Cruella de Vil, Voldemort and the 25 greatest movie villains of all-time

24. Nurse Ratched

If ever there was a character who did not deserve a title like nurse, it would have to be Nurse Ratched. While you would think that someone in the medical profession would have some sort of compassion, in this case we have a woman with none. In fact, as far as being a villain, Nurse Ratched is one for the books.

In One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest, we know we are dealing with mental patients and we expect that things are not always as they seem. And yet, what this particular nurse does is truly malevolent. We are talking about a character who terrorizes sick and helpless patients, and if that doesn’t make someone a villain, I don’t know what does.

Nurse Ratched is on a power trip that leaves her being a tyrant over the medical ward she works in. She clearly gets off on essentially abusing the patients she is supposed to be helping and it gets to a point where one of her targets actually kills himself.

The fact that she is not only the cause of a mental patient’s suicide, but obviously does not care makes her the worst kind of villain. Instead of her patients needing help, it is clearly her that needs that psychiatric help.

Thanks to Nurse Ratched’s mental manipulations, an entire ward of mentally unwell people are essentially left traumatized. And for that reason alone, she is truly one of the greatest movie villains ever.