Forget Pennywise, Tim Curry's Greatest Villain Role Is Actually This One

The world lost an all-time cinematic presence on August 25, with the passing of the legendary Tim Curry, aged 80. Curry instantly classed up any film he appeared in, but he shone the brightest in his most villainous roles. From his gleefully depraved interpretation of Pennywise in the 1990 miniseries based on Stephen King's It, to a breathtakingly flamboyant performance delivered from beneath pounds of hellish makeup in Ridley Scott's Legend, his signature devilish eyebrows and silky timbre never disappointed.

But his 1996 turn as Long John Silver in Muppet Treasure Island was Curry at the peak of his powers. To this day, it's infectious to see how much fun he's clearly having in the role; Curry jumps from charm and warmth to genuine menace in seconds, while rolling his eyes back in delight and periodically just cackling at his own villainy.

Children's films are often defined by their villains, who represent the incomprehensibility and menace of the adult world made flesh. Curry understood the assignment well, injecting what could have been a stock role with an incredible amount of depth and diabolical joie de vivre.

Curry Gave a Stock Villain a Warm and Perverse Edge — In a Muppets Film

In adapting the rather dark original story by Robert Lewis Stevenson into a children's musical comedy, Muppet Treasure Island naturally had to make a few changes. Curry, though, still thoroughly inhabits the character of Long John Silver in all his manipulative, paternal, and homicidal glory. From the moment he unleashes his first delirious cackle after good-naturedly frightening young Jim Hawkins (Kevin Bishop) with his Jim Henson Creature Shop-designed "parrot," Curry's Long John Silver is instantly a classic villain.

Curry's pitch-perfect performance, however, rests on three key tricks: He interacts with the Muppets exactly as if they were human performers, he treats Jim like he might feel fatherly love for him ("Because I like you, boy! I hope you didn't think I was lying about that"), and he imbibes even stock villainous scenes with devilishness and a vague underlying lechery. Long John's love for Jim, love for his own villainy, and...well, lust for Miss Piggy are integral to why Muppet Treasure Island retains its watchability. It's nigh-impossible to imagine one of the film's early scenes, in which Long John menaces Jim, then effortlessly pivots to comforting him, teaching him how to navigate by the stars, without Curry.

Likewise, a Curry-less Muppet Treasure Island would lack the magic that occurs during Curry's "A Professional Pirate" musical number. One of the film's centerpiece sequences, it kicks off with one of Curry's inimitable cackles, and proceeds through an extremely Rodgers and Hammerstein-like vamp with human performers and Muppets alike hoisting him aloft as he stage-whispers to them, "It's my only number" and tries to metaphorically seduce Jim into the pirate life.

'Muppet Treasure Island' Is Still the Best Muppet Take On the Classics

All respect due to Sir Michael Caine's timeless performance as Ebenezer Scrooge in The Muppet Christmas Carol, but Curry's performance and sense of irreverent, sometimes mean and usually silly fun makes Muppet Treasure Island the franchise's best take on classic literature — and its best modern film overall. Director Brian Henson, his three-man screenwriting team, and the supernaturally gifted Muppet performers get a tremendous amount of mileage from placing beloved Muppet weirdos on an 18th-century ship, especially in a hysterical show-stopper of a musical number that styles many of the Muppet stowaways as passengers on a '90s-era cruise ship.

"Cabin Fever" is one of the best Muppet musical numbers ever committed to film. Beginning with canted fisheye lenses depicting the sweat-soaked pirates and crewmen aboard losing their marbles, it escalates to Fozzie Bear draped in leis and shaking maracas, with a couple of bewildered rats complaining that they're "demented and disoriented ... and a little bit mad." It's the film in a nutshell: Imaginatively goofy Muppet hijinx mixed with surprisingly sweaty, tense genre dramatics.

Curry has, deservedly, received plaudits across the board for his work in horror and fantasy, but the degree to which he elevates Muppet Treasure Island is impossible to overstate. For those of us — and they are many — grieving this week, there's no better remedy than to enjoy his devilish, cackling performance alongside Kermit, Rizzo, and Miss Piggy. Curry's work will outlive him by decades, but the magic he brought to potentially boilerplate material may be the thing most worth remembering him for.