If she doesn't scare you, no evil thing will...!
Considering the whole conflict of the movie is a twisted hag who wants to kill a bunch of dalmatian puppies to make coats out of their hides, you can be certain it has Nightmare Fuel aplenty.- Cruella De Vil, period. What else can one expect from someone with the words cruel and devil in her name. She's a walking representation of animal abuse and vanity whose prime focus is to make fashion wear out of animals and is gunning for the puppies of her old school friend. She only gets worse throughout the film as she literally goes insane trying to get the puppies and sports a prolific Nightmare Face during the pursuit (pictured above) with the climax being her ramming the back of the delivery truck. Take a look at Pongo and Perdita's faces in that split-second before Cruella hits the truck; that's not fear, that's terror.
- Another thing that should be noted is that Cruella is very unique compared to the other Disney villains as much like Lady Tremaine and Frollo, she is realistic. People like her exist in real life. For example, the chances of you coming across an evil queen, a sorcerer, a sea witch or a pirate are slim-to-none. And no one has good publicity like Gaston. But are there Ax-Crazy animal abusers out there who take delight in seeing poor little animals getting killed? You bet your biscuits!
- Even before her Sanity Slippage, or revealing her true intentions, Cruella is a Faux Affably Evil wretch of a woman. First, there's her slimy and offputting personality, then there's her emaciated and corpse-like appearance. Really, it's like she drapes herself in animal fur, because it's the closest thing to human warmth as she can get! She's as close to a lich as you can get without magic...
- During her first scene, Cruella tells Anita to tell her when the puppies arrive before leaving with a chipper "Cheerio! Cheerio, darling!" You think nothing else of it...until the scene were Perdita has her puppies. Count on quite the Jump Scare as the thunder crashes and the lightning strikes and suddenly, you see Cruella standing in the open doorway. Unless Anita had called her while Perdita was in labor (which is pretty unlikely, seeing as Lucky had trouble and needed to be revived) or she just happened to be in the neighborhood (which, again, seems unlike Cruella)...it sinks in for you that she had been watching the house the entire time, waiting for the puppies to be born...
- The many examples of parental worries in the film alone:
- Perdita's reaction that The Dreaded Cruella has arrived to their residence for a visit. Then she immediately runs off to hide:
Perdita: Oh Pongo! It's her! It's that devil woman!- Perdita's reaction to hearing that Cruella wants her puppies. She tearfully tells Pongo that she was so happy before, but now wishes they weren't having any.
- Lucky is born unconscious and initially thought to be stillborn; only Roger's persistence at CPR: Clean, Pretty, Reliable saves him.
- How Horace and Jasper break into the flat; after putting on a Bavarian Fire Drill that fails, they simply charge their way in, having Jasper distract Nanny by locking her up in a room while Horace collects the puppies. After they leave and Nanny finds the puppies gone, she runs into the streets calling for help and crying.
- The kidnapping of the puppies is very much presented as if it was Roger's and Anita's children who were taken as well as Pongo and Perdita's.
- The idea of having your children (or pets) kidnapped is bad enough, but imagine them being kidnapped by an insane Serial Killer who wants to wear their skin. The realization that the puppies are found at the De Vil place suddenly jumps the scale of Pongo and Perdita's rescue of the puppies.
- Pongo and Perdita jumping and swimming through frigid cold river water trying to get to their puppies. They're freezing but they're not giving up. Perdita jumps in after Pongo and she begins swimming but the scene cuts to back before the audience can see her and Pongo make it to the other side.
- Pongo and Perdita trudging through the snow completely lost while the children are slowly freezing to death and all they can do is keep going. If the collie hadn't arrived when he did, they'd have lost at least a few puppies.
- The climax has a big one; imagine you're in a truck as a stowaway, with your kids, and the woman trying to kill them keeps ramming the truck to knock it off the road. There are no seatbelts or restraints, so everyone is in danger of injuries from the jostling. All Pongo and Perdita can do is keep their puppies from falling out over the cliffside and hope for a miracle. Or, in this case, a Badun who has no sense of driving.
- You got to feel bad for the driver of the truck. Just minding his own business, making a delivery to London, when all of a sudden, he's attacked by a "crazy woman driver" trying to run him off the road for reasons he can only guess at.
- When the Great Dane arrives at the park and leads Pongo and Perdita on where to go to locate their puppies:
Great Dane: When you reach Withermarsh, contact old Towser. He'll direct you to the Colonel and the Colonel will take you to your puppies at the… De Vil place.
