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- Natural Born Killers
- Warner Bros.
The Most Dangerous Villain Power Couples In Movies
The couple that slays together stays together... at least, that seems to be the philosophy of these villainous crime duos. From not-so-innocent bystanders who get swept up in their lover's crime sprees to pairs of predators who have found in each other a bloodthirsty kindred spirit, these criminal couples are often inspired by real-life duos like Bonnie and Clyde or Charles Starkweather and his girlfriend Caril Ann Fugate.
Often, these doomed romances end with the pair gunned down, whether by the police or by one another, but in other cases not even the grave is enough to stop love - or viciousness. Vote up your favorite villainous couples, from absolute #couplegoals pairs to the most toxic romances imaginable.
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The Couple: Directed by Oliver Stone, from a script by Quentin Tarantino, this indictment of the media's obsession with dangerous criminals wouldn't work without a dynamic modern-day Bonnie and Clyde at its center. In this case, that's Mickey and Mallory Knox, a pair of outsiders from abusive families who turn to a life of crime together and ultimately become celebrities even while they're fugitives.
What Makes Them So Dangerous: While the Knoxes certainly take out plenty of people before all is said and done, the film suggests that what truly makes this killer couple dangerous is the irresponsible way in which the media glorifies their misdeeds, creating a vicious cycle in which they are empowered to commit ever more appalling acts.
Notable Misdeeds: Where to even start? According to the flick, their initial spree claims more than 50 victims across three states, and the Knoxes aren't done yet...
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The Couple: When it comes to criminal couples, they don't get much more iconic than real-life bank robbing duo Bonnie Parker and Clyde Barrow. Their Depression-era exploits were immortalized on the silver screen in this 1967 flick, where they were played by Faye Dunaway and Warren Beatty, respectively.
What Makes Them So Dangerous: Initially just in it for the thrill, Bonnie and Clyde get more and more ambitious as their early criminal undertakings prove less lucrative. Graduating from small-time heists to robbing banks, they eventually add old-fashioned homicide to the list.
Notable Misdeeds: Clyde shoots a bank manager squarely in the face when the man tries to stop one of their getaways.
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The Couple: In life, they were Tiffany Valentine and Charles Lee Ray, notorious serial killer. When Charles died after a shootout with police, his soul was transferred into a doll and he became the perhaps-even-more-deadly Chucky. Years later, Tiffany returned to try to help resurrect him, only to end up killed by him instead, with her own soul transferred into another doll.
What Makes Them So Dangerous: As dangerous as they may have been in life, Chucky and Tiffany are even more so as dolls. Since no one suspects them, they can move undetected, and seem to be almost impervious to harm. Ultimately, it is only their lack of real trust in one another that is their (temporary) undoing.
Notable Misdeeds: They knock off lots of people, including an old couple in order to swipe their RV, but their ultimate goal is to get themselves transformed back into human vessels once again. Unfortunately, they just need to find some suitable "volunteers."
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The Couple: Veronica is a member of a powerful mean girl clique at her high school, but she's tired of it - tired of their petty dictatorial behavior, tired of all the school politics. When she meets the rebellious J.D., she finds a kindred spirit who will help her not only break out of the mold but also get a little payback. Or so she thinks.
What Makes Them So Dangerous: Let's be honest here, when it comes to danger, this is really J.D.'s show, at least for the majority of the movie. Veronica may want to establish her own identity and get out from under the shadow of her high school clique, but J.D. is the one who turns those impulses homicidal.
Notable Misdeeds: By film's end, J.D. has caused the demise of several characters, but his ultimate plan is to set off an explosive in the school's boiler room during a pep rally.
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The Couple: Roy Batty and Pris are half of a quartet of replicants - genetically engineered humanoids who have artificially shortened lifespans of only four years. They've returned to Earth because they want to track down their creator and demand "more life."
What Makes Them So Dangerous: Both Roy and Pris demonstrate superhuman strength and endurance, as well as brilliant intellects. Pris, for instance, sticks her hand into a pot of boiling water to retrieve an egg without suffering any harm. So, when they set their sights on something - even when that something is taking someone out - very little can stop them, except the ticking clock of their own mortality.
Notable Misdeeds: "I have done... questionable things," Roy tells his creator, shortly before putting him down.
