ENDORA YOUR ENTHUSIASM (19)
By:
September 7, 2025
One in a series of enthusiastic posts, contributed by 25 HILOBROW friends and regulars, on the topic of our favorite sympathetic villains. Series edited by Heather Quinlan.
CARSON DYLE
Charade is a Hitchcockian thriller built on shifting identities and layers of deception. Its villain is a master manipulator whose true identity is concealed until the film’s final act. The first murder happens before the opening credits even roll: Regina Lampert’s (Audrey Hepburn’s) husband is pushed from a train, his body tossed aside like a prop in someone else’s game.
The next scene cuts to Hepburn’s porcelain face as she tells a French inspector that she barely knew her husband at all. When she identifies his body at the morgue, her expression flickers — shock, recognition, maybe guilt — but she says nothing.
Enter Cary Grant, smooth as ever, offering his help. But his identity keeps changing. Is he a concerned stranger? A government agent? A killer? Regina can’t tell, and neither can we. She meets a man claiming to be Hamilton Bartholomew (Walter Matthau), a CIA official, who says her husband was part of a wartime theft — $250,000 stolen and never recovered. Bartholomew insists Regina has the money and warns that the men who helped steal it are coming for her.
Three of them show up at the funeral: Tex Penthollow (James Coburn), Herman Scobie (George Kennedy), and Leopold W. Gideon (Ned Glass). They’re cartoonishly sinister — Scobie has a metal hook for a hand — and they immediately become the main suspects. But Grant lingers in the background, smiling, flirting, always just a little too convenient. Regina keeps him close, maybe because she believes him, maybe because she wants to.
Matthau’s Bartholomew seems credible, with his tidy office, encyclopedic knowledge, and a plate of chicken and liverwurst sandwiches. Regina never suspects he’s lying. But the real deception runs deeper: He is Carson Dyle, the presumed-dead fourth member of the gang. He’s eliminated the others one by one, while gaslighting Regina and manipulating her grief.
As the bodies pile up — Gideon, Scobie, Tex — Regina finally sees Grant collecting mail under the name “Dyle.” That’s the name Matthau told her belonged to the killer. Convinced Grant has betrayed her, she finds the missing quarter-million in rare stamps and rushes to deliver them to “Bartholomew.”
Grant stops her: “That man is Carson Dyle.”
Regina screams, “I don’t know who anyone is!” — a cry of total disorientation, and the emotional core of Charade. Everyone is lying. Everyone has a mask.
She freezes. Then Dyle reveals himself: “You’ve got the money now. It belongs to me… They left me there with five bullets in my leg and stomach. I spent ten months in a German prison camp. That’s why I had to kill them. Please believe me: I’ll kill you too. It won’t make any difference.”
While his suaveness, skill as a villain, and the revelation of his wounds may cause the viewer sympathize with Dyle, his threat to kill Audrey Hepburn makes us finally stop rooting for him.
ENDORA YOUR ENTHUSIASM: INTRODUCTION by Heather Quinlan | Kathy Biehl on DR. FRANK-N-FURTER | Catherine Christman on ALEXIS CARRINGTON | Crockett Doob on M3GAN | Nick Rumaczyk on AURIC GOLDFINGER | Mariane Cara on MIRANDA PRIESTLY | Trav SD on PROFESSOR HINKLE | Alex Brook Lynn on TOM POWERS | Lynn Peril on ENDORA | Adam McGovern on EDDIE HASKELL | Mimi Lipson on SUE ANN NIVENS | Heather Quinlan on HAROLD SHAND | Tom Nealon on SKELETOR | Matthew Hodge on BARRY LYNDON | Josh Glenn on JOEL CAIRO | Dan Reines on WALTER PECK | Mark Kingwell on HARRY LIME | James Scott Maloy on CLARENCE BODDICKER | Nikhil Singh on LOCUTUS | Carolyn Campbell on CARSON DYLE | Tony Pacitti on DENNIS NEDRY | Gordon Dahlquist on WALKER | Colin Campbell on RUTH LYTTON | Marc Weidenbaum on THE XENOMORPHS | Susannah Breslin on ANTON CHIGURH | Micah Nathan on PATRICK BATEMAN.
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