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"Mature Content Warning!" |
Kurt Dussander is one of the protagonists in Stephen King's novella Apt Pupil. He is a notorious Nazi concentration camp commander who escapes to America, but is then blackmailed by Todd Bowden into telling him stories of his crimes.
He was portrayed by Sir Ian McKellen in the film.
His Evil Ranking[]
What Makes Him Close to Being Pure Evil?[]
In general[]
- It is not played for sympathy when he privately admits to himself that he enjoys Todd's company and has faced suicidal thoughts and feelings due to his extended isolation and fear of being caught.
- Though he claims that he regrets his past and was only following orders, his flashbacks show that he enjoyed what he did, and he finds himself enthralled by the memory of his crimes, showing he never really repented but was only suppressing his desire to harm others, and he's actually grateful to Todd for influencing him to go back to his old ways.
- While he has frequent nightmares about his victims, this doesn't count as remorse as he doesn't regret his crimes and just fears being caught.
- Dussander is responsible for Todd's mental decline into a killer, as whilst Todd indeed forced him to regale his war crimes for his own satisfaction; the reality of Dussander's crimes and the Holocaust begin to wear at Todd's sanity, causing experiencing violent dreams of sadistic rape, and as Dussander ingratiates himself into Todd's life and blackmails him with this to keep from Todd killing him, Todd relieves the stress of the aforementioned by brutally killing homeless people.
- Dussander is even amused to deduce that Todd has become a serial killer, being impressed.
Specific[]
- He was a sadistic Nazi who enjoyed torturing and killing thousands of people, including Morris Heisel's wife and daughters who were gassed to death in the showers.
- He also regularly stole the belongings of the inmates and kept some for himself rather than deliver them to his superiors, and even boasts how he was able to deceive Himmler himself, showing his lack of loyalty.
- He prided himself on inventing a more refined method of torture, calling inmates into his office where he displayed a delicious pot of lamb stew, using their hunger to torment them into divulging information.
- He lies to Todd's family about what they're doing together and makes up a false story about his past, claiming to be an innocent German who was horrified by the Holocaust.
- He poses as Todd's grandfather when his grades fall, meeting with Todd's guidance counselor and making up a story that Todd's parents are having problems in the home, then gloats to Todd afterward that "the fool believed everything."
- He threatens Todd by saying he has a document in a safe revealing Todd's complicity that will be opened if he dies, when he's just making it up to frighten him. Though this is mostly to protect himself from being killed by Todd, he still takes pleasure in terrorizing him.
- He horrifically kills a stray cat by roasting it alive in an oven, then makes a sick joke to Todd about burning his dinner.
- He also buys a dog from a shelter and is implied to have killed it as well, as there's no dog with him the next time we see him.
- He lures a number of homeless men into his house and stabs them to death in the kitchen, hiding the bodies in his basement. He's also aware that Todd is also killing homeless people and is amused by it.
- Upon being exposed, he persists in lying to the authorities about who he is, then commits suicide to deny them the pleasure of extraditing him and putting him on trial.
- He muses that he finds it funny that Morris Heisel, a man he "wouldn't have known from Adam" was the one to oust him.
- Reflecting on it further, he even decided that, on second thoughts, rather than it being "funny", it's "hilarious"
- He muses that he finds it funny that Morris Heisel, a man he "wouldn't have known from Adam" was the one to oust him.
- While it's implied that he goes to Hell in the form of everlasting nightmares of his victims, this is deserved given his atrocities, so it doesn't make him a scapegoat.
What Prevents Him from Being Pure Evil?[]
- He has genuine affection for Todd, and whilst twice saying that he could never like him, he does come to respect him and comes to enjoy his company despite their mind games, and before he dies, he assures Todd that he was never going to turn him in and he wishes him the best in life.
- His last moments even has him muse that he wishes he could leave a note for Todd, but does not for fear of incriminating him.
Trivia[]
- Dussander, whilst remaining the sadistic Nazi he was in the films as the books, is slightly less worse in the film, likely for budget and rating issues, in that in the novel:
- He successfully and horrifically burns alive a cat; with the screaming explicitly being compared to that of a young boy's, and obtains a dog from a shelter, and there is no indication as to where it is later in the novel.
- He devised his own method of torturous interrogation in bringing starving victims of the Holocaust and presenting them with a succulent lamb stew and faux-affably interrogating them by asking questions. In the novel, his faux-affable mannerisms is what alerts the Holocaust survivor in the bed next to him to his true identity.
- Dussander is shown killing one homeless person in the film to dispose of him as an eyewitness, but in the novel, he is described to have killed and buried numerous homeless people.
- Although Dussander is implied to have gone to Hell in the end of the novel, he only receives a violent death by a self-inflicted air-embolism in the movies, likely to circumvent the peaceful and mellow death he gave himself in the novel by overdose (albeit, before he realises he is going to Hell).
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 Near Pure Evils
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Novels Adaptations | ||