Cruella De Vil (Disney)

"Darling, I live for furs, I worship furs! After all, is there a woman in all this wretched world who doesn't?"

- Cruella De Vil foreshadowing her obsession.

Cruella De Vil is the main antagonist of Disney's 101 Dalmatians franchise, and one of the secondary antagonists in Mickey's House of Villains.

She was voiced by the late Betty Lou Gerson in the film, April Winchell in the TV series, and Glenn Close in the live action film adaptation.

Personality
Cruella is one of the most iconic and well-known Disney Villains and is a primary member of the franchise, she is remembered for her unique name, extravagance, and obsession - practically a worship - of fur. As mentioned earlier Cruella is very fashionable and chic, she dresses only in fur which she apparently lives for. However, as her name might suggest, she is also extremely cruel, ruthless, manipulative, conniving, and vile. Behind her glamour is an extremely murderous and vituperative psychopath who is willing to kill and skin 99 puppies just to create her own spotted fur coat and when the Radcliffes wouldn't sell she resorted to stealing them.

However, unlike other villains such as Scar, Hades or Judge Claude Frollo, Cruella is not much of a schemer who carefully plans out, she has shown to be quite reckless and temerarious, so she appears to act on impulse. Cruella shows a complete lack of manners, being rude and possibly even arrogant and according to Anita this trait was passed on when she was young at school, Cruella is shown to be extremely obnoxious, detestable, and prejudicial, so she demands her 99 puppy dalmatians without saying "please". Cruella could be considered a narcissist.

Cruella's appearance resembled that of a demon, she is described as a "devil woman" by the Dalmatians and is physically frightening which was shown by the lyrics of "Cruella De Vil", "Cruella De Vil, Cruella De Vil, if she doesn't scare you no evil thing will!" Cruella is short-tempered, cantankerous, and quarrelsome. She has shown to be easily enraged and infuriated, an example of this would when the Radcliffes denied her the dalmatians and she Aleft in a fit of rage. Her henchman, Jasper and Horace, appear to be the cause of most of her frustration. At the end of the film is when Cruella has a complete and murderous breakdown.

She appears to be abusive, defamatory, and argumentative towards her minions, Jasper and Horace, an example of this would be when she acquired the two of them the task of dognapping the dalmatians while they were watching the TV show "What's My Crime" and then asked if they can watch it to the end she slaps them in exasperation of their bumbling stupidity. Cruella is cold-hearted and unsympathetic, so she despises dogs, describing them as beasts and shows very little concern of their lives.

She also appears to be an unpleasant and treacherous sadist, taking great delight in the thought of killing the puppies in the most brutal ways. It is not until the end Cruella reveals her true personality, a violent, careless, murderous, destructive, and downright evil psychopath, after the dalmatians escape, she becomes nearly insane and preposterous, so she goes on a rampage trying to retrieve the dogs but accidentally crashes the car she was driving.

101 Dalmatians (1961 film)
In her debut, Cruella was mentioned by Roger to be Anita's old schoolmate. He began to sing his own version of her called "Cruella De Vil". Cruella storms in and asks if the puppies came believing they are the key to make a spotted fur coat. Anita says in three weeks they will. Cruella leaves without even joining Anita for tea. She then comes back in three weeks. Anita and Roger say "no" when she asks them to sell the puppies. Roger even told Cruella off. Furiously, Cruella storms out, warning them that she would get even and they would be sorry. She asks Horace and Jasper on the phone for help in stealing the puppies.

Then she next appears in the film when she angrily watches her henchmen watching "What's My Crime". She demands them to start skinning the puppies for a fur coat. She slaps Horace and Jasper when they ask if they can finish the show first, and leaves them in her house to skin the puppies, threatening to call the police if they aren't done by morning. She finds Horace and Jasper looking for the puppies who escaped the house and they discover their footprints in the snow. She then vowed to find the dogs "even if it takes until next Christmas."

They follow them to Dinsford and Cruella sees black puppies and soon she realizes that they are the puppies in soot when snow falls on them and uncovers their disguises. She calls her henchmen to catch them, but they are attacked by a black Labrador and fall down on the road. Cruella follows the van the puppies ride in, but damages her car in a tree and is trapped in the snow, but quickly escapes the trap and crashes into a tree, knocking off her car parts. Enraged, she goes insane with a wild look in her face in her attempts to catch the puppies and rams the truck they're in to try and knock it off the road, but Horace and Jasper try to do the same thing, but Horace pulls out the wheel and they crash into Cruella's car. Both cars crash down a hill but Cruella and her henchmen are unharmed, but the puppies escape. Cruella cries and yells at Horace and Jasper, who finally get fed up with her insults, and tell her to shut up, and they are later arrested off-screen.

101 Dalmatians II: Patch's London Adventure
Cruella had been released from jail, but has a restraining order and is on probation. Her life in ruins, she tries to calm herself down working with Lars, a German artist. Try as he might however, he cannot please Cruella with his designs, so she decides to help by looking for the Dalmatian puppies again, and find out their address by seeing Patch on the newspaper. She bails Horace and Jasper out of jail to find the puppies, and she hides them in a stolen truck to get to the puppies. The Baduns are able to subdue the Nanny and steal the puppies for Cruella, who aspires to use their fur for a coat. When Lars disagrees, Cruella ties him up and gags him, and turns to her original plan of turning the puppies into a fur coat.

