Franz Kindler, also known as Charles Rankin, is the main antagonist of the 1946 crime-drama and thriller film The Stranger.
He was portrayed by Orson Welles, who also played Harry Lime in The Third Man and voiced Unicron in Transformers: The Movie.
What Makes Him Pure Evil?[]
- A devoted Nazi and one of the Third Reich's most brilliant minds, Kindler was the one who developed the idea of committing genocide against the Jews and other conquered peoples through the Holocaust and Generalplan Ost in order to make sure that Germany would remain one of the most powerful nations in Europe even if they lost the war, making him responsible for one of the worst mass murders in history. Kindler also ran the death camps in which much of the killing took place, including mass gassings and hundreds of people being buried alive in lye pits.
- Although the crimes took place prior to the film, they aren't offscreen villainy because the plot is driven by the War Crimes Commission's attempts to apprehend Kindler for his crimes and real-life photos from Nazi death camps are shown which serve as a visual representation of Kindler's crimes.
- When his former subordinate Konrad Meinike tracks him down, Kindler strangles him to death in order to eliminate the one person who can identify him. Although Meinike certainly wasn't innocent, as he commanded one of the death camps under Kindler's supervision, he was genuinely remorseful for his crimes and was killed while trying to convince Kindler to see the error of his ways, which Kindler viewed as a contemptible sign of weakness.
- He fatally poisons his wife Mary's dog to stop him from leading anyone to Meinike's body, having previously mistreated him by locking him in the basement overnight.
- He uses emotional manipulation to convince his wife Mary Longstreet to help him get away with Meinike's murder, then later tries to kill her by sawing out a ladder in the clock tower so she'll fall to her death out of paranoia that she might let something slip.
- When he finds out that Mary sent her brother to the rendezvous where she was supposed to walk into his deathtrap, he gaslights her by accusing her of being responsible for his death (although he actually survives) before trying to kill her again.
