Soap Villains Who Were Truly Scary

[ReddFoxx]

Jill Bennett on Knots Landing is another one.

[applcin]

I was a teen when I first saw AMC and Ray Gardner and he was scary. Not because he was some powerful, uber-clever, Machiavellian, over the top villain, but because he was so ordinary. Like, he was the guy you'd be afraid to run into on the street or the one you figured would break into your house and attack you. It threw me a bit at first when Gil Rogers joined GL as Hawk because, while the Southern mannerisms were somewhat the same, Ray had been so vile, whereas Hawk was basically just a flawed good old boy...devious at times, yes, but not evil. 

[Khan]

And then there's Gil Rogers as Carolee's kind and concerned psychiatrist on THE DOCTORS, a complete and total flip from his work on AMC and GL.  Now, he, ladies and gentlemen, is one damn good actor.

[rlj]

Tyrone AMC

Alma AW

Shawn YR

[applcin]

I wish I had seen that. I was still way behind, circa 1972, when it got yanked from YT.

Here's some Ray.
 

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[Cruising Soaps]

Sheila Carter, David Kimball, Roger Thorpe, Brent GL, James ATWT, 

[DramatistDreamer]

I'm not  sure that his characters qualified as being "truly scary" but IMO, Larry Pine certainly deserves an honorable mention for his consistent portrayals of some thoroughly rotten baddies on P&G soaps in the 1980s and 90s, namely Tad Channing (ATWT) and John Davis (GL). In Oakdale, he became a menace to pretty much the entire town and whether it was Channing or Davis, no woman was safe with him.

 

 

Whether John Davis or Tad Channing before him, Pine's menacing villains were sure to meet similar fates out of the lives of the people he terrorized. 

 

I guess you could say Pine's villains fell out of favor.

[victoria foxton]

I remember Larry Pine from playing nice guy Roger Gordon on OLTL. His turn as the wicked Ted Channing was a couple of yrs before i started watching. I did watch GL during this time.But i've forgotten about this role. Did you make the cool gifs?

[DramatistDreamer]

 

Tad Channing had a much more significant role on ATWT than John Davis (whose stay was relatively brief) did on GL. Tad had a whole umbrella story built around his character, with multiple suspects in his murder. Most of the Tad Channing story arc is on YT but unfortunately some key episodes are still missing.

 

Yes, I did make the GIFs myself.  If you type in GIF in front of the URL in a YouTube video, Google takes you to a nifty site where you can make your own GIF. I just found out about it and decided to give it a try, lol.

[Quent]

Tad Channing was great. Didn't he suffer a particularly gruesome demise?

[P.J.]

 

He fell into wet cement and became entombed in a building foundation.

 

Is that him with Sierra in one of those gifs?

[DramatistDreamer]

 

Yes, he tricked Sierra into believing that she was there for a get together that would include Tonio and Betsy but gave Sierra a completely different time so she would show up alone, then attacked her.  Fortunately for Sierra, she slapped then scratched his face and threatened to clock him with that big blunt telephone (could you imagine this scene done with a cell phone??) and just as Tad was answering the door to Holden, Sierra managed to flee.

Tad also attacked Meg later that evening when Meg returned to his suite looking for the purse she forgot when she showed up earlier looking for Holden, who was then working for Channing.

 

I did think that the first actor who played Tad had a sort of oily ingratiating charm but perhaps Pine was brought in out of fear that the audience might become enamored of Tad and want him to stay on and Pine's venal portrayal would ensure that the character met his deserved end because he'd garner no such desires. 

With the exception of James Stenbeck, I think ATWT had a history of disposing of their villains and I can't blame them...viewers shouldn't be falling in love with the bad guy/gal.

[P.J.]

 

 

Thanks! I'd completely forgotten that. And the fact there was another Tad.  And thank goodness Marland didn't feel forced to turn every villain into a romantic lead. They'd get laid, but they were always skunks.

[DramatistDreamer]

 

You're welcome!

 

Every time I revisit the Tad Channing saga-- a real estate developer who is prone to sexually assaulting women, I can't shake the notion that Tad could be based on a certain IRL NYC real estate developer.  As a NYC based writer, Marland would have been a keen observer of certain social circles in NYC.  The more I revisit these scenes, the more eery and prescient this particular characterization seems.

[Mr. Vixen]

This is probably an off the wall choice considering she has been long forgotten and was significantly less scary towards the end, but Cynthia Preston's Faith Roscoe on GH sent absolute chills down my spine. When she first showed up in town there was just something about her performance and her style that was terrifying to me. It's a shame that they quickly diluted and wasted her and then killed her off for no reason. She's one random return I would not be upset about and I hate that CP never popped up on another soap.