Geekscape’s Top-10 Sports Movie Villains Of All Time
The 45th Super Bowl is coming this weekend. I don’t know who is playing.
If you’re like me (and I imagine most readers of Geekscape are in this respect) you learned the bulk of your sporting knowledge from films and TV. Sure we all played chaotic pickup games as children, but only a few of us (AYSO inductees, Little League practitioners, Kenpo karate tykes) managed to play sports in any active, structured fashion. I was taken to a few basketball games as a kid, and loved the chocolate malts I had at the ballpark, but the world of noisy televised sports, the subscriptions to Sports Illustrated for Kids, the basketball hoop over the garage door – these are all alien to me.
The one place I would learn about sports (The Olympics notwithstanding) would be the video store and the local cinemas. In the sports movies, the mere game was bulked up into a hugely dramatic endeavor, where hardworking underdogs would rise against adversity, often against impossible odds, and often overcome against some opponent-cum-perceived enemy.
It was the enemies that always interested me. The vaguely villainous types that would swoop in on their bus, pour out in lockstep conformity, and give evil eyes to our heroes. Little explainantion is given to these people. All we know about them is that they’re well-moneyed, they’re well-dressed, they’re well-prepared, and they have every reason to defeat the good guys. They are never afraid of the good guys; indeed they are often headstrong and cocksure. And, since we know our ancient sports movie tropes, we know they are destined for failure.
In celebration of the Super Bowl, and in quiet appreciation of the Bad Guy, here is a list of the 10 greatest sports movie villains.
10) Minnesota Fats
from “The Hustler” (1961)
Eddie Felson (Paul Newman) is the worst kind of pool shark. He’s so good that people won’t take bets with him, and he struggles to make a living. He’s also cocky in the worst possible way, allowing his ego to stand in the way of his reason and his pocketbook. He comes into town to challenge the man who, he hears, is the best pool player in the world. This is Minnesota Fats (Jackie Gleason).
Fats is an imposing man. He’s bulky, stoic, unmovable. The first time Fats and Eddie play, the game lasts literally days. As the games grind on, both men suffer from fatigue, but their games do not flag, and their resolve does not slip. Eventually Eddie becomes so drunk and angry and distracted, that Fats wins. At that point it was not a pool tournament. It was a stamina contest, and a battle of the wills.
This is the kind of villain I like to see in my sports movie. A guy we know well just by looking at him. Someone whom we know is instinctively a badass, and who can toy with his competition. Someone who has a passionate love of the game, and an impeccable skill, yet still that mild streak of cruelty allowing for scenes of quiet, subtle sadistic mockery. Who would have thought so much quiet wickedness culd exist during a pool game? Robert Rossen’s “The Hustler” provides it for us.
9) Alexander
from “Robot Jox” (1990)
This was one of the most important movies in the world to me when I was 14 or so. Its ideas seemed revolutionary: In the future, war has been outright outlawed. All international disputes over resources, pride, and downright antagonism, are decided in robot battle arenas. This seems so practical to me. Rather than sending thousands of tragic soldiers into a battlefield to die, why not train an elite group of athletes to pilot gigantic robot suits, and have at it in a one-on-one fashion? Maybe if everything goes wrong, a single mob of innocent spectators may die.
The hero of our film is Achilles (Gary Graham) a Joc just on the cusp of retirement, and afraid of his replacement Athena (Anne-Marie Johnson), a wiry upstart. Achilles and all his fellow Jox, however, fear the machinations of the wicked Eastern robot pilot Alexander, who wears black, has an Eastern European accent, and gleefully kills his opponents, even when such an action is kind of taboo. Alexander has cooler robots (with multiple legs and what have you), and a sick, death-driven attitude.
The Robot Jox are a pretty neat group of athletes engaged in a pretty cool sport. That there is a wicked expert in the world of Robot Jocking makes my inner 9th grader squeal with delight.
8) Baron Wolfgang von Wolfhausen
from “Beerfest” (2006)
I’ve been to a few Super Bowl parties in my day, usually with more interest in the spread, or the commercials, or even because a crush had incited me, but I have noticed that, at such events, just as ubiquitous as football jerseys and screaming and pretzel sticks, is beer. It’s usually crappy American beer, too. Like Natural Light or something. The playfully absurd faux-fratboys over at Broken Lizard realized this universal connection of sport to beer, and, in 2006, made the underrated drinking comedy “Beerfest”
“Beerfest” followed a group of friends who stumbled upon a secret underground beer-drinking contest while on vacation in Germany. They, foolish neophyte American that they are, feel they can jump into the competition with no problems, but are thoroughly and embarrassingly trounced by the wicked German team. Those Germans sure do know their beer. The world’s largest beer keg is in Heidelberg, Germany. I’ve seen it.
