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"Mature Content Warning!" |
Clement "Clem" Hoately is a major character in the first half of the 2021 psychological-horror thriller film Nightmare Alley, the second film adaptation of the 1946 novel of the same name.
He is the manager of a circus known for its geek shows, whose geeks allow him to make a lot of money. However, it later turns out that Clement actually drugs drunkards to force them into serving him as his geeks and staying at his business.
He was portrayed by Willem Dafoe, who also voiced Lord Cob in Tales from Earthsea and Ryuk in Netflix's Death Note.
What Makes Him Pure Evil?[]
- Tricks troubled and desperate people, like traumatized World War I veterans and drunkards, into drinking alcohol he spikes with opium tincture after promising them a temporary job, which makes them subservient to him, letting him use those addicts as his "geeks" for the geek show of his circus.
- According to Clem, he keeps his geeks until they become too sick to continue or start dying, leading him to discard them and seek a new one.
- Treats his geeks horribly, using them as attractions and treating them like if they were beasts instead of humans, feeding them as part of the show, and forcing them to sleep in a cage.
- Collects the corpses of deceased babies in jars inside his circus tent.
- When his geek, by the time of the film's story, tries to escape, he asks Stanton Carlisle, his newest employee, to assist him in preventing the geek's escape. Once they recapture him, they drop him carelessly back in his cage.
- Despite the fact that his employee Pete is an alcoholic and his wife, Madame Zeena, cares for him, Clem doesn't give a damn about his health and gives him a bottle of sugarcane. Eventually, Pete dies from drinking too much.
- While Clem does look somewhat saddened because of this, this becomes moot when one considers that Clem gave him the alcohol despite knowing that his wife didn't want him to drink because of his health, so he possibly acted like he was sad to look better in front of his performers.
- Upon realizing that his geek has contracted an infection in his head, rather than seeking medical help for him, he asks Stan to help him drop the geek in a shelter and leave him there to his fate. Given the geek's serious and fragile condition, it's more than likely that the geek was left there to expire in the middle of the night.
- What's more, while he did leave the geek at the doorstep of a shelter and rang the bell, he criticizes Stan for taking time to put the geek out of the rain and insists that he leave him there and run with him before anyone sees him, proving that he likely dropped the geek there to look better if questioned and not because he genuinely cared for his health.
- He at one point insults Adolf Hitler for invading Poland, but this doesn't specify if he opposes the Nazi ideology or not.
- As they eat in a restaurant, he explains to Stan the process of how he drugs his "geeks" to work for him, and he does this with glee on his face, horrifying Stan.
- When his circus nearly gets closed down by the authorities before Stan talks the sheriff out of closing them down with tricks he learned from Madame Zeena and Pete, Clem's sole concern is to hide the geek before the cops may spot him, whom he harshly forces to walk.
- While he seemingly gets along with Stan, he likely treated him nicely because Stan followed his orders, given how he threatens him at first when he warns him to never touch his alcohol, and praised him for manipulating Marshal Jedediah Judd with his tragic past to talk him out of closing the circus, suggesting that he was happy because his business was safe and that Stan had learned to be as cunning as him.
Trivia[]
- Despite his status as Pure Evil, Clement Hoately has one debatable factor that could disqualify him, that being that he possibly cares for a woman, presumed to be either his wife, girlfriend, or prostitute, who is seen twice in the film, with Clem dancing for her in one scene and later holding her when they watch Madame Zeena crying for Pete's death. However, Clem never mentions her in his other scenes, so there's no way to prove that he genuinely cares for her, given that when his circus is nearly closed, he doesn't go to check for her but prioritizes hiding his geek from the authorities.
External Link[]
- Clement Hoately on the Villains Wiki.
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 Pure Evils
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