10 Movies Where The Villain Isn't Seen Until The End

While neither the best of Sean Connery's James Bond movies, nor an especially treasured entry in the franchise as a whole (due in part to its unfortunate foray into racism), the Roald Dahl-penned You Only Live Twice (1967) went where no Bond movie had gone before: to space. Well, that and it revealed the face of series antagonist Ernst Stavro Blofeld (Donald Pleasence) for the first time.

The film sees Bond (Connery) get bumped off in the opening credits so he can go deep undercover in Japan. While there, he acclimates to the culture and disguises himself as a native in an attempt to blend in and find out who is responsible for the hijacking of a NASA spacecraft. Turns out it's his arch-nemesis Blofeld, leader of international counter-espionage outfit Spectre, hiding in a volcano lair. Who would've thunk it?

Legendary precisely for his face being shown so little, Blofeld set the template for the off-screen villain, gaining mystique and notoriety through a string of Connery's Bond films, only glimpsed from behind, and usually stroking his signature white cat. You Only Live Twice finally blew his cover and had him come face to face with 007 in an epic and much-parodied battle in his liquid hot magma base. While various actors have played the facially-disfigured villain since, Pleasence's iteration reigns iconic.