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Most horror movies get us to hate/love the villain by making him or her evil. The classic mad scientist out to rule the world/destroy mankind/conduct immoral experiments, the monster who destroys for the sake of destruction, the killer who indiscriminately kills sex-crazed teens--these are all examples of the "common" type of villain.

But then there are the bad guys who aren't really trying to be bad; they are presented to us in a sympathetic light. Who are your favorites?

I'll start the list off with a few of the well-known ones:

The Wolfman: alongside the bloodthirsty Count Dracula and the mad Baron von Frankenstein's monster (another candidate), we have Mr. Talbot, the cursed man seeking redemption. If it weren't for his Manwich lunches (made with 100% real man), he'd be a downright likable fellow.

Gort (The Day the Earth Stood Still): In the midst of the string of evil alien movies, we get one peaceful guy coming down to try to bring us to our senses. Instead, humans kill him in a fit of paranoia. Not sure he's really a villain, per se, but the people in the movie treat him as one.

The Ymir (20,000,000 Miles to Earth): This monster goes on a rampage, but only because he is on a strange planet being poked with sticks and shot at.

Godzilla might also qualify for this category, at least in the later movies where he becomes a defender of Japan and of Earth.

And one more from a movie I recently watched: Mr. Franz in Attack of the Puppet People (http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0051381/). He is crazy, but he gets a very sympathetic portrayal by John Hoyt. ****SPOILERS**** He is a dollmaker and puppeteer by trade. His wife left him years before the time of the movie. Heartbroken, he quit show business and began making dolls (he talks to the dolls as well, claiming they are his friends). People start disappearing from his doll factory, and we learn that he has been kidnapping people and shrinking them to doll size; then he places them in suspended animation in doll tubes and displays them as his "art." He awakens them from time to time for parties, but mostly they sleep. He is beaten in the end by John Agar and his bride-to-be, June Kennedy, and he is left waiting for the police, crying that he doesn't want to be alone. ****END SPOILERS**** I was pleasantly surprised by this movie, and, if you haven't already seen it, it's worth a watch.

Who are your favorite sympathetic villains/monsters?

I have always found Jack Palance's Dracula (1973) to be a tremendously sympathetic portrayal.  I don't know if it was Richard Matheson's script, or Palance's spin on the part, but I felt sorry for the Count.  He was truly damned.

Peter Lorre does his damnedest to make the child-murdering Hans Beckert sympathetic in Fritz Lang's amazing M. It's really quite a harrowing performance.

Of course, sympathy and understanding only take you so far. Hans Beckert is a horrible human being.

I.M.O. Godzilla is made out to be "bad" as well as "good" ... The 1st b.w. Godzilla film w/ Raymond Burr Godzilla really wasn't really trying to be bad, like you said. Godzilla is just presented as "bad" because of his destruction.

Later - The Showa-era Godzilla was presented as "good" ... I think, but wait ... was he not he presented as "bad" in King Kong vs Godzilla? Ahh! Im not even sure lol ... I like Godzilla movies, bad or good.

(http://img24.imageshack.us/img24/8084/kingkongvgodzilla.jpg) (http://img24.imageshack.us/i/kingkongvgodzilla.jpg/)
Yes, that's a fight, not a dance party lol.

I just watched DEATH FACTORY: BLOODLETTING, and I must say the killer mutant claw-handed chick is a really pathetic figure.  She never asked to become a living nightmare, and you get the sense that there is just enough humanity left in her to hate the existence she is forced to lead.

Surprisingly, I can only think of monsters/villains from old movies, e.g.:

- the creature from the black lagoon, that I was feeling sorry for even as a kid.

- Romero's living dead. They definitely didn't ask for their fate and the end of part 1 and throughout part 3 they get away not too bad compared to humankind.

- I believe there are quite a few westerns with gunsmen hired by the main villain that are not that bad, bur I can't think of one specifically.


The most "modern" character I can think of is from the comic "Preacher". Cassidy is definitely a complete a**hole, although some of his actions become quite understandable and he is somehow somewhat likeable sometimes. He reminds me actually of someone I knew at university (although that one was not a vampire).

