Top 10 Movie Nazis: Our Nazi Basterd picks, plus advice on how to kill them.

by Tom Hawker, IGN UK

UK, August 18, 2009 - IGN is with Aldo Raine on this one: the only good Nazi's a dead one. And with Inglourious Basterds about to hit screens worldwide, we'd thought now would be a good time to unveil our own hit list of top cinematic Fuhrer-fanciers - the great, the not-so-great and the downright diabolical - and plot their grisly demises. Unfortunately, neither Lt. Gruber, nor his little tank, qualified.

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10. The Illinois Nazis
(Henry Gibson in The Blues Brothers)

No, they're not Nazis, but members of the swastika-flashing American National Socialist White Peoples' Party, who just happen to also hate Jews and blacks - although they've just added white-boy soul musicians who disrupt their hate speeches to the list. Writer Dan Aykroyd took the "what are you going to do about it, whitey?" rant nearly verbatim from the morons in the US Nazi documentary The California Reich.

How To Kill This Basterd?

A mile-high plummet in a Ford Pinto, leaving a crater in the road. It's notable that, of all the car smashes in the movie, the Nazis are the only people to actually cark it. "I hate Illinois Nazis" indeed.

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9. Commandant Ilsa
(Dyanne Thorne in Ilsa, She Wolf Of The SS)

Welcome to Camp 9, where the inmates are slave labour during the day and sexual labour at night, with those who fail to satisfy the leathery nympho-Nazi - allegedly based on 'Beast of Buchenwald' Ilse Koch - losing their lives or their balls. And if you thought this blitzkrieg of Nazisploitation, torture-porn and porny torture couldn't be any more tasteless and insensitive, the movie is dedicated to the survivors of the Holocaust. No, really, someone actually made this.

How To Kill This Basterd?

Gunshot. The uber-granny gets a bullet to the head delivered by her sneering superior, so he can smirk of her misdeeds: "The Allies will never know."

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8. Neville Sinclair
(Timothy Dalton in The Rocketeer)

Arch-movie star and even archer-fascist secret agent, Sinclair's like an Errol Flynn who swapped his membership of the debauched Flynn's Flying F*ckers for a Nazi Party card. Yes, the debonair Deutsch-dabbling douchebag is looking to half-inch Howard Hughes' rocket-pack plans and turn the master race into flying aces. But given that it was just Bond in a slick 'tache (Dalton is always 100% improved by lip fuzz) no one in the audience was the least bit surprised when he turned out to be the villain.

How To Kill This Basterd?

Aero incineration. The old boy gets flambéed along with his mutant-Jimmy Hill-alike henchman, Lothar, when his zeppelin Hindenberg's itself into the 'Hollywoodland' sign.

7. Kurt Dussander (aka Arthur Denker)
(Sir Ian McKellen in Apt Pupil)

'The Blood Fiend of Patin' was only following orders, of course, but it helped that he loved doing it too. Now his relationship as fairy godfather to fascinated all-American boy Todd Bowden threatens to reignite those dark fires in his eyes. The pair share a mutually corrupting bond, their twisted power games underscoring two monsters' recognition - or is that attraction? - of themselves.

How To Kill This Basterd?

Exposure. When the old man's horrific past is revealed and extradition to Israel looms, he gives himself an air embolism. He dies scared but, sadly, not ashamed.

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6. Adenoid Hynkel
(Charlie Chaplin in The Great Dictator)

Chaplin had never been fond of The Third Reich (one Nazi propaganda book called him "a disgusting Jewish acrobat") and so pushed forward with his then career-endangering determination to make Hitler as laughable as possible. The result is Tomanian dictator Hynkel, a duplicitous, garbage-spouting, hate-filled, petty little monster who's almost as puffed up as the inflatable globe he dances with. A pretty spot on impression then.

How To Kill This Basterd?

Fate unknown. He's mistaken for his Jewish-lookalike Shultz (also Chaplin) and arrested, while Shultz gets to impersonate Hynkel and reverse his fascist hate-policies. Score 1:0 to the disgusting Jewish acrobat.

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5: Standartenführer Hans Landa
(Christoph Waltz in Inglorious Bastards)

Cheerful, charming, cunning and completely camp, Landa's like a Nazi Rob Brydon, but less annoying and more genocidal. His uncanny ability to track down and exterminate Europe's Jews is aided by a coal-souled empathy, devoid of sympathy and compassion. 'The Jew Hunter' steals the whole movie, by virtue of being the best-written and most-complex character in it and, accordingly, was so hard to cast that Tarantino almost called off the whole bloody affair when he couldn't find the right man.

How To Kill This Basterd?

Does QT give Landa the "Injun Haircut" he deserves or a lingering fate perhaps worse than death? Now that would be telling...

4. Dr. Christian Szell
(Sir Laurence Olivier in Marathon Man)

"A live, freshly-cut nerve is infinitely more sensitive." The White Angel is pure compounded evil - he's not just a Nazi but a dentist to (jack)boot. He sharpened his skills in Auschwitz by removing the diamonds from the teeth of Jews in exchange for their safe passage, then mercilessly betrayed them to the gas chambers anyway. Poor Babe Levy, his next patient, might just feel a little twinge. "Is it safe?"

How to kill this Basterd?

Greed is a killer, and so it proves when Szell accidentally stabs himself with his own hidden blade while diving after his precious, extremely unsafe diamonds.

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3. Franz Liebkind
(Kenneth Mars in The Producers)

He wasn't stupid, he was a smartie, so he joined the Nazi Party. The writer of 'Springtime For Hitler' has an ear that's as tin as his hat and a soft spot for horrible vermin - the only thing he fancies more than his pigeons is the Fuhrer. "Hitler, there was a painter! He could paint an entire apartment in one afternoon! Two coats!"

How To Kill This Basterd?

Unlikely, as he's nigh on indestructible, surviving a suicide attempt and a close encounter with a bomb. He's still standing at the end of the movie, even though he is covered head-to-toe in a plaster cast.

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2. Dr Strangelove
(Peter Sellers in Dr Stangelove)

Well you'd have to be a Nazi to appreciate the majestic awfulness of a Doomsday Device, and this Teuton's solution to the imminent end of civilization - taking a small select group of males deep underground idea with a gaggle of nubile mates - merely takes the idea of the master race to the next level. Sellers was so brilliant at improvising on set that even the clinically methodical Stanley Kubrick gave his star room to improvise.

How To Kill This Basterd?

Mutually assured self-destruction. It's the end of the world as he knows it, but at least he's magically regained the use of his legs.

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1. Major Arnold Ernst Toht
(Ronald Lacey in Raiders Of The Last Ark)

Like the best movie Nazi's, Toht doesn't believe in the power of the Ark, he just believes in power. Just in case you didn't get the idea, Toht or Tod is German for death. His charming way with a coat hanger, less charming way with a red-hot poker, sinister giggle and sweaty, waxy complexion would make even hardened Nazi's think twice about letting him babysit their kids.

How To Kill This Basterd?

The Wrath Of God. It melts his face like a Jimmy Page solo while he screams like a girl. Bet the creepy bugger believes now. Gut tod, ya?