What to say if you liked it

A commendable countdown of the 20 nastiest, most malevolent scoundrels from the history of celluloid and comic books.

What to say of you didn’t like it

A contemptible calamity as an authentic examination of cartoon villains was sacrificed at the damned altar of DVD unit-shifting.

What was good about it?

• Cesar Romero’s hyperactive stellar villain The Joker from the Batman television series. It’s now all too apparent where Graham Norton’s pilfered his persona from.

• Burgess Meredith as the irascible Penguin from the Batman television series.

• Frank Gorshin as the frolicsome Riddler from the Batman the television series.

• The clips of the shadowy, taut Max Schreck in Nosferatu, still far more chilling than many modern horror flicks.

What was bad about it?

• Some of the human dross dragged in to offer the expert opinions. Perhaps to the brainwashed teenage dolts who are suckered to the screen to watch MTV 12 hours a day the names of “Hal Sparks” and “Dee Snider” may mean something other than TV effluence.

• And the more famous talking heads weren’t much better. Chatting about his role of Magneto in X-Men, you could see the wrinkles in Sir Ian McKellan’s forehead gradually melt into the banal vernacular of a press release. Ben Affleck was even worse, speaking like a formal notification terminating your employment, “I loved Bullseye RE: the comic.”

• Twentieth in the list was Jabba The Hutt. We’ve always had a problem with his attraction to Princess Leia (and the green humanoid he dispatched to be eaten by the Rancor). It’s impossible an alien race would find a human alluring as the sole function of attraction is to pro-create, so why would Jabba slaver over Leia when he would naturally regard her with the same revulsion as humans reserve for Jodie Marsh?

• Far too many of the villains just happened to have starred in anaemic Hollywood “Blockbusters”. Green Goblin and Dr Octopus were in the Spiderman films for instance. And what’s worse is that many of the comic book villains were from Marvel comics, and as anyone with a cursory knowledge of comics is aware, Marvel superheroes (and villains) are soulless, two-dimensional corporate icons and have none of the depth of their DC rivals such as Batman.