She’s not a monster. She’s just an ordinary person pushed by circumstances to do very bad things.

She’s no Waingro, no Buffalo Bill, and certainly no Michael Corleone. Villainy of that sort requires a man’s touch.

WHY MEN ARE BETTER VILLAINS BY GRAHAM DASELER 34THPARALLEL MAGAZINE ISSUE 49

One of my own favorite screen scumbags has long been Waingro, the trailer-trash police informant played by Kevin Gage in Heat (1995). Like Buffalo Bill, Waingro has a bad haircut and a penchant for slaying women. His record as an inmate in Pelican Bay State Prison and the swastika tattoo he sports on his sternum suggest that he’s a white supremacist, though within the context of the movie this is more of a garnish to the character than the meat and potatoes of his motivation. He seems, rather, to enjoy hurting people purely for its own sake, like the time, early in the movie, he shoots a security guard simply because the guy’s standing there, dazed and deafened from the blast that blew open his armored car.

I love the quiet, magisterial way he sucks up his chest before beating a hooker to death in …