The villainous German beer-drinking team captain was played by a sinister Jürgen Prochnow, who lends his usual intensity to the role, but also proves that he’s not above the humorous material. He cakles and mocks with the best of them, and looks down on the Americans with a genuine spite. He even makes a cute “Das Boot” joke. What a class act.
7) Zeus
from “No Holds Barred” (1989)
WWF wrestling personality Hulk Hogan was so popular in the mid-to-late 1980s, that his faced graced everything from toys and lunchboxes, to hundreds of bootleg t-shirts, fruits snacks, and even a Saturday morning cartoon show. His first feature film acting gig was a role as wrestler Thunderlips in the fatuous “Rocky III” (1982), but it wasn’t until 1989 that Hogan landed his first leading role, in a semi-serious wrestling tale called “No Holds Barred” where he played a Hogan-like wrestler named Rip.
Rip was a virtuous blue-collar type who wrestled in legit tournaments, and who was, thanks to the machinations of evil suits in smoky boardrooms, forced to compete in a no holds barred tournament against the unstoppable Zeus.
Zeus, played by Thomas “Tiny” Lister, is one hell of a badass. In his first appearance, he knocks out a fellow wrestler without even introducing himself, yanks fistfuls of hair from the wrestler’s head, and bellows his victory to the crowd. He had the letter “Z” shaved into the side of his own head. He barely spoke, preferring to eyeball people with his cockeyed stare, and grunt in animal glee. He would frequently beat his chest, but, if memory serves, the chest-beating looked a little bit more like he was flagellating himself with sage bundles.
I love the thought of an unbeatable pro-wrestler, especially one so shrouded in mystery as Zeus. No one knew from whence he came, or what his motivations really were. Only that he had to – had to – defeat Rip at all costs.
6) The Beast
from “The Sandlot” (1993)
“The Sandlot” is considered by many people in their late 20s to be a modern American classic. It’s about a young boy who moves to a new town, and falls in with the local misfits who are obsessed with baseball. The team is rife with cliched characters, but, according to those who love it, they are distinct people, and most are especially fond of the chubby and cocky Ham, played by Patrick Renna.
While “The Sandlot” does feature a baseball rivalry with a local band of slicker, more professional athlete types, the true villain of the film is probably The Beast, an enormous, bestial, minotaur-like junkyard dog who legendarily will eat any baseball that lands near it. The Beast is a terrifying creature with a horrifying reputation. The dog is depicted as kind of mythic.
Of course, the heroes must eventually do battle with the dog, and this, to me, serves as a much more interesting sport rivalry than the film’s central plot. The kids must protect the game they love and live and have bonded over by facing their darkest fears in the form of a horrible monster. A monster that east baseballs. There is something ancient about this idea, but then, there’s something refreshingly familiar; like everyone had this kind of trial as a kid.
5) Max Baer
from “Cinderella Man” (2005)
Ron Howard’s “Cinderella Man” told the true story of Depression-era boxer Jim Braddock, played with a surprising gentleness by Russel Crowe. The film entire was a quiet, storybook approach to Braddock’s humble life, and modest struggles to become the world boxing champion.
The final fight of “Cinderella Man” is with real-life boxer Max Baer, a boxer so strong, so brutal, so notorious, that he actually has a reputation for killing one of his opponents in the ring. He is depicted as cocky, unapologetic and unbeatable. Since he is played by notable actor Craig Bierko, he is also possessed of no small amounts of Billy Zane-like slimy charm. He is dashing, handsome, sleazy, and can, should the situation call for it, kill you.
In real life, Baer was actually a decent fighter, who was copascetic with Braddock, and felt endlessly guilty about the life he accidentally took, but in the movie, with Bierko at the reigns, he became a mythic sleazeball with superpowered fists. I like that.
4) Roy Turner
from “The Bad News Bears” (1976)
Morris Buttermaker (Walter Matthau), is a hard-drinking misanthrope who wants to do anything but coach little league. Sadly, after an inauspicious career in the minor leagues, it is his only recourse. He is teamed up the The Bears, the worst team in an ultra-competitive children’s baseball league, and, together, they manage to use their wits to beat the bad guys. Well, they notoriously don’t defeat the bad guys, but they are pleased anyway. Michael Richie’s “The Bad News Bears” remains, to this day, a staple of the kid sports movie genre, and was even remade by Richard Linklater in 2005.
The bad guy in “The Bad News Bears” is Roy Turner, played by Vic Morrow. Roy is a well-dressed Gestapo type, who keeps his players clean and efficient. He is not self-effacing, and he is not sympathetic. He is a clear-cut bad guy. But then, Morrow brings a touch of humanity to the role, so that I saw him as a slightly weary, and completely professional.
