Soap Villains Who Were Truly Scary

[Faulkner]

Not campy fun or just people you love to hate, but chilling and frightening in a way that haunts your dreams.

 

For me, it’s always going to be Sheila on Y&R. I was a kid when she was torturing Lauren, but when she’d cock that eyebrow and almost coil herself up like a viper, I would feel a shiver.

[Franko]

Vivian (DOOL) had her moments.

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[DaytimeFan]

 

Louise Sorel's best work. And of course, she directed herself. The legend goes that she didn't take her lunch break while everyone else did, and when the crew came back, she did the scene...and when she was done, the crew all said she scared the hell out of them.

[Khan]

DAYS fans (including yours truly) were too busy being shocked by that storyline to realize how twisted a man like JER had to be to come up with such a ghoulish idea.

[Brolden]

OK, so... when I had just started watching ATWT around 2000, I had never yet seen James Stenbeck on the show, but I had heard so many things about him on the show. I remember there was a picture of him on one of the sites that would profile the characters and that one single picture was the only thing I 'knew' James by. I just checked, and I actually have the picture saved on my computer, so I'll attach it to this post. It's the smallest picture and it's the stupidest thing (mind you, I was 10 at the time), but that picture actually gave me the creeps. Something about the way he's staring in it. Combined with everything I had heard about the character. 

I also believe that when I first saw James when he returned to the show in 2001, it was in the middle of a thunderstorm and the character was seen with a violent flash of lightning. Which, of course, I now know harkens back to the old "Hello, Barbara" days. 

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[Dr Neil Curtis]

Early James Stenbeck 

Ray Gardner

[Faulkner]

Sherilyn Wolter (formerly Celia on GH) played a very short-term character on GL in November 1993 named George, a henchwomen (I believe) hired by Roger to kidnap Eleni. She had such a creepy, icy menace. I can’t seem to find clips of her.

 

It’s funny how so many actors who play villains start off giving these eerily calm, controlled performances that are very unsettling and effective, but after a while, they almost always become scene-eating caricatures with jazz hands.

[DRW50]

 

Those will probably be up later in the year on that Bandstandmike channel. It's not nice of me to say but at the time I was rooting for her to kill Lucy 

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She was terrifying on Santa Barbara. Sadly most of the individual clips of her are long gone.

 

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[jam6242]

The only soap villains who really scared me were Jonah Lockwood/Keith Whitney (played by Bruce Martin) on The Edge of Night, and Sven Petersen (Roberts Blossom) on Another World.

[DramatistDreamer]

 

Early James Stenbeck was definitely scarier than later incarnations. 

Anyone who sees the episodes where he lures Barbara into a trap in sunny Spain, or exhausts a plane of fuel and leaves a plane full of people (including a young Dusty) to starve for oxygen, knows how much more menacing 80s James Stenbeck was.

 

Also on ATWT, Marcia Talbot definitely gets my vote for a soap villain who was truly scary.  There were no cartoon stunts, just psychosis and psychological warfare. She was cool, methodical and deranged.  Thankfully Marland had the sense not to make her a "grey character"(god, I hate that term!)

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 and Marcia got what she deserved in the end.

I always thought, if I were rebooting ATWT, I'd definitely have Frannie and Kim have to go to one of Marcia's probation hearings at the prison and read one of those hand-written statements to the parole board on why Marcia should never be released from prison, as a hand-cuffed, jumpsuit outfitted Marcia watches Frannie and Kim from her seat.

 

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[JellicleCat]

 

I agree about Sheila. Kimberlin Brown played her, both on Y&R and on B&B, with such menace barely hidden beneath the surface. And in her scenes with Susan Flannery/Stephanie you could feel the rage threatening to break through her facade. It was mesmerizing.

[vetsoapfan]

 

I second the vote for Jonah Lockwood on TEON. Writer Henry Slesar never sank to the level of ridiculous, low-brow camp, the way JER and Ron C would, and therefore the reality of a deranged serial killer terrorizing Monticello was chilling. This was the most suspenseful storyline I've ever seen on TV. The only thing that rivalled it was the Who Killed Laura Palmer episode of Twin Peaks.

[Dr Neil Curtis]

I don’t know Marcia but looking at that clip that heifer is scary & bat crazy. Who is Douglas? Is that the Doug Cummings guy?

[Faulkner]

Oh I hated Lucy, so I would have been cool with that.

 

Re: Sherilyn. What a great actress.

 

Forgot about early Ryan Chamberlain on GH.

 

 

[DramatistDreamer]

 

Yeah, Marcia was what you'd call Doug's Girl Friday, who was also in love with him.  She was indeed crazy.

EDT: I should say that Marcia was actually obsessed with Doug, who himself was very mentally unstable.