Follow TV Tropes

Following

Sissy Villain / Film

Go To

  • King Xerxes of 300. He is usually wearing nothing but a gold speedo and lounging seductively on his throne.
  • Dr. Terwilliker in The 5,000 Fingers Of Dr. T. Even though he's intent on marrying Bartholomew's mother, you can clearly see he's very swishy. Especially during the fabulous dress-up song.
  • Bangkok Knockout has an effeminate fighter who initially squares off against Ao, squealing in falsetto about how much he's enjoying getting kicked by such a handsome boy.
  • The Riddler as played by Jim Carrey in Batman Forever. Not just incredibly camp, but also Ambiguously Gay for Bruce Wayne.
  • In Bombay Velvet, Kaizad Khambatta is married, but uses his wife for honey-trapping his enemies, and seems to prefer the company of other men and seems very jealous of Johnny's romance with Rosie.
  • Prince Edward in Braveheart, a foppish, homosexual weakling who cares more about new clothes and playing with his boy toy than conquering Scotland. (His Real Life analogue, Edward II, actually was gay, but not an example: besides the problems with calling real people villains, the real Edward II was interested in traditionally manly, outdoorsy pastimes like sports and, unusually given his station in life, manual labor.) The main villain, Longshanks, is a manly man.
  • The Celluloid Closet: A lot of movie villains were portrayed as having camp and implied gay stereotypes, though not crossing into explicitly Depraved Homosexual territory before the 70s or so.
  • "Sally Can't Dance" in Con Air, one of the villainous prisoners, is a camp gay guy in a dress, or trans woman (it isn't clear).
  • Sebastian Valmont in Cruel Intentions. Not gay, certainly, but soft-voiced and whiny. The clincher? His stepsister promises him that if he succeeds in an evil task she's giving him, she'll fuck him.
  • The Dark Crystal: SkekEkt is the most flamboyant of the villainous Skeksis, but all of them are rather fragile due to their old age.
  • Diamonds Are Forever:
    • Mr. Wint and Mr. Kidd are a pair of assassins who are very strongly implied to be a gay couple. Wint shows some Camp Gay mannerisms; Kidd, however, is an aversion of this trope, being Straight Gay.
    • Blofeld from the same movie got quite the upgrade in fabulousness, as well. He even got to dabble in Creepy Crossdressing.
  • The Scorpio Killer from Dirty Harry. The contrast is made more blatant by the fact that Harry Callahan is played by quintessential "man's man" Clint Eastwood.
  • The Vietnamese Giggling General in Eastern Condors comes across as quite effeminate, due primarily to his peculiar laugh, but is an incredibly ferocious martial artist
  • From the 70s film The Eiger Sanction (based on the book), there's a fellow called Miles Mellough, whose sole purpose in the movie is to embody this trope. He has a lap dog named 'Faggot', wears flamboyant clothing and makes off-colour jokes about rape in a very sissy voice. At no time is he a credible threat (we're supposed to believe he was a crack commando?!) and his death is devoid of any interesting fight: Eastwood leaves him to die in the desert midway through the film.
  • Jean-Baptiste Emanuel Zorg from The Fifth Element had some of these traits, specifically the delicacy and high fashion. Remember his perfectly appointed office? Dallas, on the other hand, is an ex-soldier played by Bruce Willis.
  • The villain in the Chow Yun-fat film Full Contact is openly gay and wants to fuck Chow almost as much as he wants to kill him.
  • Emperor Commodus from Gladiator is quite foppish and effeminate, especially compared to the extremely manly Maximus.
  • Park Chang-yi in The Good, The Bad, The Weird is a murderous, psychopathic prettyboy with anachronistically fabulous clothes and grooming. Overlaps with Agent Peacock, as he's the most feared assassin in Manchuria and every bit as deadly as he is pretty.
  • In The Grand Duel, Adam Saxon is the baby of the Saxon brothers, a dressed-all-in-white dandy, and a psychotic killer to boot who goes into near orgasmic delight whenever he gets to kill someone.
  • Percy in The Green Mile. Fittingly, the casts' Southern accents make it sound a lot like "pussy."
  • One of the complaints often levied against the Harry Potter films is that Voldemort often comes across as this.
  • Herod in the original movie production of Jesus Christ Superstar. He lounges in a swimming pool with two attractive women and two male servants, sings in a higher register than the other male characters, and does a very camp dance during his song.
  • Valentine from Kingsman: The Secret Service has a lisp, dresses fairly casually (and when he DOES go formal, is very foppish), and is sickened by acts of murder. Direct murder, that is. He's fine with having people kill each other.
  • Jareth the Goblin King from Labyrinth is every bit as fabulously campy as the man who played him, but in a decidedly sexy and cool way like Frank-N-Furter mentioned below. Complicating the issue further is his definite affinity for the ladies, or at least for Jennifer Connelly.
  • Dr. Caspary in The Lightship (Robert Duvall, Playing Against Type) is an effeminate dandy whose mannerisms seem to channel Truman Capote's. He's also a modern-day pirate who hijacks a naval vessel with help from his two henchmen thugs (one of whom is implied to be his lover).
  • The Maltese Falcon (1941) pits macho Anti-Hero Sam Spade up against three Sissy Villains: Joel Cairo, Kasper Gutman, and Wilmer. (Only The Hays Code prevented the film from out-and-out showing that Cairo and Wilmer are the Gayngsters they are in the novel.)