It's gotta be King Kong !

Oh, another one.

Seth Brundle.

Poor guy... :bluesad:

Pretty much all the "evil" characters on Dark Shadows.  Very few of them were ever presented in an "evil for the sake of being evil" manner.  They all had fully developed backstories and you could clearly see their motivations and a lot of times they came off as more sympathetic than the regular characters.  My favorite was Angelique - she was pretty immoral, certainly, but she always made you wonder:  If you had supernatural powers, and you were hopelessly in love with someone who didn't love you, would you use those powers to try to get what you wanted?  And when things spiralled out of control, what would you do?  Barnabas Collins was another.  He was originally presented as an evil vampire, but then they did a bunch of episodes set 200 years in the past, where you found out he was a normal guy who had a vampire curse put on him, and of course he had to kill people to exist.  But considering that, he did all he could to end the curse, and certainly spent plenty of time thinking about how everyone would be better off without him.  That was one of the greatest things about the show, no one was simply "good" or "evil", everyone had their motivations and their circumstances, and did what they could to get what they wanted.

Second the vote for the Creature from the Black Lagoon.

Trog, from the 1970 movie by the same name.

Jan in the Pan from THE BRAIN THAT WOULDN'T DIE. 

Oh, c'mon.
She was annoying without a body, imagine how irritating she would be if she could move.   :teddyr:

The pan is the best place for her !  :cheers:

I agree with the ymir. he just needs to be alone. LEAVE HIM ALONE!

Gollum

Is it just me or does Gollum look like lance henriksen?   :question:

Right now I can only thing of the mummy (Christopher Lee) in the first Hammer movie. He's the monster, agreed, but his actions are caused by third parties who took him to England or manipulated him for their own purposes. And by the end nobody seems to find out all these.

Frankie from Monster Squad

(http://www.thegianthead.com/frankenstein.jpg)

Dracula wants him to kill the kids in the film, but he ends up befriending them and helping them to defeat probably the lamest vampire ever.  :thumbup:

He isn't exactly a decent person, but whenever I catch "Under Siege" on TV I think Krill (Gary Busey) deserved better. After all, his main issue is that he hates Steven Seagal, something I can understand, and he proves to be quite a competent officer, he almost manages to repair the submarine before the good guys blow it up.

Warning Potential SPOILERS here.

It seems to me that most villains have sympathetic qualities to them...Dracula is cursed to live well beyond what he wants to, The Wolf Man turns into an uncontrollable menace terrorizing and killing every full moon, Jason was a victim who drowned and returns to terrorize those he deems similar to those neglectful kids who let him die so horrribly, most creatures and giant monsters just want to be left alone...some of my favourite more sympathetic monsters:

The Wolf Man -Larry Talbot is king of the crop here in my opinion. Basically a good guy cursed to bring doom and despair not only to himself but all those around him it seems.

Nosferatu - be it the original Max Shreck take or Klaus Kiniski, this vampire deep down just really wants to move on.

The Ymir and King Kong - two giants who never asked to be unleashed upon an unsuspecting world

Lyle Talbot for sure, I am very interested to see how his pathos plays out in the new film of The Wolfman.

Frankenstein's Monster - " We belong dead." Here's a guy made up of various parts of the dead that never asked to be brought to life. Also when the average response you get when you meet new people is torches, and pitchforks then your social life is bound to be very limited.

Speaking of pichfork-crowds everywhere, here's a good one at that topic:

http://www.thepaincomics.com/weekly030903a.htm

* THE AMAZING COLOSSAL MAN - Nice guy turned into a monster by a bomb blast . . . and forced to wear a diaper.

* THE INCREDIBLE MELTING MAN - Same as above.  Nice guy turned into a dripping monster . . . minus the diaper.

* Michael Landon's werewolf in I WAS A TEENAGE WEREWOLF - Troubled teen turned into a monster by an unscrupulous scientist.

* Duncan Marsh, the werewolf in the 1956 movie THE WEREWOLF - Middle-class family man turned into a howling beast.

