The term anti-hero is often misunderstood. This is a character that appears as a protagonist in a movie, book, or television show, and needs to be genuinely unlikeable. Anti-heroes don't always have to be completely disgusting, and often have some sympathetic trait to help the audience identify with them on some level. Examples include Homer from The Simpsons to characters like Spawn and The Punisher of the comic book universe.
It's a person that has to make the audience cringe, so it's tough to make a good movie with a real anti-hero. Only a group of very talented directors and writers can tell a compelling story about a creep.
Here are a few movie heroes who are kind of creepy and fall into the anti-hero category. They often star in black comedies, satires, or the types of screenplays that break the fourth wall, where these kinds of characters feel at home.
6 Rupert Pupkin – The King of Comedy
Martin Scorsese likes to challenge his audience by telling them a story about a person they probably won't like. While his other anti-heroes tend to be dangerous people, Rupert Pupkin is just terribly awkward, and his attempts to break into the world of comedy are tragic in ways that are equally sad and pathetic.
The movie is intended as a satire and a black comedy that focuses on celebrity worship, so it's a theme that stays timely. It also takes an honest look at the issue of mental illness, with the story becoming more about Rupert's personal fantasies than what really happened. By the end of the movie, it's hard to tell the difference.
5 Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart – Amadeus (1984)
Anyone who knows the finer details of Mozart's life knows he had a rather juvenile sense of humor, but this adaptation of the popular stage play of the same name takes that to a whole other level for the benefit of the antagonist and our hero's rival. Salieri, a composer in the royal court, is surprised and disgusted to find out this former child prodigy is little more than a "giggling, dirty-minded creature."
Mozart is truly creepy from literally the first scene in which he appears, shamelessly chasing a girl into a private dining room and reciting a disgusting poem to distract her, complete with explicit curses. We're not sure if Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart had that iconic laugh, either, but it's the perfect example of creepy.
4 Budd Fox – Wall Street (1987)
Of course, Gordon Gekko is creepy, but he's the bad guy. Budd Fox is already a focused and determined stockbroker and former frat boy when he meets Gekko, and after spending some time with Gordon, he gets even worse. The theme is that Budd was already vulnerable to the goodness of greed, like anyone, and it just takes that one influence to push him.
Budd starts out as a young man who is more of a typical creep, obsessed with basketball and "chicks" as his buddy Marv puts it. He's already a slick operator who goes full slimeball under Gordon Gekko's leering eye. It's mostly due to the influence of his very non-creepy dad that brings our hero back from the brink.
3 Nick Naylor – Thank You For Smoking (2005)
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A marketing and public relations director for a tobacco company, the audience doesn't have to get to know this person to know how despicable they are. Nick is doomed from the start in this regard, and that's the challenge. By the end, he's actually an understandable character if not a sympathetic one.
Naylor takes a bit too much pleasure in this work, joking with a friend about being "Merchants of Death." There is some personal drama here, as Nick is trying to reconcile the nature of his job with being a decent father, and he's actually making a sincere effort even if he mostly fails.
2 Wade Wilson, Deadpool
How can a mercenary and assassin for hire not be creepy? Wade Wilson seems to do his best to do the right thing despite his insistence that he doesn't, but the general nature of his job won't let him be a normal person. He deals with this by cracking jokes and playing pranks, most of which are tasteless and involve real physical harm, and plenty of his peers can't stand him.
Things don't exactly improve for Wade either, as he gets exponentially creepier after the discovery of his mutant superpower. It's not just the full-body scarring, either, as he seems to be even more mentally unhinged after the trauma of being treated in Ajax's "clinic."
1 Willie T. Stokes – Bad Santa
Oh, come on, but it's Santa Claus. How could the person that plays Santa not be lovable? Through the magic of black comedy, that's how, and it seems to work even better when juxtaposed against the mindless cheer of the holiday season. However, Willie isn't dressed up as Santa to entertain kids with wishes and adults with photographs. His costume is part of a gift that he's planned with his partner Marcus, who plays the elf, and together they gain access to the inner workings of various shopping centers in order to rob them.
This routine works fairly well for a while and includes a number of shocking and hysterical mishaps that only a creep like Willie could get into, but goes awry when a naive child named Thurman mistakes him for the real Santa. In an interesting twist, the film is dedicated to John Ritter, who played a supporting part and was famous for playing creepy anti-heroes himself.