9 Terrible Movie Deaths That Ruined Great Villains

8. Ernst Stavro Blofeld - For Your Eyes Only (1981)

The pre-credits sequence to Roger Moore€™s fifth outing as James Bond is a bit of a curate€™s egg: written in case they couldn€™t tempt Moore back and required yet another recasting of the James Bond character, it was intended to use existing Bond continuity to link the new actor with past storylines and cement him as James Bond in the eyes of the audience from the word go. Featuring Bond€™s helicopter being co-opted by an unnamed villain with a clear personal history with Bond, the set-piece sees Bond being played with as the helicopter nearly crashes, before 007 regains control and pursues the villain, eventually dropping him down a giant smokestack as the man pleads for his life. The villain may be unnamed, even in the credits€ but it€™s clearly Blofeld, SPECTRE boss and nemesis for 007. There€™s the bald head, the white cat, the jacket with the Nehru collar€ but at the time of filming, ownership rights for the character were disputed, and there was a massive legal wrangle underway over the rights to Thunderball, with screenwriter and producer Kevin McClory determined to remake the film and cash in on the Bond name and reputation. Eon Productions had already decided not to bother with the character again, but elected to make a statement: they were the originators of James Bond in the cinema, and weren€™t tied down to one screenplay or one set of characters. Blofeld, Bond€™s greatest single villain, was killed off, absurdly, pathetically, in all but name in the pre-credits sequence (still in a wheelchair after being caught in the explosion at the end of Diamonds Are Forever a decade earlier)€ to make a point.