THE Childcatcher from the film Chitty Chitty Bang Bang has been voted the
scariest character in children's literature, it was revealed yesterday.
The pale-faced baddie is familiar to millions through the 1968 hit film in
which, played by Robert Helpmann, he steals away children in the fantasy
land of Vulgaria.
The thin-faced thief polled one-third of the votes in a survey by the online
bookseller Amazon. The top female villain and overall runner-up was Cruella
De Vil from 101 Dalmatians. She grabbed just over 10 per cent of the votes.
Other scary characters were the Oliver Twist bully Bill Sikes, who came
third, and Harry Potter's arch-nemesis, Voldemort.
Amazon's product manager, Wendy Snowdon, said it seemed that villains who
committed crimes against small children and cute puppies were the most
inexcusable to children.
"They are the very stuff of nightmares. Genuinely scary villains stick with
us from the first time we read the book as a child," she said.
Ms Snowdon said the villains that people found most scary were usually from
works at least 20 years old, although some did change through generations.
She said people over 50 found Bill Sikes and Gollum from Lord of the Rings
"creepy".
The under-21s found characters such as the Grand High Witch from The Witches
or Voldemort from Harry Potter particularly terrifying.
There was also a difference between the sexes.
Men found the mythical literary characters such as Gollum, and The White
Witch from The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe scary.
But women found the bullies such as Bill Sikes twice as frightening as the
men.
Other fearsome children's villains that ranked in the top ten included the
Wicked Stepmother from Snow White, the evil Miss Trunchbull from Roald Dahl'
s Matilda and the dreaded Captain Hook, from Peter Pan.