Patch's hero, Thunderbolt, tries to rescue the puppies, but Lil' Lightning tricks him into openly attacking Cruella and the Baduns. Cruella captures him and Patch. Lightning reveals Thunderbolt as a fraud, crushing Patch's spirit. The puppies escape but Thunderbolt is too ashamed to follow. The Baduns inform Cruella that the puppies escaped, but Patch tricks them while Thunderbolt frees Lars. The dalmatian puppies escape in a double-decker bus and Cruella chases after them with her henchmen, but Cruella is distracted by Thunderbolt faking a heart attack. Cruella decides to put him out of his misery by killing him, but she accidentally knocks the Baduns unconscious. Patch puts the bus in reverse and Cruella, Lil' Lightning, and the Baduns are almost run over and fall into a river. Lil' Lightning and the Baduns are imprisoned while an insane Cruella is dragged into a mental institute, never to be seen again.

101 Dalmatians (live-action film series)
Cruella De Vil is the main antagonist of the 1996 film 101 Dalmatians, and the 2000 sequel 102 Dalmatians.

101 Dalmatians (1996 film)
"All right, keep the little beasts. Do what you like with them. Drown them, for all I care! You're a fool, Anita! I've no use for fools. You're fired! You're finished! You'll never work in fashion again! I'm through with all of you! I'll get even! Just wait! You'll be sorry, you fools! You idiots! (Jasper: Good evening, Madame.) Out of my way!"

- Cruella promising to get revenge on Roger and Anita over refusing to hand over the dalmatian puppies and even beating up her minions Jasper and Horace in anger.

Cruella is first seen arriving in her car to the House of De Vil. A chauffeur opens her car door for and greets her, only for her to flick a cigarette ash onto his shoe. She then exits the car and heads inside the building; first being greeted by her butler, Alonzo, and then by her employees before approaching Anita who is designing two new coats; one with stripes and another with Dalmatian spots. Anita is shocked nervously by Cruella's presence at first and tries to hide the design with the spots from her, but Cruella takes it and is entranced by it. Cruella then notices a picture of Anita's dog, Perdita and picks it up. She is charmed by her dog, but wonders why she has spots and Anita explains that Perdita is a Dalmatian. Cruella then asks a variety of question; was Perdita her inspiration, she was; does she have long hair or short, short; is her fur coarse or fine; a little coarse; much to Cruella's dismay; but finds redemption when Anita says it was very fine when she was a puppy. After this, Cruella tells Anita that the two of them need have a talk and calls her to her office and to bring the spotted coat design with her as well.

In her office, Cruella tells Anita to tell her more about the Dalmatian spots, pointing out that she did leopard spots in the 80's. Anita tells her that Dalmatian spots are a little different.

102 Dalmatians
"Not Ella. Ella's gone. AND CRUELLA'S BACK!!!"

- Cruella giving up on redemption and returning to her evil schemes as she reverts back to her original state.

Cruella has seemingly been released of her obsession of furs and now loves puppies and has decided to get rid of her fashion house because the clothes are made out of fur. While visiting Chloe Simon, one of the puppies nearly falls out the window and while Chloe and the other puppies try to rescue her, Cruella hears the chimes of Big Ben and she reverts back to her original obsession with spots, having a hallucination seeing black spots everywhere and she now wants 102 Dalmatian puppies for her designs. She enlists the help of another fashion designer named Jean Pierre Le Pelt and an unwilling butler named Alonso. She frames the owner of the animal shelter Kevin Sheppard for kidnapping the puppies and he is arrested. He escapes from jail and tries to help Chloe rescue the puppies, but they are trapped by Cruella. The puppies escape and Cruella tries to capture them, and at the same time Alonso redeems himself by defeating Jean-Pierre Le Pelt and freeing Chloe and Kevin while Cruella is defeated by getting baked in a cake. The police come and arrest her and Le Pelt, this time for good.

Kingdom Keepers
In the novel series, Kingdom Keepers, Cruella is one of the main Disney villains called the Overtakers, and their plan is to take over all of the Disney parks. (at night, all of the characters and attractions in Disney World and Disneyland come to life) Cruella is the Evil Queen's right hand woman and a nuisance. She was not as dangerous and scary as Chernabog, Jafar, Judge Claude Frollo, the Evil Queen, Ursula, and Maleficent, but she was still dangerous. She threatened to burn one of the Kingdom Keeper kids' face with a cigarette.

Once Upon A Time


Cruella is a character in Once Upon a Time, where she appears as one of the four main antagonists in the second half of season 4. The character later appears in the latter half of season 5, which primarily takes place in the Underworld. She was portrayed by Victoria Smurfit.

101 Dalmatians Comic Strip
Cruella also appears as the main antagonist, and still want the puppies, but in some episode, she seem to be more nicer then evil, because at the finale of the series she finally redeemed herself by be love by everybody. It is revealed that she has a brother, mother, cousin and niece.

Descendants
Cruella seems to be banished and prisoner on the Isle of the Lost with other villains and their offspring, she had a son named Carlos De Vil, and she is African American and was portrayed by Wendy Raquel Robinson.

Trivia

 * Cruella is ranked #39 on AFI's list "100 Years...100 Heroes and Villains".
 * She is ranked #6 in the Top 30 Disney Villains.
 * Cruella is not only one of the most iconic and popular villains in the Disney franchise, but also one of the most iconic villains of all time.
 * Cruella is one of the few Disney Villains to return in one of the Direct to DVD sequels.
 * Cruella De Vil was originally meant to return as the villain of The Rescuers, but was scrapped and replaced with Madame Medusa, as Ollie Johnson stated that it felt wrong and that he wasn't interested in making a full-length sequel to an otherwise unrelated movie around that era. Plus Cruella De Vil from 101 Dalmatians has nothing to do with The Rescuers, and both films already have sequels.
 * Cruella's design resembles Coco LaBouche from Rugrats in Paris: The Movie.

Navigation
Cruella De Mon (Disney)