mtd best films forever: Best Psychopath Movie

It’s not like I go around picking out my favorite psychopaths all the time. However, in this case, in the world of film, I think it deserves some attention. After all, there have been so many incredible performances; it seems completely cool, and completely healthy to list my favorite psychopaths. Right?

At first glance, I was coming up with the archetype psychopaths, ie. Norman Bates, Hannibal Lector, etc., but then I thought about it a bit, and thought to include sociopaths. I mean, sociopaths need love, too. Or do they? And then I thought to myself, what’s the difference?

Well, some medical dictionaries consider psychopath and sociopath to be synonyms. Both are anti-social disorders in which sufferers seem to derive pleasure through cruel means, lack normal emotions like empathy or guilt, are incapable of forming human bonds, and when properly diagnosed can be treated with therapy and medication. As far as differences, they usually rear their ugly heads in outward behaviors. Sociopath tend to be sloppy joes, uncalculating, find it difficult to attain any consistency in life, and only exhibit flares of erratic violence, with seemingly no thought to the consequences or concern about being caught; ie. Travis Bickle in Taxi Driver. Psychopaths tend to be neat, to an obsessive degree, can maintain seemingly normal lives, with an awareness of a need to be accepted and successful, but still not feel any true emotional connection. When psychopaths become violent, it’s usually well planned, sometimes over the passage of years, resulting in a sometimes highly undetectable crime; ie. Patrick Bateman in American Psycho.

I hope you’ll forgive me for launching into that whole bit. I just had some demons to exorcise as far as finally nailing down the difference between a psychopath and sociopath. Hopefully it wasn’t too painful. Worse comes to worse, you’ll now know the difference when you come across your next psycho, ie. presidential candidate.

Here’s some more stipulations I felt like arbitrarily attaching to this latest list. I thought it’d be nice to include films that might not center on a psychopath, but were equally affected by a psychopath, ie. Mr. Blond in Reservoir Dogs, who sounds more like a sociopath (now that I know the difference). I realize this is a bit of a Pandora’s box, and I could be listing crazy characters from now until Moses, so I capped it at the titles included in the list. Also, I threw in folks that just went mad, from either inner or outside, possibly supernatural forces, ie. Jack Torrence in The Shining. Lastly, I only included a couple typical horror movies. Otherwise, I really would be listing movies from now until Moses, since basically every horror movie has a psychopath of some kind in it.

I encourage you to leave your comments and let me know what movies I missed. And by all means, vote for your favorite psychopath movie in the poll section!