10 Most Memorable Hammer-Wielding Movie Characters

Quentin Tarantino is no stranger to inventive and lurid violence. Calvin Candie, played as skin-crawling and loathsome by Leonardo DiCaprio in Django Unchained, is one of the auteur's most terrifying creations. From the moment that early promotional images were released, showing him gazing at a hammer, it was clear that this character had violence on his mind.

Candie and his hammer feature in a number of horrific moments throughout the film. At the culmination of a fight to the death between two slaves, Candie calmly drops the tool at the side of one of them urging them to finish the job. The hammer makes another appearance in the dinner table scene, famous for DiCaprio's continued performance after legitimately cutting his hand on broken glass, when Candie menaces both Django and his wife Broomhilda, threatening to bash open their skulls.

DiCaprio's performance in Django Unchained is famously intense and the straightforward brutality of a hammer is a weapon that suits him perfectly. Candie is arrogant and full of hate, so there's a chilling effect to the way he deploys the hammer as a dispassionate weapon for killing slaves.