Balls and Walnuts
more than you ever wanted to know
The traitor always bites it in the end
I’m sure you’ve heard: Special Counsel Patrick Fitzgerald won’t be seeking an indictment against Karl Rove. I can hear (insert name of your favorite superhero) now:
“You win this time, Turdblossom, but we shall meet again!”
In the movies, the hideousness of the evildoer’s fate is often proportionate to his infamy. Perhaps we can find solace in this fact. Surely Rove is more wicked than any of the dudes listed below. If so, perhaps his comeuppance will be that much tastier.
Let’s consider the fate of cinema traitors, shall we?
Traitor: Fredo Corleone
Crimes: Sets up his brother Michael for assassination. Not as smart as he thinks he is.
Punishment: Shot while saying his Hail, Mary.
Assessment: Too kind.
Traitor: Becky (from Sin City)
Crimes: Betrays her fellow prostitutes by telling the mob about Jackie Boy’s murder. Not 1/10 as cute as Jessica Alba.
Punishment: Serial-killer Josh Hartnett’s next victim.
Assessment: Hard to say, since it happens off camera . . . you eeediots!
Traitor: Jack Torrance
Crime: Oh, nothing much. I think he only wanted to give Wendy and Danny a haircut WITH THAT AX.
Punishment: A really bad case of hypothermia.
Assessment: Did you see that chick in the bathtub? I’d say Jack suffered enough.
Traitor: Jerry Lundegaard
Crime: Arranges his wife’s kidnapping. Talks funny. Oh, wait, they all talk funny.
Punishment: Brought to justice by Marge Gunderson.
Assessment: The wood-chipper would have provided a more satisfying conclusion.
For my money, however, the all-time most satisfyingly righteous comeuppance happened to Donald Pleasance’s character in Fantastic Voyage. Remember that one? A team of scientists are loaded into a sub, shrunk down until they are smaller than a red blood cell, and then injected into an ailing researcher. Their mission: travel to his brain and destroy an inoperable blood clot with a teensy-weensy laser. ONE of the crew is a Russian mole, a saboteur determined to foil their Fantastic Voyage.
Donald Pleasance plays the claustrophobic Dr. Michaels, the second-most memorable member of the cast. (The most memorable member of the cast is Raquel Welch, whose breasts get covered with antibodies. To keep her from suffocating under the antibodies’ ruthless grip, other needless-to-say-male crew members have to claw them off her circa-1966-nubile form. Oh, yeah.) As for Dr. Michaels’ fate . . .
Traitor: Dr. Michaels
Crime: He’s British. Back in 1966, they were all a bunch of Commie moles.
Punishment: His head is eaten by a macrophage!
Assessment: Claustrophobia . . . slow suffocation . . . digestive enzymes turning your face to mush. Who could ask for anything more?
Think about literature, TV, and film. What’s your favorite punishment for a villain?
D.
I’ve always liked the comeuppance the Nazi traitor Walter Donovan got at the end of Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade.
However, for my money, it doesn’t get much better than what happens to Ricardo Montalban at the end of The Naked Gun.
Well, there’s the novella I just read in which the bad guy is killed by monkeys. That was pretty entertaining.
But I really love what happens to the bad guy at the end of Don’t Look Down. You don’t actually see it, but you see it coming.
I kind of liked the one where this president of the US who invaded a country under highly questionable legal circumstances had it blow up in his face and turn out just as all the naysayers predicted.
I also liked how the president’s supporters blamed the media for the civil war in the illegally invaded country, and how they called everyone who had suggested that, gee, maybe invading a country isn’t such a hot idea ‘traitors’.
I don’t remember how that one ended, though.
Becky’s comeuppance in the graphic novel The Big Fat Kill (which the Dwight segment of the Sin City movie is based on) is not at all a mystery. She’s down in that alley with the gangsters when the bullets start to fly, and she takes one right through the throat. Nasty, but then that’s Sin City for you…
Favorite: Wickham driving off to Newcastle with his bride, Lydia (Pride & Prejudice).
Second Favorite: Captain Dudley Smith being shot by Lt. Ed Exley (L.A. Confidential)
More Nazi villains (not traitors per se but…)
Major Toht (Ronald Lacey, the creepiest Nazi ever) getting his face melted off in “Raiders”.
Dr. Szell (Olivier) eating diamonds in “Marathon Man”
I can’t belive Innerspace was a remake – and by the sounds of it a cheap immitation with an 80’s spin. anything with an 80’s spin came out cheap (except I still love Fast times ar Ridgemont High, and they did it withy scrawny Meg Ryan instead of someone more buxom.
I am struggling with my Gypsies…they’re a bit dirty.
the whole town in High Plains Drifter. Getting painted red and. . . just left there.
Favorite: Wickham driving off to Newcastle with his bride, Lydia (Pride & Prejudice).
Oh yeah…that is one beautiful piece of poetic justice.
How about Stringer Bell, gunned down by Omar and Brother Mouzone (with Avon Barksdale’s blessing)?
You’re all a bunch of teases. I haven’t read/seen a lot of these stories so I DON’T know how the bad guy bit it! Darla, I.L., I’m talking to you.
Sheila, yeah, I agree on L.A. Confidential. That (and Temple of Doom) came to mind when I prepared this. But it was getting late 😉
May I say, this is one of the really cool things about blogging — the occasions when I hit on something that fires people’s imaginations.