Roy Turner was not just a memorable role, but served as the blueprint for a generation of sports movie villains. If you haven’t seen “the Bad News Bears,” by all means, do. The sequels, you can skip.
3) Chong Li
from “Bloodsport” (1988)
“Bloodsport,” the film that put Belgian action star Jean-Claude Van Damme on the map, is one of the better films from the underground pitfighting genre that was so big in the 1980s. Van Damme plays a character named Frank Dux who travels to Honk Kong to participate in a martial arts tournament called Kumite, where all martial arts are mixed, and there are essentially no rules. Participants often die. Frank is a decent fellow, but is also a good fighter and he trounces his competition.
The lingering specter over the competition is Chong Li (Bolo Yeung), a hugely muscled Chinese fighter who seems to take no small amount of pleasure in killing his in-ring opponents. Chong Li is enormous, with biceps like Thanksgiving hams, and pectoral muscles that could house a family of stray cats. What’s more, he’s one mean motherfucker. He only smiles when he is doing severe, irreparable damage to another human’s skeleton.
I love the notion of The Unbeatable Opponent, and Chong Li so well encapsulates this, by appearing like a well-toned, limber, slightly rabid elephant. His position is only helped by his unquechable lust for violence. Bolo Yeung is amazing in most of his roles (which were all largely of this stripe), and Chong Li is probably his highest-profile role.
2) Cobra Kai
from “The Karate Kid” (1984)
As a film, “The Karate Kid” is the source of many sport movie cliches. To be sure, there were scores of wise martial arts masters in the past, but it wasn’t until Pat Morita played Miyagi-san that the role was codified for a generation of American kids. There were underdogs before, but Ralph Macchio, with his proto-guido demeanor, and self-effacing smirk became the face of Kenpo Karate kids for years.
And there were bullies in movies before, but none so horrible and dark and notorious as The Cobra Kai. These were no mere bullies. These kids seemed out for blood. The scene where they chase Daniel (Macchio) around the high school gym wearing their Halloween finest, has reached near-classic status amongst fans of ’80s martial arts movies. The Cobra Kai came across as an amorphous blob of purified hate, an abstract monster of sorts. And all because they took karate classes from some dojo located, undoubtedly, in a strip mall.
This is why their evil seems so pure to me. Thanks to the Marine-style classes they took, these kids seemed to be brainwashed. And the head of the Cobra Kai, John Kreese (Martin Kove) was only slightly less friendly and obsessed and harsh than Hermann Goering. This was a man who allowed his hatred taint the minds of youth… all for the sake of karate. What an awesome villain.
1) Ivan Drago
from “Rocky IV” (1985)
Silent, enormous, imposing. Shaped by the finest Soviet training technology that science has to offer. Married to an ambiguously sexual, ballbusting robowife, and seemingly made of steel, Ivan Drago is the perfect sports movie villain. Played by the then-unheard -of Dolph Lundgren, Ivan Drago is everything a sports movie villain ought to be: Kind of cartoonish, physically peerless, imminently unbeatable, dangerous, bloodthirsty, stoic, determined to do only one thing in life: defeat and/or kill his opponents, whichever is easier. He’s also paired with an equally villainous wife (Brigitte Nielsen). I imagine their courtship involved a lot of uncaring, icy stares at suffering proles and starving children.
What’s more, Drago represents the Soviet half of one of the sloppiest Cold War metaphors in cinematic history. This turns him from an already-lurid caricature into an epically melodramatic tool. I don’t know about you, but I love characters like that.
Stallone’s “Rocky” movies ran the gamut from American classic to, well, “Rocky IV.” you can read my full analysis of the films here: http://witneyman.wordpress.com/2010/11/30/the-series-project-rocky/. In what is the weirdest and most bugnus crazy of the sequels, we are treated to one of the most memorable and lurid sports movie villains in the genre’s history.
Honorable Mention: Bob Barker
From “Happy Gilmore” (1996)
Adam Sandler’s goofy golf comedy is not very good, but is well-loved by many people of a certain age. It was a simple story that was punctuated by several surprisingly memorable moments. The most memorable was, of course, the scene where Happy (Sandler) participated in a celebrity open, and found himself in a tussle with the erstwhile host of “The Price is Right,” Bob Barker. Barker is a notoriously kind and friendly man, who was a professional of the old guard. To see him swearing and savagely beating Adam Sandler carries with it a pleasure that is difficult to describe. For that scene, he deserves a mention on this list.
Witney Seibold is a film writer living in the United States. He watches movies and then writes about them. Then he goes to work at a movie theater. He recently became the co-host of a movie podcast over at Crave online, and he maintains a personal movie review ‘blog called Three Cheers for Darkened Years! which can be found here: http://witneyman.wordpress.com/