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The Couple: Originally introduced in Batman: The Animated Series, Harley Quinn quickly became one of DC's most popular characters. A former psychiatrist who studied the Joker, Dr. Harleen Quinzel eventually fell in love with her patient, helping him break out of Arkham Asylum and joining him in his schemes. In the film, Harley is played by Margot Robbie, while the Joker is played by Jared Leto.
What Makes Them So Dangerous: Amanda Waller calls them the "Criminal King and Queen" of the city, and ultimately what makes them so dangerous - besides being utterly devoted to one another, at least for now - is that they are both absolutely fearless and willing to do anything, the more sadistic or dangerous the better, for a laugh.
Notable Misdeeds: The Joker forced Harley to jump into a vat of toxic chemicals for him, and the duo executed Batman's protege in cold blood.
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The Couple: In Quentin Tarantino's pretzel-shaped, chronologically complicated crime opus, Pumpkin and Honey Bunny, played by Tim Roth and Amanda Plummer, in parts written expressly for them, fill the obligatory Bonnie and Clyde-esque spot in the script when they hold up a diner populated by some of the film's other characters.
What Makes Them So Dangerous: Compared to the rest of the film's cast of hitmen, crime bosses, sadistic pawnshop owners, and more, we don't get to spend a lot of time with Pumpkin and Honey Bunny, who nevertheless leave a big impression.
Notable Misdeeds: You know you're tough when you pull a gun on Samuel L. Jackson...
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The Couple: Top Dollar is a crime boss who controls all the street gangs in Detroit. Myca is his half-sister and also his lover, so you know things are a little weird right off the bat. She also keeps eyes as souvenirs, so there's that...
What Makes Them So Dangerous: They're in charge of at least most of the organized crime in town, but that's just the beginning. Their sadism seems to know no bounds. What makes them particularly dangerous to the otherwise-immortal Eric Draven, who has come to avenge the deaths of himself and his fiancee on the eve of their wedding a year before, is that they're able to accept the mysticism that has brought him back from beyond the grave, and work to circumvent it.
Notable Misdeeds: There's no shortage of bad things (see the aforementioned eyeballs), but when we're first introduced to Top Dollar and Myca, they're in bed with what turns out to be a corpse because they "played too rough."
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The Couple: Baby first meets Buddy and Darling when they are recruited to pull of a heist by Doc, the criminal mastermind who has Baby under his thumb. The inseparable pair seem like pretty easy partners-in-crime, until things go very wrong on their last job.
What Makes Them So Dangerous: At a glance, Darling seems like the more dangerous of the two. She's a crack shot, and seems a lot more vicious than the laid-back Buddy. When Darling is gunned down after their last job goes south, though, Buddy blames Baby for her demise and becomes utterly ruthless in pursuit of his vengeance.
Notable Misdeeds: The two aren't afraid to use violence to get what they want, but it's only after Darling dies that Buddy truly shows how cruel he can be.
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The Couple: When in doubt, turn to the Bard. Maybe the original killer couple, Macbeth and his wife are persuaded to kill the king so that Macbeth can take the throne, only for the guilt over the deed - and other acts of violence they commit to cement their claim - to slowly eat at both of them and undo all they have accomplished.
What Makes Them So Dangerous: What is initially a single act - the assassination of the king to claim his throne - begets more and more, as they wipe out others to cover up their initial misdeeds, and are driven to delusion and desperation.
Notable Misdeeds: It is Lady Macbeth who initially urges her husband to take the king's life and his throne, but before all is said and done, Macbeth's own guilt and fear of being displaced drives him to terrible acts of his own, including ordering the children of his enemies assassinated.
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The Couple: Inspired by the real-life crimes of Charles Starkweather, this 1973 film - Terrence Malick's directorial debut - introduces us to Holly, the 15-year-old daughter of a sign painter, and Kit, a 25-year-old garbage collector who reminds her of James Dean. The two fall in love, but Holly quickly finds out that love can be murder.
What Makes Them So Dangerous: Kit demonstrates early on that he will kill anyone who tries to stand in the way of his and Holly's relationship, starting with her own father.
Notable Misdeeds: In order to begin their life of crime, Holly and Kit fake their own deaths by burning down her house after offing her dad.