I think Frankenstein's monster is probably the most sympathetic... he's not even evil, just misunderstood and hated.

The "sympathetic vampire" was a twist on the legend that began very early in movie history with Gloria Holden trying to break free from the curse in DRACULA'S DAUGHTER in 1936 (I didn't find Max Schreck too sympathetic).

Kubrick tries to make Alex, one of the most evil characters in film, sympathetic in A CLOCKWORK ORANGE.  (Similar to the trick done with Humbert in Nabokov's LOLITA---I haven't seen Kubrick's version  :bluesad: but I assume he takes the same angle).

I think Carl Stargher (Vincent D'Onofrio) from "The Cell" is a perfect example. He's the byproduct of religious fanaticism, verbal/sexual/physical abuse, neglect, and ultimately abandonment, which is horrifically depicted from the eyes of an innocent child throughout the film. If I had a family unit like that, I'de kidnap and plasticize girls also!!! Hell, my family is pretty great and I still need 60mg of Prozac daily to survive em'...  :bouncegiggle:


(http://images2.fanpop.com/images/quiz/150000/150912_1235543290231_465_297.jpg)

I think the bugs in STARSHIP TROOPERS are sympathetic; it seemed to me that the filmmakers subtly, but persistently,  suggested that human kind was brutally encroaching on the bug world.  I think when NEIL PATRICK HARRIS announces that the injured "brain bug" is "afraid" it's pitiful. 

LoL, I remember reading somewhere that the premise of the film was based on where humanity would be "if Nazis had won the 2nd world war".  I guess that explains the need for mass galaxy-wide expansion and domination (or why Rico, a south American native, has blond-hair and blue eyes)...

...even with that slant on the film; I still didn't sympathize with those damn bugs!

Pumpkinhead in part 2. 

I think that Mighty Joe Young should be up there alongside the Ymir and King Kong. He was happy in his jungle until he was kidnapped and made into a sideshow freak. And he did everything he did to protect his love.

I'll also throw in the Big D from Legend. Sure he was evil incarnate, but he tried to kill Tom Cruise, so I gotta give him some credit.  :tongueout:

DR. Jekyll
In Most Portrayals He Is A Nice Guy Who Slowly Becomes Addicted To His Serum And Can't Help His Evil Nature When It Takes Over


FRANKENSTEIN
In Most Interpretations He Is Alone , Scared And Confused About What He Is And Why He's In This World


ANGEL
The Most Evil Vampire Who Ever Lived , Cursed By A Gypsy To Have A Soul And A Conscience , He Lives Sharing His Body With His Evil Vampire Spirit......The Character Had A Great Backstory But They Never Let The Character Live Up To His Potential


ANAKIN SKYWALKER / DARTH VADER
He Starts Out As A Young Boy Who Would Never Hurt Anyone , And He Is Manipulated And Lied To And Corrupted By The Emperor , He Believes He Was Betrayed By Obiwan And The Confrontation Leaves Him Without Arms And Legs And Severely Burned , He Is Given Mechanical Limbs , And A Respiration Suit To Continue His Warped Sense Of Rightiousness



SANDMAN
He Uses His Mutant Powers To Rob Banks , But Only To Pay For The Medical Bills Of His Dying Daughter , He Is The One Who Shot Peter Parker's Grandfather By Accident And He Lives With It On His Conscience


NORMAN BATES
An Abusive Childhood Has Left Him With A Dual Nature , One Is A Shy Hotel Clerk , And The Other Is A Psychotic Transvestite With A Compulsion To Kill

Just Thought Of A Few More


THE FOREST PRINCE from HELLBOY 2
He Sees The Humans Destroying All Of The Forestland , And Seeks To Join The Three Broken Pieces Of The Crown So He Can Conjure The Golden Army To Kill All Of Humanity

THE BEAST from BROTHERHOOD OF THE WOLF
The Beast Only Kills Because He Is Forced To By The Bad Guy

the teddy bear and the baby in "demonic toys":

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wH6fokAYjMQ

Eli, the vampire from Let The Right One In.  Eli's a killer, but she does it only because she has to to survive.