10 Truly Evil Horror Movie Villains Who Never Actually Killed Anyone
9. Nurse Ratched – One Flew Over The Cuckoo's Nest
Back in 1975, the sweet and wholly agreeable Louise Fletcher may not have made sense to play one of the most subtly evil and manipulative antagonists of all time, and yet the proof is in the pudding, with her turn as Nurse Ratched in One Flew Over The Cuckoo's Nest going on to become an all-time icon in the film canon and beyond.
Head nurse of a ward for the clinically insane during a period when mental health in the USA at a continuous low, Mildred Ratched represents the dehumanisation and emasculation of not just men, nor the mentally ill, but of contemporary society at large. A tool of oppression, acting at the behest and whim of the state, she rules over the ward with an iron fist in a velvet glove.
A foil to Jack Nicholson's wacky, fun-loving Randle McMurphy, she is strict, severe and ruthless, subjecting her charges to electroshock therapy and, in McMurphy's case, a frontal lobotomy. McMurphy is dead by the film's conclusion, but not at Racthed's hands -- she merely sucked the spirit out of him, and his fellow patients took care of the rest.