#3: Judge Claude Frollo

“Enough of this cutesy Disney crap!”

Look into his cold, dead eyes, everyone:  Here you have, hands-down, the most terrifying Disney villain in the long history of its legacy.  His very presence prevents his film’s tone from elevating anywhere above “grim” and contributes to the reason “The Hunchback of Notre Dame” is one of the forgotten, less-respected Disney classics.  (But certainly not bad.  The movie is actually awesome and clever and perceptive…it’s just also joyless and bound to give any child nightmares for months.)

Here’s his ‘thing’ (and you tell me whether this sounds more Disney…or DePalma): When we first meet him, the Judge, Paris’ high-ranking clergyman, kills a helpless young mother (with no remorse) for trivial reasons and then is about to drown her deformed baby by dropping him down a well…but stops when he realizes that maybe the child can serve him one day.  Years later, he psychologically tortures the now-teenage hunchback by making him recite things like “I’m ugly” and “I will scare people away,” and keeps him cloistered in the cathedral to the point where the hunchback begins hallucinating and inventing friends, so desperate for human interaction.

Oh, and this isn’t even the main conflict:  The Judge then finds himself desiring an innocent young woman, and rather than dealing with those forbidden feelings, he elects to kill her (rationalizing that she is the devil manifested to tempt him).

Take a look at the not-at-all-subtle clip below if you don’t believe me (or have blocked it from your mind):

Lest you think he’s strictly one-note, he’s not:  he’s got some dimension to him.

Listen carefully to a passing line he recites within the last few lines:  “God have mercy on me.”  He knows deep down there’s nothing righteous about his quest to destroy her — he knows the fault lies within him.  But he only lets that admission escape his lips for a fleeting moment; then he swallows the guilt and moves on with his vile, evil plot.

Compounding the power of his villainy is our knowledge that people like him really existed at the time — members of the clergy exploiting their position.  There’s really very little exaggerated about him, unlike most other Disney villains.

I dare you to watch this film as an adult and then think it wise to show your kids.