My Favorite Villain

I have been listening to the Anthrax album State of Euphoria non-stop in my car lately. Great record a friend of mine just turned me on to. There's a song titled "Now It's Dark" on the album. I immediately said to myself, "That's a Blue Velvet quote." Sure enough, the song is about the movie, and the chorus quotes Frank Booth, the villain in Blue Velvet, one of the most bizarre film's I've ever seen. This got me thinking about villains.

There are a lot of memorable villains in both cinematic and literary history. Perhaps due to my age and the fact that film was a big part of my life at one time, the most memorable villains are ones I watched on old VHS tapes time and time again.  The greatest of them all is Frank Booth as played by Dennis Hopper in the David Lynch film Blue Velvet.

I could give a brief two sentence synopsis of the film, but that just wouldn't do it justice. If you haven't seen it, then you simply must. I am going to assume that most people reading this are familiar with the film, as it is required viewing for those of us who enjoy dark, edgy themes.  If you haven't seen it yet, I'm sure Netflix has it.

For years I considered Randal Flagg, from the Stephen King novel The Stand,  to be my favorite villain, but with much deliberation I have decided that Frank Booth is the most memorable and greatest villain of them all. He's sadistic, murderous, violent and unpredictable. He's a drug addict, a gangster, a rapist, confused, insane, and frightening. And, on top of all that, he delivers some of the most memorable one-liners, most of them littered with the incessant use of his favorite four-letter expletive. My favorite line: "Don't you fucking look at me." His Heineken rant is classic as well: "Heineken. Fuck that shit! Pabst Blue Ribbon!"

So, I raise a Pabst for Frank Booth, may your celluloid soul rot in Hell, you evil fuck!