  • In Abel Gance's biopic of Napoleon, Gance himself steals the show as Louis Antoine de Saint-Just. Foppish and effete in his dangling earrings, and described as the most feared man in the French Revolution – other authors have called him the Terror's "Angel of Death".
  • Lord Cutler Beckett from Pirates of the Caribbean has elements of this as well, though a lot of real life aristocrats of 18th century acted like that so it's purely canon instead of being for just the heck of it.
  • Plan 9 from Outer Space:
    • The alien commander Eros. In the words of the Rifftrax guys: "He makes Carson Kressley look butch!" The actor's name was Dudley Manlove. Yes, that was his real name. Poor guy.
    • Eros' superior, however, out-swishes him by a mile. He was played by a guy with the ordinary name (and not-so-ordinary nickname) of John "Bunny" Breckinridge, but his lifestyle topped having the surname "Manlove" by ten miles.
  • Watson from Razor Sharpe, although, given his unfathomable accent, it's anyone's guess whether this is intentional or just the result of dodgy acting.
  • Repo! The Genetic Opera has Pavi Largo as a minor villain. He is foppish, flamboyant and painfully vain; he dresses in replica vintage Italian suits, and speaks with an outrageous Italian accent for no good reason. He's also a serial rapist who wears the face of a beautiful woman over his own.
  • Archibald Cunningham from Rob Roy, a downright fop who murders people to buy fancy new clothes. He affects a comically mincing facade, but drops the act behind closed doors and when he's angry. When talking to his mistress he actually mentions putting on a "lithp" as part of his highborn act. True to the way this trope is usually played, The Hero is the classically manly Rob Roy, though unusually, Cunningham is a vastly superior fighter with a fair amount of Villainous Valour.
  • Dr. Frank-N-Furter from The Rocky Horror Picture Show, albeit he's an Evil Is Cool example.
  • Charles Laughton (who was bisexual) as Emperor Nero in The Sign of the Cross.
  • Buffalo Bill, the quasi-trans Serial Killer from Silence of the Lambs, is one of the most famous examples.
  • Raoul Silva (as played by Javier Bardem), the antagonist of Skyfall. He even actively fuels the Foe Romance Subtext between him and 007.
  • Ronald, in Squatters, is first introduced in a long red wig and he lisps his way throughout the movie.
  • Bruno from Strangers on a Train, Brandon and Philip from Rope, Norman Bates from Psycho... it's safe to say that Alfred Hitchcock loved this trope.
  • Jean Girard from Talladega Nights: The Ballad of Ricky Bobby is a comedy version of this trope. He even talks about his husband. And he raises horses — who are also gay. However, subverted in that he's the best racer on the circuit for a time — and he puts Ricky in a humiliating arm lock in order to force him to admit that French crepes are delicious. Also subverted in that he's not particularly villainous, more of The Rival who secretly admires Ricky Bobby and sees him as a Worthy Opponent. He's a bit of an arrogant jerk, but so is Ricky.
  • Eli Sunday, the shady preacher from There Will Be Blood, who's almost too pathetic to be an actual threat. Almost.
  • Willard Gates, the villain with an aversion to being exposed to violence, in This Gun for Hire.
  • Billy Breakenridge is a corrupt sheriff's deputy on the take from the bandit Cowboy gang in Tombstone. He's also portrayed as an effeminate, homosexual weakling. Breakenridge's collaboration with an outlaw gang is probably historically accurate, but his effeminacy was probably something Wyatt Earp made up in his account of the events at Tombstone.
  • Darren "Wall Street" Bettencourt of The Transporter spends his first appearance trying to feel Frank up, while talking about how much "I like him." He's got the limp wrists, the Large Ham gestures, the pretty boy look, and the mincing. And then he reveals that he's actually The Dragon and a fairly nasty Blood Knight who wants to fight Frank to the death.
  • Aro, the head vampire in the film version of Twilight, due to Michael Sheen simply not giving a shit.
  • They're not the main villains, but in Vanishing Point Kowalski picks up two stereotypical gay hitchhikers who attempt to rob him, and he beats them up.
  • Komodo from Warriors of Virtue is prissy, frilly and effeminate, but he very clearly has gotten with several of the hot women in this movie anyway.
  • Subverted by Adrian "Ozymandias" Veidt in Watchmen. The screenwriter and director were convinced he was gay, the actor who played him suggested he was probably at least bisexual in an interview, and there's an Easter Egg in a shot of his computer desktop that may or may not have a gay Porn Stash. He's also extremely well-dressed, to the point of garishness in some scenes, and has a fabulous androgynous haircut bordering on Power Hair. He's also a ruthlessly efficient martial artist, a hard-nosed businessman, and has terse, rather dry and dour speech patterns and body language. He might not be quite Straight Gay, but there is nothing mincing or effeminate about him in the slightest.
  • Mr. Ho, The Dragon from Way of the Dragon, is quite effeminate, especially when he feels Tang Lung's stomach and says, "Ohhhh, what rippling muscles!"
  • In Yellow Hair and the Fortress of Gold, the villainous Colonel Torres is a dandy, and strongly implied to be homosexual (and possibly an Ephebophile).


Top