Leland Gaunt the kind of "guy" that played the whole town and made them kill eachother. He is pretty high up on the evil list lbvs.
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...actually, The Trashman didn't give me a shudder either, but he does fit the bill of "bad guy"-to me he is tragi-comic, because of his realness...Trashy didn't really scare me. Yes, his thinking is waaaay off, yes he killed, but his obsession with fire made him 'real'. Harold Lauder was scary because of the mental chess game he played and complete lack of remorse.
Of all of SK's characters and monsters, I found Patrick Hockstetter the most disturbing and horrifying. I hope SK never creates another character like him. Even Big Jim looks good compared to Hockstetter.
Mrs. Carmody[/QUOTE
Haven't met these characters yet... all in good time
Ran out of time before finishing my edit as I decided I better qualify my choice or suffer the evil eye.
Depends on how you look at things I figure. You expect bad things from the classic bad guys, but when you get bad things done by good people, well that elevates them to a higher form of bad guy.Sending people to their death, knowing who will die on the journey and not telling them, so they can make the decision on their own whether or not to make the ultimate sacrifice is a higher level of bad IMO.
This is why I love this question, and one of the reasons I love sK. I wonder how many authors have enough villains to support such a question.My family friend is so hilariius. He said "I know a villain so horrible that even Stephen King could never have thought him up. That's where the saying 'truth is stranger than fiction' comes from.
I'm speaking of course of Richard Milhaus Nixon."
I was having trouble thinking up a "favorite villain." I usually hate the villains. I know the story would fall to pieces without one, but I still have trouble with their existence. Probably because I struggle so much to keep real-life villains out of my mind. I work with someone who's so difficult to get along with that whenever I HAVE to do it I imagine that the devil himself would be easier pleased than THIS guy.
It's the only way I can handle his freezing-cold shoulder and icy attitude, which even the fires of the hot place would fail to melt.