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The Couple: It's that age-old story of boy meets girl. He's a hospital orderly with aspirations of becoming the most prolific mass killer in history. She's his underage love interest and accomplice. After taking out 12 people in a murder spree, Bartlett is sentenced to the electric chair, while Patricia Bradley escapes the death penalty due to her young age. Just because he's no longer among the living, however, Bartlett isn't about to let that stop him.
What Makes Them So Dangerous: Well, he's a ghost now, able to stop peoples' hearts while they can't even see him. And because her records were sealed, nobody even knows what she did. So together they seem like a pretty unstoppable force, well on their way to their goal of racking up a bigger body count than any other serial killer in history, until they run into Michael J. Fox's paranormal eliminator, who has been able to see ghosts ever since the demise of his wife who, it turns out, was actually done in by Bartlett and Bradley.
Notable Misdeeds: Even before he was a specter, Bartlett and Bradley managed to wipe out a dozen people in a premeditated attack on the psychiatric hospital where he worked, which Bartlett points out is "one more than Starkweather."
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The Couple: Julia may be married to Larry Cotton, but her heart really belongs to his brother Frank, with whom she had a steamy affair shortly before her wedding. What she doesn't know, until she and her husband move into his family's old house, is that Frank is no more, having been ripped apart by a puzzle box he got in Morocco on a search for ever-greater sensation. When some blood drips onto the floorboards of the upstairs bedroom where Frank passed, he is reborn as a skinless revenant who needs Julia's help to complete his resurrection.
What Makes Them So Dangerous: While Pinhead and the other Cenobites are what we all remember from Hellraiser, the primary antagonists of the first film are actually Frank and Julia, whose forbidden love drives them to commit a string of slayings in order to restore Frank.
Notable Misdeeds: It's one thing to knock off a bunch of people (often with a hammer) in order to use their physical essence to rebuild your lover's body, but Frank and Julia may take it too far when they finally take out Julia's husband and Frank dons his own brother's skin.
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The Couple: Miriam Blaylock is a vampire who has been alive since the days of the pharaohs. Over that time, she has amassed quite a number of lovers, but her most recent is John, whom she has promised eternal life. The duo have been together for 200 years, feeding on others to maintain their own youth and immortality.
What Makes Them So Dangerous: Did we mention that they're vampires? Cuz that's the big thing. They feed on blood to survive, and their victims don't exactly come out of the process in great shape. That they're played by Catherine Deneuve and David Bowie doesn't hurt, either.
Notable Misdeeds: Worse than the whole draining people's blood thing, Miriam has been misleading John and, it turns out, all of her other lovers over the years. While she seems to enjoy eternal life and youth, they only get that first thing, and after a couple of centuries they abruptly age into living mummies, all of whom she keeps in coffins in an attic where they suffer for eternity.
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The Couple: Played (fearlessly) by Rosie Perez and an early-career Javier Bardem, the eponymous Perdita Durango and her beau, Romeo Dolorosa are (equally fearless) criminals who start off as bank robbers and go from there at a run.
What Makes Them So Dangerous: There is seemingly nothing they won't do. When they kidnap a pair of college-age "gringos," Dwayne and his girlfriend Estelle, with the intention of eating one of them, they first sexually assault the couple before making them choose which one is going to get sacrificed and eaten.
Notable Misdeeds: We did mention that whole thing where they were planning to eat someone, right? Also, the main scheme they're undertaking in the film is driving a truckload of fetuses across the border...
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The Couple: Poor Bart. It seems as if he never wanted to hurt anyone, in spite of his infatuation - and skill - with guns, something he'd had ever since he was a kid. When he falls in with carnival sharpshooter Annie Laurie Starr, though, who is, by her own admission, "bad, but will try to be good," things don't go so well for the young couple - or anyone who crosses them.
What Makes Them So Dangerous: For starters, both Bart and Laurie are crack shots. And they're wild about each other - and about guns. It's really Laurie who's the dangerous one, though. Bart seems reluctant to hurt anybody, but Laurie has no such qualms.
Notable Misdeeds: Laurie guns down a few people before all is said and done, but when it looks like she's going to take out Bart's childhood friends, who are trying to spare the couple's lives by convincing them to turn themselves in, Bart finally has enough and shoots her.
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