RSS
Home
The top 10 greatest Stephen King villains
Print
Email
RSS
Subscribe
The Crimson King drawn by Michael Whelan
10. Blaine the Mono
This one may be fairly obscure, but the people who have read The Dark Tower know what a creepy entity Blaine is. Schizophrenic, suicidal, and obsessed with riddles, Blaine holds the protagonists hostage as he speeds toward his own death. Their only chance of escape is to come up with a riddle that he (and his supercomputer of a brain) can't solve. This seemingly unwinnable battle makes the ending of The Wastelands. It is also one of the highlights of the series as a whole.
9. The Tommyknockers
King pays tribute to 50's alien movies with this door stopper of a book. King subverts most alien plots by having the Tommyknockers start off dead and later reveals the fact that they were quite stupid. The takeover is the result of the ship releasing a gas into the air that transforms whoever breathes it into Tommyknockers themselves.
8. Atropos
The main villain of Insomnia, a tie-in to The Dark Tower, this little bugger is an invisible "doctor" who cuts you from your life force and giggles with delight as you slowly die. His demented love doesn't stop with humans, he holds a dog hostage and then kills it.
7. Christine
A warning sign to all car aficionados about what could happen if you become obsessed with your car. Of course the fact that it's alive and/or possessed doesn't help matters either. Even creepier then the "killer" aspect of the car was the fact that it
actually has a healing factor that puts Wolverine's to shame.
6. The Crimson King
Like Flagg, The Crimson King had a whole lot of great buildup, only to lead to an anticlimactic end. Still, aside from DC's
Anti-Monitor, there isn't a villain in literature with a plot so wide reaching as CK's. He literally wants to destroy everything,
not just the world or even the universe, but the multiverse in its entirity.
5. Cujo
One of the more sympathetic villains in the roster. There is no demonic presence or psychosis, merely a disease that gradually takes its toll on the poor title character. The fact that we see Cujo as a big, playful and lovable dog and the POV scenes where we see him trying to fight to hold onto his sanity after he becomes infected makes it very difficult to villify him to such a great degree, even if he does hold a family hostage in a car for three days during a record breaking heatwave.
4. Annie Wilkes
Putting even the most rabid of comic book fanboys to shame, Annie Wilkes is every celebrity's worst nightmare. This 300 pound bag of crazy seems nice at first, but goes nuts over the slightest offense. She holds a writer hostage and forces him to retcon his own work lest she takes out the axe.
3. The Overlook
A seemingly simple secluded hotel, the Overlook acts as host to not only a dark past, but ghosts, killer topiaries, supernatural
wasps, and some undefined entity that overpowers Jack Torrance and gradually drives him to homicidal madness. This villain
thrives on inclement weather as it cuts off contact with the outside world and robs its prey of any chance of escape.
King's first recurring supervillain. Randall Flagg showed up as the demonic major baddie of The Stand as well as an evil wizard in Eyes of the Dragon as well as The Dark Tower. His ending isn't deserving of the character, but he did make for interesting reading throughout several books.
1. Pennywise
One half Lovecraftian horror, one half homicidal sewer lurking clown, Pennywise is the ultimate Stephen King villain. He's
ancient, from another dimension, and he literally turns your greatest fear against you. Unlike some of the other villains on the
list, Pennywise doesn't go out like a punk. It takes not one, but two, final confrontations over a 30 year span for our heroes to finally defeat him once and for all and kill him...or did they?!
Related Articles:
Comments
