Our readers run the gamut on their favorite bad guys

"The Dark Knight" continues to break box office records in Hollywood, but a record was also broken this week at the Daily Herald, where I received a landslide of reader suggestions for additional villains to be named to my list of the most vile movie characters in history.

Significantly, not a single person championed mad slashers. No Jason Voorhees. No Michael Myers. No Freddy Krueger.

Why not? Because they're mostly boring, personality-challenged villains who go around chopping up victims we care even less about than the slashers themselves. It looks like film critics were right in the long-run.

Also significantly, readers didn't rally around any particular villain. Instead, readers identified an eclectic mix of baddies as top-10 contenders.

My list last week came with a few internal rules. Villains had to be in movies at least 5 years old to allow time to separate the truly memorable from the temporarily celebrated. I avoided highly sympathetic villains and anti-heroes in favor of hardened villains motivated by pure evil, or at least by a shocking disregard for humanity.

Under these rules, "King Kong" would not be a villain, but "Jaws" star Bruce the Shark would. Rutger Hauer's replicant antagonist Roy Batty was more human than Harrison Ford's protagonist Rick Deckard in "Blade Runner," so I didn't count him as a heinous villain.

Still, readers had plenty of suggestions. Here are but a few of them.

"Dann: A favorite movie of mine that is often overlooked (probably because it flopped at the box office) is 'Once Upon A Time In The West.' In this masterpiece, Henry Fonda gives a tremendous performance as the evil sadistic Frank. For my money, this portrayal is the meanest villain I have ever seen. I believe this is the only time Fonda played a villain.

- Bob Gleason, Wheeling

Bob, you're right. In fact, director Sergio Leone had to practically put Fonda in a headlock to get him to agree to play his mad dog gunfighter. Fonda said he never understood why Leone wanted him for the role. But when Fonda saw himself on the silver screen in that initial close-up, a portrait of evil with cold, dead eyes, he got it.

"Dann: I was particularly gratified to see that you included Auric Goldfinger. Gert Frobe's portrayal of the quintessential Bond villain is too often overlooked. No subsequent Bond bad guy has come close to the mad visionary determined to throw the U.S. into economic chaos. Best of all, he did it without frothing at the mouth.

I would, however, not have included the demon from 'The Exorcist.' You should have restricted the list to humans (and witches) only. Perhaps the demon could appear in a list of nonhuman antagonists, along with HAL and Chucky. As a replacement I offer two candidates: Catherine Tramell of 'Basic Instinct' or Simon Phoenix from 'The Demolition Man.'"

- Bill Pohnan, Streamwood

Bill: HAL was in the running, but... inexplicably... faded... out.

"Dann: One glaring omission, perhaps because it was a serial rather than a movie. The most menacing villain of all was Charles Middleton as Ming the Merciless in the Flash Gordon serials of 1936, 1938 and 1940, with Buster Crabbe as Flash Gordon. Middleton was constantly menacing and evil without hesitation or any remorse. For some reason, he was the only Asian on the entire planet Mongo.

- Gary Koca, Streamwood

Gary: Ming was on our short list of candidates for interplanetary serial killers.

Dann: Here are a few more: Michael Madsen as the sadistic Mr. Blonde in 'Reservoir Dogs' (1992), Bill McKinney ("I bet you can squeal like a pig. Wheeee!") as the mountain man in 'Deliverance' (1972), and Klaus Maria Brandauer as the merciless genius Maximilian Largo in 'Never Say Never Again' (1983).

- Michael O'Gorman, Geneva

Michael: I agree about Mr. Blonde. I've earmarked him as a villain with great potential to move up the list.

"Dann: When I was a child, my parents took me to see 'Oliver!' I loved the movie but found Bill Sikes terrifying and cruel. He met with a very just ending for having killed Nancy."

- Sharron Boxenbaum, Hoffman Estates

Sharron: The biggest villain in "Oliver!" is the lyricist who wrote Nancy's words to "As Long As He Needs Me," a song that romanticizes domestic violence and advised a generation of girls to "love him right or wrong," thereby turning a pop movie into a fetid, abuse-enabling piece of propaganda.

"Mr. Gire, great column on the greatest movie villains. There is, however, one that would have to be on my list: Dennis Hopper's character Frank Booth in 'Blue Velvet.' They don't come any creepier!

- John Laugesen, Elk Grove Village

John: Hopper's performance was so bombastically frightening that when he shouted "Don't look at me!" I turned away from the screen.

"Dann, only time will tell, but I think you might eventually add Lord Voldamort from the Harry Potter series to your list in a few years."

- Beth Small, Elgin

Beth: Yes, He Who Must Not Be Named might very well be named to the list in 2010.

"Dann: How about Roat, the Alan Arkin creepy character who tries to kill Audrey Hepburn in 'Wait Until Dark?' Or Norman Bates from 'Psycho?' or Maleficent from Disney's 'Sleeping Beauty'? How many kids got nightmares from that character?

- Kent Schielke, Naperville

Kent: Good choices, but I don't consider Norman an evil villain. He's just a boy trying to protect his nutty, homicidal mother. She's just a mom trying to protect her boy from sex and heartbreak. They're great characters, but I don't see them as vile villains.

"Dann, I think you missed the biggest, scariest bad guy of them all: the shark from 'Jaws.' Just think of all the people who wouldn't go in the water for a year or two after seeing that movie. Don't shivers run down your spine just hearing the theme, dum, dum, dumdum?"

- Gloria La Berg, Des Plaines

Gloria: In addition to Bruce the Shark, we considered "The Birds" and "Cujo."

Other suggestions:

• Tim Roth as Archibald Cunningham in 'Rob Roy' was completely despicable - Janet Wade, Buffalo Grove

• Rutger Hauer as Reinhardt Wulfgar in the 1981 "Nighthawks." Another one is Bruce Dern in "The Cowboys." Anyone who kills John Wayne deserves to be hung!' - Frank Shaw

• Edward R. Rooney from "Ferris Bueller's Day Off" and Biff Tannen from the "Back to the Future' trilogy." - Michael Kloempken, Algonquin

• Harvey Keitel as "The Bad Lieutenant." - Rick Carlson, Elk Grove Village

• Agent Smith from "The Matrix" - Randy Klecka, Lakemoor

• Blair Underwood's and Ed Harris' characters in "Just Cause" - Virginia Jones, Elgin

• Robert De Niro and Robert Mitchum from the two "Cape Fear" movies. And what about Glenn Close from "Fatal Attraction"? Or Kathy Bates from "Misery"? - Pat Jones, Wheaton

• Norman Bates in "Psycho" and Baby Jane in "Whatever Happened to Baby Jane?" - Mark Larson, Addison