Perdita: (shocked, frightened) De Vil?!
Pongo: (also shocked) Th-the De Vil place?
Perdita: Oh, Pongo, it was her!
Great Dane: Oh, someone you know?
Pongo: Sorry, sir! There's no time to explain! (he and Perdita start running)
Perdita: (running) Oh I hope we're not too late!- And the dark tunnel leading out of town to the countryside followed by the Great Dane giving Pongo and Perdita advice as they run off. The echos of his voice, the dark tunnel illuminated by street lights in the heavy fog don't help:
Great Dane: Good luck Pongo! (Echos) If you lose your way, contact the barking chain! (Echos) They'll be standing by! (Echos)- If it wasn't established enough that Cruella, Jasper and Horace were bad people who were very cruel with handling animals, this Wham Line delivered when Cruella arrives at Hell Hall to speak with Jasper and Horace about the puppies really seals the deal:
Cruella: Do you understand?! Tonight!
Horace: But they ain't big enough.
Jasper: You couldn't get half a dozen coats out of the whole caboodle.
Tibbs: (listening, appalled) Coats?! Dog-skin coats?!- The many ways Cruella suggests the puppies be put down is unsettling from drowning to poisoning using Ether. She eventually settles for her goons beating them to death and skinning the bodies. Tibs and the poor puppies are frightened when they hear this.
Cruella: Then we'll settle for half a dozen! We can't wait! The police are everywhere! I want the job done tonight!
Horace: How are we going to do it?
Cruella: Anyway you'd like to, poison them, drown them, bash them in the head! You got any chloroform?! I don't care how you kill the little beasts but DO IT! AND DO IT NOW!!- To get Jasper's attention, Cruella yanks what appears to be a wine bottle out of his hands while he's drinking it and flings it backhand into the fireplace, where it shatters and then explodes with a loud bang, frightening both Horace and Jasper and the puppies.
- The shot of Hell Hall darkening with the moon disappearing behind the clouds when Sgt. Tibbs and Colonel go to investigate is quite creepy. The Colonel even warns Tibbs to be careful going in there.Colonel: They say the old place is haunted or bewitched or some such fiddle-faddle.
Tibbs: (uneasy) Fiddle-faddle and rot, sir.
Colonel: (as Hell Hall darkens) Just the same, Sergeant, use extreme caution. No telling what sort of hocus pocus you might run into. - When Pongo and Perdita arrive, they and Colonel immediately rush to the inside of Hell Hall. When we cut back to the inside of the manor, a Scare Chord is heard and the whole room is a lit bright red illuminated from the fireplace as Sergeant Tibbs and the puppies are all helplessly huddled together against a wall as Horace and Jasper are all but ready to kill them. Luckily Pongo and Perdita burst through a window to save their puppies.
- This shows that despite being somewhat the typical bumbling villainous henchmen the twos are indeed evil and cruel when they want to.
Jasper (chuckling sinisterly): Now we got' em Horace, they've run out of room. - A few brief close-up shots of Pongo and Perdita's faces as they face off against Horace and Jasper as the vicious protective Mama Bear and Papa Wolf they are.
- Upon reuniting with their puppies at the barn, Pongo and Perdita learn why would Cruella want over 99 dalmatian puppies:Perdita: What on earth would she want with so many?
Unnamed Female Dalmatian Puppy: (frightened) She's going to make coats out of us!
Perdita: (horrified) She couldn't!
Sergeant Tibbs: (to Colonel) That's right Sir! Dog skin coats!
Patch: (frightened) Horace and Jasper were going to pop us off a-a-and skin us!
Perdita: She's a devil! A witch! Oh what do we do? - In a way, there's the climax of the movie leading up to the infamous chase scene. In order to get past Cruella and her goons to reach the van that will take them back to London, the dalmatians all disguise themselves as Labradors. The whole sequence is full of building tension as the dalmatians try to sneak towards the van in a Race Against the Clock before it leaves while hoping Cruella and the others won't see through their disguises, while at the same time said villains are getting dangerously close to finding where they're hiding, culminating in Pongo and the remaining puppies walking past Cruella as she watches them while melting snow is dripping on them and threatening to wash away the soot. Naturally, when Lucky gets buried in snow, removing his disguise and exposing the dogs, all hell breaks loose.
