Most Popular Movie Characters and Fan Voting in Animation Suspense Comedies and Sci Fi

While Gone With the Wind proved to be a fan favorite in four voting categories -- No.1 in Best Movie of All Time (all genres); No.1 in Best Movie Kiss; No.1 in Best Movie Dialogue One-Liner; and No.3 in Best Movie Characters -- Silence of the Lambs garnered the No.1 vote in fan favorite Best Suspense Movies, and it is one of just three movies in history to earn Academy Awards in all of the Top Five academy voting categories -- Best Picture, Best Actor, Best Actress, Best Director, and Best Original Screenplay or Adapted Screenplay (1991).

A half million fans voted on their favorite movies in the following categories (as well as others):

• Best Film Characters
• Best Animation Films
• Best Suspense Films
• Best Comedy Films
• Best Science Fiction Films

The television program "Best in Film: The Greatest Movies of Our Time" related the voting results in these categories on March 22, 2011.

Jaws (1975), ranked No.2 on the fans' Top Five favorite suspense yarns. Three through five on the Best Suspense Movies list were voted in as follows: No.3 -- Psycho (1960); No.4 -- The Shining (1980); No.5 -- Pulp Fiction (1994).

Top Five Fan Voted Movie Characters

Forrest Gump and his life experience box of chocolates rates as the Best Movie Character of all-time by fans who voted for their movie favorites in 10 categories overall.

The next four fan favorite Best Movie Characters were:

• No.2 -- James Bond
• No.3 -- Scarlett O'Hara
• No.4. -- Hannibal Lector
• No.5 -- Indiana Jones

Top Five Fan Voted Best Animation Films

In the Best Animation Movies of all-time, fans chose the following films:

• No.1 -- The Lion King (1994)
• No.2 -- Toy Story (1995)
• No.3 -- Beauty and The Beast (1946) and 1991
• No.4 -- Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs (1937)
• No.5 -- Fantasia (1940)

What the Experts Say

In VideoHound's Golden Movie Retriever, 2005, Edited by Jim Craddock, a Four-Bone rating for a movie is equal to the Four-Star rating used by other critics.

VideoHound's Golden Movie Retriever rates all five of the fan favorites in the Best Animation Movies category with Four-Bone awards.

In the stiffer competition of Four-Star Movies The 101 Greatest Films of All Time, 2003, by Black Dog & Leventhal Publishers of New York, none of the five fan chosen Best Animation Movies, The Lion King, Toy Story, Beauty and the Beast, Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs, and Fantasia appear on the list of Four-Star 101 movies.

The movies chosen for Four-Star Movies The 101 Greatest Films of All Time include all genres in a single listing catalogued by Gail Kinn and Jim Piazza.

Experts Versus Fans in Best Suspense Movies

Of the Best Suspense Movies chosen by fans, Kinn and Piazza rated Psycho the highest at No.14. Jaws is ranked No.65, and Pulp Fiction comes in at No.99. The Shining and Silence of the Lambs do not appear on the Four-Star 101 list.

VideoHound's rankings for the fans' Best Suspense Movies are varied. Only Psycho and Pulp Fiction received the Four-Bone rating. A Three-and-A-Half Bone award went to Silence of the Lambs and Jaws, while The Shining earned VideoHound's Two-and-A-Half Bone rating.

Top Five Fan Voted Science Fiction Movies

E.T. The Extra-Terrestrial (1982) received two Top Five category votes by movie fans, one as the No.5 Best Movie of All-Time (all genres) and a second as No.2 Best Science Fiction Film.

The No.1 vote in Best Science Fiction Movies went to Star Wars (1977). Following are the other three of the Top Five Science Fiction Films voted in by movie fans:

• No.3 -- Avatar, 2010
• No.4 -- The Matrix, 1999
• No.5 -- Close Encounters of the Third Kind, 1977

And the Experts Say:

Four-Bone ratings went to the science fiction films Star Wars, E.T. The Extra-Terrestrial, and Close Encounters of the Third Kind from VideoHound's. The Matrix earned a Three-and-A-Half Bone rank.

The Best Science Fiction Movies of all-time voted by movie fans did well on the hard-earned Four-Star 101 list catalogued by Kinn and Piazza. Three of the fans' Top Five Science Fiction Movies made the Four-Star 101 list. They are Close Encounters of the Third Kind, No.25; Star Wars, No.52; and E.T. The Extra-Terrestrial, No.59.

Top Five Fan Voted Comedy Movies

Marilyn Monroe is as much a fan favorite today as Clark Gable. The two mega-stars of their day worked together just once, in Misfits (1961), the film that was the last movie for both of them. Monroe earned fan kudos for her performance in Some Like It Hot.

These are the fans' Top Five Comedy Films of all-time:

• No.1 -- Airplane, (1980)
• No.2 -- Monty Python and the Holy Grail, (1975)
• No.3 -- Some Like It Hot, (1959)
• No.4 -- Young Frankestein, (1974)
• No.5 -- Tootsie, (1982)

The experts of VideoHound's agreed on the fan picks Tootsie, Young Frankenstein, and Some Like It Hot. All three received Four-Bone ratings. Three-and-A-Half Bone rankings went to Monty Python and the Holy Grail and Airplane.

Airplane barely made the Four-Star 101 list, snatching the No.100 spot.

Monroe, however, shined brightly, getting the Four-Star 100 list nod at No.12 for her Some Like It Hot riot with Tony Curtis and Jack Lemmon.

Gable shined, as well on the Four-Star 101 list. His It Happened One Night, a great comedy for which he won his only career Oscar, was awarded the No.32 slot. It Happened One Night was movie history's first film to earn all five Top Five Academy Awards.

And, of course, Gone With the Wind and Gable's Rhett Butler always rank high on any movie list of the best. GWTW is Four-Star 101's No.4 movie, and the fans' Best Movie of All-Time (all genres).