Pearly whites and black hearts: the five most villainous smiles in movie history
For the most part, smiling is supposed to convey feelings of joy and satisfaction, but cinema has a way of using the happiest emotions on the human spectrum as a means for villainy.
There’s even an entire movie about it, with Parker Finn’s hit horror Smile using unsettling grins as the backdrop to both an inspired viral marketing campaign and a bumper haul at the box office, with a sequel on the cards and eying an October 2024 release.
People might smile when they’re happy, but plenty of folks have derived happiness from doing some truly terrible things, and there are no shortage of movie characters who love nothing more than to flash their pearly whites right after they’ve displayed the blackest of hearts.
The barometer for a villainous cinematic smile is an easy one; if anyone was to catch a glimpse of the following five expressions staring back at them from the other side of a crowded room, then the first instinct would be to run a mile. Haunting in isolation, but all powerful in their own unique way.
The five most villainous smiles in cinema:
5. The Man Who Laughs (Paul Leni, 1928)
Nobody’s going to look at Conrad Veidt’s Gwynplaine in the classic 1928 silent romantic drama and think he’s a remotely trustworthy character, but it’s not really his fault he looks so villainous.
The tragic figure was left permanently disfigured by a surgeon who mutilated children on the orders of the king, with Gwynplaine forced into a travelling circus due to his off-putting appearance. He’s not actively trying to frighten people, but it’s a natural by-product of the tragedy inflicted upon him.
The permanent smile etched on his face isn’t deliberately disturbing, but it’s garish and hard to look at, with the disconnect between what his mouth is doing and the sadness his eyes are conveying stirring up a bad bout of mixed emotions. Not a conventional villain, then, but an unforgettable one nonetheless.
4. Psycho (Alfred Hitchcock, 1960)
The unnerving end to an iconic movie, Alfred Hitchcock ends Psycho with a smile that’s been burned into cinema history ever since.
Anthony Perkins’ Norman Bates is a bit of a dweeb and a loser, as presented throughout the running time until it transpires that he and his overbearingly murderous mother are one and the same. Suffering from a personality disorder, he’s trying to protect himself in a way, even if he’s got a strange way of going about it.
Staring down the camera and burning a hole through a captive audience, Bates’ grin might be a subtle and understated one, but the aura it projects is undeniably haunting. Cinema’s scariest-ever mummy’s boy, his remorseless smirk has lost none of its power.
3. The Omen (Richard Donner, 1976)
Being the son of the devil himself comes with its own unique set of perks, something young Damien makes perfectly clear in the very last shot of Richard Donner’s classic franchise-spawning horror.
With strange and sinister events following his switcheroo son everywhere he goes, Gregory Peck’s Robert Thorn decides the only way to prevent the unspeakable evil the hellspawn will bring upon the world is through the means of infanticide.
Unfortunately, not only do the authorities disagree, given their obliviousness to his true parentage, but the eerie smile he gives the camera is the icing on the cake after Damien ends up under the care of the president, in a tantalising plot thread that was abandoned in the inevitably subpar sequel.
2. A Clockwork Orange (Stanley Kubrick, 1971)
The very first image Stanley Kubrick committed to the screen in A Clockwork Orange is a malevolent grin curling at the lips of Malcom McDowell’s Alex, which is very much a sign of things to come.
That single expression tells everyone all they need to know about the character, who relishes in the misery he inflicts upon others before his life is turned upside down in more ways than one when he’s subjected to intense behavioural rehabilitation.
He doesn’t say a word, but it’s already abundantly clear this guy is nothing but bad news. He looks exactly the sort to indulge himself in the seedy side of criminality, with the opening slow zoom saying a thousand times more than any monologue ever could.
1. No Country for Old Men (Joel and Ethan Coen, 2007)
Having already committed a murder before escaping from custody, Javier Bardem had already showcased the cold, calculated, and unfeeling nature of Anton Chigurh the second he showed up in No Country for Old Men.
However, it’s the smile that pushes the character into the realm of all-time villainy because at no point does it look like trying to emulate human emotion wasn’t either intensely researched or capable of causing him genuine physical discomfort.
“Step out of the car please, sir” has never sounded more sinister than it did here, with Chigurh’s psychopathy running so deep that the innocuous act of smiling might well be the most terrifying thing he does in the entire movie.
