Tomb

Just because they’re minor-league hired muscle doesn’t mean we don’t love them. Check out these premium movie goons:

• Jaws (Richard Kiel) from The Spy Who Loved Me (1977) and Moonraker (1979): This seven-foot-tall metal-toothed villain proved indestructible enough to appear in two separate James Bond films. His preferred method of execution was biting people, which sounds curiously inefficient in a milieu in which everybody has firearms. Plus, he turned nice halfway through Moonraker. Nevertheless, he remains an iconic Bond henchman, second only to...

• OddJob (Harold Sakata) from Goldfinger (1964): Who needs a gun when you’ve got a Frisbee hat? This dapper, silent villain set the bar for ridiculous Bond henchmen for decades to come. He and Jaws both made memorable cameo appearances in the insane kung fu comedy Mad Mission 3: Our Man from Bond Street (1984), a.k.a. Aces Go Places 3.

• Kronk (Patrick Warburton) from The Emperor’s New Groove (2000): A dimwitted Disney henchman with great cooking skills and a tendency to discuss ethics with a tiny angel and devil who appear on his shoulders. Speaks fluent squirrel. (“Squeak squeaka squeaka, uh... squeaka.”) The character was popular enough to get his own spinoff movie, Kronk’s New Groove (2005).

• Al Leong: This Asian-American stuntman and actor has developed a cult following for his numerous henchman roles in the ‘80s and ‘90s. With his prominent forehead, long black hair and Fu Manchu mustache, Al is always easy to spot, especially since he’s packing an Uzi in every movie and usually dies before the end. He tortured Mel Gibson in Lethal Weapon (1987), led a violent gang in Big Trouble in Little China (1986), played Genghis Khan in Bill and Ted’s Excellent Adventure (1989) and portrayed an assortment of disposable thugs in Die Hard (1988), They Live (1988), Rapid Fire (1992), Black Rain (1989), Last Action Hero (1993) and Escape from L.A. (1996). His henchman character actually survived to the end of Double Dragon (1993), where he could be seen outside the main villain’s destroyed headquarters holding a sign reading “Will hench for food.”

• Frankie and Tic-Tac (Mike Starr and Al Mancini) from Miller’s Crossing (1990): A pair of minor-league gangsters. Frankie is big and dumb, while Tic-Tac is elderly and mean. After Frankie takes a chair to the face, he sputters “Jesus, Tom!” to his attacker before trotting away like a chastened schoolboy. Moments later, Tic-Tac storms into the room to teach the attacker a lesson. We also get to hear Frankie’s surprisingly operatic singing voice in a later scene.

• Chechnyan mercenaries (Alex Kovas and Mario Woszcycki) from RocknRolla (2008). A wealthy Russian gangster hires these two goons to guard a satchel of money after a previous satchel gets stolen by One Two (Gerard Butler) and his gang. The duo compare battle scars before their vehicle gets rammed by a car, and the money is stolen again. Well, eventually. It turns out that the Chechnyans are way, way, way tougher than the gang suspected, and the heist is not easy. Every time it seems certain that One Two has gotten away with it, one of the two mercenaries will get up again and resume the chase, to the point of surreal ridiculousness.

• Black and White (actors unknown) from Shaolin Invincibles (1977): These two colour-coded weirdos use their kung fu skills and enormous prehensile tongues (?!?!) to make things tough for the good guys. They’d be the weirdest henchmen in movie history, if it weren’t for the fact that a pair of trained, sword-proof kung fu gorillas are in the same movie.

Also notable are Bullet-tooth Tony (Vinnie Jones) from Snatch (2000), Mr. Blonde (Michael Madsen) from Reservoir Dogs (1992), the Candy Bars from Hudson Hawk (1991) and K-9 the Martian dog from Looney Toons.