Know Your Blofelds: We Rank Every Version of Bond’s Biggest (and Best) Baddie
(Warning: This story contains spoilers for ‘Spectre.’ If you haven’t seen it yet, don’t read further!)
After months of build-up and speculation, one of the worst-kept movie secrets of the year has finally been revealed: In Spectre, James Bond’s adversary is none other than Ernst Stavro Blofeld, the super-spy’s most persistent and menacing adversary, and the head of the shadowy organization that shares the name of the new film.
We haven’t seen Blofeld — who made his first appearance in 1967’s You Only Live Twice — in an “official” Bond movie for nearly 35 years, but as the third act of Spectre revealed (and as most people had already guessed), Christoph Waltz’s sinister Franz Oberhauser is revealed to also go by the name Blofeld, and even ends up with the character’s iconic facial scar. With one of cinema’s truly iconic bad guys (and the inspiration for Mike Myers’ Dr. Evil) back on screens, we decided it was a good time to go back through the character’s history and rank the various portrayals from worst to best. Does Waltz’s version rank among the definitive takes on Blofeld? Find out below.
John Hollisas in ‘For Your Eyes Only’ (Photo: MGM)
7. John Hollisas/Robert Rietty, For Your Eyes Only (1981)
After a ten-year absence, Blofeld returned briefly in the pre-credits sequence of 1981’s For Your Eyes Only — and even then, he’s never officially identified, due to the legal complications that led to the making of Never Say Never Again. Following a visit to his late wife’s grave, Roger Moore’s Bond boards a helicopter that’s actually being remotely controlled by a wheelchair-bound, cat-stroking villain (played by John Hollisas, voiced by Robert Rietty). 007 gets control of the helicopter back, and ends up turning the tables on his nemesis, dropping him down an industrial chimney. It’s an undignified way for Blofeld to die, but it’s nobody’s fault but his own: it’s a ludicrous scheme, and it doesn’t help that it’s mostly played for laughs, with Blofeld screaming “I can buy you a delicatessen!” before he plummets.
Charles Gray in ‘Diamonds Are Forever’ (Photo: Everett)
6. Charles Gray, Diamonds Are Forever (1971)
The third face of Blofeld belonged to British actor Charles Gray — an actor who’d played a completely different role in You Only Live Twice. Here, seeking vengeance after the death of his wife at the hands of his arch-villain in On Her Majesty’s Secret Service (see more on that below), Sean Connery’s Bond tracks Gray’s Blofeld to a lair where the villain has changed his appearance through plastic surgery, and employed a group of decoy doubles to throw 007 off the scent. Bond thinks he gets his man, but Ernst Stavro is soon back on the scene, using stolen diamonds to build a laser satellite to hold the world’s nuclear weapons for ransom. It’s one of his better plans, but Gray, while a good character actor, is a dull supervillain, and his Blofeld is a patriarchal Brit who’s nowhere near as suave or menacing as some of his bald-headed peers. And it doesn’t help that he seems more than a little inept when it comes to actually executing his scheme.
Christoph Waltz and Lea Seydoux in ‘Spectre’ (Photo: Sony)
5. Christoph Waltz, Spectre (2015)
Even excluding the pointless on- and off-screen shenanigans about whether or not Christoph Waltz’s Oberhauser was really Blofeld, the double Oscar-winner’s revival of 007’s greatest foe has to feel like something of a disappointment. For one, his plan — something about profiting from a giant surveillance technology — is disappointingly mundane. For another, the idea that he’s motivated entirely because his father loved James Bond more than him is weak, turning what should be an iconic villain into a petty man-child. But most of all, Waltz, while admirably understated in his early scenes, feels like a relic rather than a reinvention, and soon descends into the kind of maniacal grins and long-winded monologues that we thought we’d consigned to history in the pre-Craig era. He’s still alive and kicking, so may yet make more of an impression in later films, but we’re decidedly underwhelmed by the 21st century reboot of Blofeld.
Max Von Sydow in ‘Never Say Never Again.’ (Photo: Everett Collection)
4. Max Von Sydow, Never Say Never Again (1983)
The great Swedish actor — who’s starred in everything from The Seventh Seal and The Exorcist to Star Wars: The Force Awakens — got a relatively brief shot at the 007 world in unofficial “bootleg” Bond pic Never Say Never Again, a remake of Thunderball starring Connery in his final turn in the role. Blofeld only has a few scenes here, but Von Sydow makes a big impression as a no-nonsense, camp-free villain who might not be especially intimidating, but who possesses a gravitas that the character’s often lacked (even if he is undercut at one point by a rather ridiculous reaction shot from his cat).
Anthony Dawson in ‘From Russia with Love’ (Photo credit: MGM)
3. Anthony Dawson/Eric Pohlmann, From Russia With Love (1963) and Thunderball (1965)
With a rather forward-looking hint at the kind of franchise-building that we’d later come to see Marvel — think of Blofeld as a sort of 1960s version of Thanos— the S.P.E.C.T.R.E. chief made his first couple of appearances mostly as a tease. Played in person by actor Anthony Dawson, but voiced by Austrian actor Eric Pohlmann, he pops up in From Russia With Love intent on killing Bond to avenge the death of Dr. No, the adversary in the previous film. He then appears again in Thunderball, chairing a sort of annual convention of S.P.E.C.T.R.E. ne’er do wells, in which he plots to extort the U.K. government with stolen nuclear weapons. We never see his face, just his grey outfit and his cat, but there’s a real menace to this version (just watch the ease and glee with which he kills underlings who’ve disappointed him), and the two films establish many of the tropes that made the character famous.
Donald Pleasence in ‘You Only Live Twice’ (Photo: Everett Collection)
2. Donald Pleasence, You Only Live Twice (1967)
The first time we saw Blofeld’s face came near the end of Japan-set You Only Live Twice, and it still ranks as perhaps the most iconic Blofeld appearance, if not quite our favorite. Relatively late in the game, the film reveals that Blofeld and S.P.E.C.T.R.E. are behind the film’s plot, revolving stolen spacecraft intended to start a nuclear war between the U.S. and the Soviet Union. But even as he feeds a henchwoman to his piranhas, we don’t see the bad guy’s face. It’s only as Bond meets his enemy that we see it’s in the bald-headed, notably scarred form of Pleasence (hired only after Czech actor Jan Werich shot five days in the role, before being replaced). Pleasence is pleasingly understated in the part — calm and quiet, but clearly disturbed.
Telly Savalas and Diana Rigg in ‘On Her Majesty’s Secret Service’ (Photo Credit: Rex)
1. Telly Savalas, On Her Majesty’s Secret Service (1969)
Telly Savalas’s turn as Blofeld is nearly as divisive as the film itself — but for us, his is the most interesting, and genuinely threatening, take on the character to date. Sure, the plot of George Lazenby’s sole outing as 007 is a little silly (Blofeld has brainwashed twelve beautiful women to distribute biological weapons to hold the world’s crops to ransom, so he can be pardoned for his past crimes). But the Dirty Dozen actor is a delight in the role: much more physically imposing than Pleasance, but still cultured, and even a little flirtatious with Bond. He’s a true match for our hero in every way, and is the only villain in the franchise to truly defeat Bond, by surviving to murder Bond’s new wife, in the most shocking moment in any of these films.
Watch a round-up of Bond’s goofiest gadgets below:
