Gaddafi ruled over Libya for 42 years until his people grew tired enough of his rule that they banded together and ousted him. This, of course, is one of the risks of dictatorship. The trade-off is that you get to live in a palace and keep lions as pets. Still, you could do that as a heavyweight boxer too. I guess dictating requires less hours in the gym.

The point that I should have got too dozens of words ago is that dictators are bad. Movies taught me that. In fact, why don’t you go ahead and read the seven evil movie dictators that deserve to be shot in the street. If you want to that is. No pressure from me. It’s a free country.

M. Bison – Street Fighter

M. Bison is proof that powe taken by force corrupts the soul. He started his evil career in the drug trade like so many others do, and rose through the ranks to the position of drug lord. With a fictional South East Asian nature under his thumb, it wasn’t long before he took the title of General and held humanitarians for ransom.

Bullies like this make me ill. And Jean Claude Van Damme can’t always be around to give them their comeuppance. It’s up to us — we, the people — to band together and shut down a threat like this. No matter the cost.

General Garza – The Expendables

As far as brutal dictators go, General Garza is kind of a pussy. He’s easily pushed around by Eric Roberts and Stone Cold. Hey Garza, whose island is it anyway?! He deserved to be dragged into the street because of this lack of force. Oppress or get off the pot!

Before the recent unrest in the Middle East, most of you had probably never even heard of Libya, much less its eccentric dictator, Muammar Gaddafi. Morons. You should have been watching more movies, especially films from the 1980s and early ‘90s. The desert nation made tons of cameos during this time period. I guess you were to busy playing Atari and feathering your mullets to notice. For those of you who missed it the first time around, here are five classic films that feature Libya.

Back to the Future I and III

In the time-travel classic Back to the Future (as well as part III), Doc Brown builds a time machine that runs on plutonium. Where does the good doctor obtain this tightly controlled fuel source? Libyans, of course. Specifically, he cuts a deal with a group of Libyan terrorists who stole the material. They thought he was going to build them a bomb, but Doc Brown had other plans. Unfortunately for him, the Libyans caught wind of his plans and tracked him down (“I don’t know how, but they found me“). Luckily, thanks to Marty McFly’s disregard for the danger of disrupting the space-time continuum, Doc is able to avoid their vengeful wrath.

Patriot Games

When CIA agent Jack Ryan goes up against a team of IRA terrorists, he goes to the ends of the earth to find them. In this case, the end of the earth happens to be the Libyan desert, where the Irish renegades have taken up residence at a terrorist training camp. After Ryan tracks them down, British Special Forces are sent in to liquidate the camp. Unfortunately, the intended targets had already left.

G.I. Jane

This Demi Moore vehicle tells the story of a female trying to break into the hyper-masculine world of the Navy Seals. The film’s climax involves a rescue operation in the Libyan desert and the recovery of some weapons grade plutonium. The film’s not big on realism, but if you like to watch Libyans getting shot or masculine bald chicks, you should check it out.

Top Gun

At the end of Top Gun, Maverick and the gang finally get a chance to put their training to good use. And by good use, I mean they get to go and drop bombs on an impoverished third-world country. But much like in real life, the bad guys in this movie had it coming. The mission was inspired by an actual mission carried out against Libya.

The Naked Gun

At the beginning of the comedy classic, The Naked Gun, detective Frank Drebin of Police Squad is deep undercover in the Mid-East exposing a plot to destroy the United States. The conspirators included almost all of America’s enemies at the time, including (you guessed it) Colonel Muammar Gaddafi. Luckily, Detective Drebin took him out with a Three Stooges-Styled attack, and the fiendish plot was thwarted.

This article was originally posted on March 11th, 2011. It was updated on August 22, 2011.