Cruella De Vil (Disney)

"Darling, I live for furs, I worship furs!""

- Cruella De Vil foreshadowing her obsession.

Cruella De Vil is the iconic 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, and April Winchell in the TV series.

101 Dalmatians (1961 film)
In her appearance, Cruella is mentioned by Roger to be Anita's old schoolmate. He begins to sing his own version of Cruella "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. Both Radcliffes say no when she asks them to sell the puppies. Roger even told Cruella off. Furious, Cruella storms out, warning them that she'll get even and they'll be sorry. She asks Horace and Jasper on the phone for help in stealing the puppies.

Then she next appears in the movie 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 vows 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 has 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 (1996 film)
Main article: Cruella De Vil (101 Dalmatians Films)

102 Dalmatians: Puppies to the Rescue
Unlike the 102 Dalmatians movie, she tries capture all the pets in England to sell them outside London, with help from one of her henchman like Professor Fastboom. She appears as a boss three times and lastly the final boss in the game.

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 will appear as one of the four main antagonists in the second half of season 4. She will be portrayed by Victoria Smurfit.

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 chic, she dresses only in fur which she apparently lives for. However as her name might suggest she is also cruel, ruthless and vile. Behind her glamour is a murderous monster 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 schemer who carefully plans out, she has shown to be quite reckless and 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 and 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 she has shown to be easily enraged and infuriated an example of this would when the Radcliffes denied her the dalmations 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 towards her minions, Jasper and Horace an example of this would be when she acquired the two of them the task of dognapping the dalmations 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 she despises dogs, describing them as beasts and shows very little concern of their lives.

She appears to be a sadist, taking great delight in the thought of killing the puppies in the most brutal ways. It's not until the end Cruella reveals her true personality, a reckless, murderous and downright evil psychopath, after the dalmations escape she becomes nearly insane and goes on a rampage trying to retrieve the dogs but accidentally crashes the car she was driving

101 Dalmatians Comic Strip
She is also 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
She seemes to be banished and prisoner on the Isle of the Lost with other villains and their offsprings, she had a son named Carlos De Vil, and she's African American and was portrayed by Wendy Raquel Robinson.

Trivia

 * Cruella ranked 39th on AFI's list "100 Years...100 Heroes and Villains".
 * Cruella is the 6th Greatest Disney Villain.
 * Cruella is similar to Mrs. Tweedy from Chicken Run: Both have a hatred for animals, both have henchmen working for them, and both are the main antagonists of their films.
 * She is also similar to Gladys Sharp from Over the Hedge: Both are animal haters and get arrested at the end of the film. However, the only difference between them is that Cruella is the main antagonist of her film (101 Dalmatians) and Gladys is the secondary antagonist of hers (Over the Hedge).
 * As well, Cruella is similar to Wilhelmina Slater: Both are cruel, scheming, and manipulating bosses and both are business women.
 * Cruella is similar to Carrigan Crittenden, the main antagonist in Casper, because both of them are rich heiresses, they are both extremely greedy businesswomen, emotionless apart from showing extreme wrath, and they both have male partners they abuse - Cruella has Horace and Jasper and Carrigan has Dibs.
 * Also, Cruella is rather like Julia Rothman, because she is a child abuser and businesswoman. Julia Rothman attempts to kill every schoolchild in London by poisoning them, much in the same way Cruella attempts to have her henchmen poison the puppies. Julia Rothman, like Cruella, is very egocentric and emotionless, and, like Cruella is one of the most infamous Disney villains, Julia Rothman is considered the most evil Alex Rider villain.
 * She is one of the few Disney Villains to return in one of the Direct to DVD sequels.
 * Cruella is considered one of the most iconic and popular villains in the Disney franchise.
 * Cruella shares some similarities to Madame Medusa from The Rescuers. Both have selfish reasons involving children; Cruella kidnaps the puppies to make a fur coat, while Madame Medusa uses Penny to retrieve the Devil's Eye diamond from the Black Hole. Plus, they both drove their similar-looking red cars like maniacs.
 * On a related note, Cruella De Vil was originally meant to return as the villain in this film, but was scrapped 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.