4. SS Colonel Hans Landa- Inglourious Basterds
The first of three very evil and sadistic characters to come on this list. Though Landa is an extremely evil and unlikeable character. Yet despite as his role in the film being to hunt down innocent Jewish people across Europe and wipe them out as if they were some type of plague, there's no denying that he is a great character for so many reasons. He is an incredibly brilliant bad guy, and is extremely evil, yet this is shielded by a performance of subtlety, yet this subtlety is wiped away with Landa's occasional outbursts of strangling women. He is cunning, so much so that his nick name is The Jew Hunter, and because of this cunning, as well as his extraordinarily large pipe, he has be described as a Sherlock Holmes-type figure. He is also a character that is incredibly hard to read. At the beginning of the film he is all smiles and pleasantries, yet moments later he orders his men to relentlessly shoot at a farmers floor to make sure every Jewish person under there is brutally and efficiently killed. However, near the end we see a character that throughout the film has been a staunch and loyal Nazi, suddenly turn his back on the Nazi regime, all so he can be seen as a hero and live a life of ease and praise. Like most people, when watching Inglourious Basterds for the first time, I honestly didnt see Landas betrayal to the Nazi party coming, and found it a great twist to the film. Another reason why we must praise Hans Landa is because it is the performance which took Christoph Waltz from obscurity and put him on the world's stage to not only receive world wide praise and applause, but also earned him his first Oscar nomination and win. Since then Waltz has played the previously mentioned Dr. King Schultz, a character that is almost opposite to Landa, as well as some other villainous roles in other Hollywood movies. Regardless of these other roles, as well as his other Oscar win, the role that Waltz will forever be remembered and praised for will be that of his cunning, evil Jew Hunter, Colonel Hans Landa.