The Vultures are minor characters in Disney's 1937 animated feature film, Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs.
Contents
Appearances
Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs
The vultures are first seen watching the Queen, disguised as an old crone, cackling to herself as she makes her way to the cottage of the Seven Dwarfs. They appear to sense an imminent death, and smiling to each other, quietly follow her. At the cottage, they watch the events from a tree; the animals of the forest notice this and, realizing that Snow White is in danger, try to chase away the Queen; however, Snow White, seeing no danger in her, lets her in the house. The animals fetch the Seven Dwarfs while the Queen succeeds in persuading Snow White to eat the Poisoned Apple. When they arrive to see the Queen leaving their cottage, they pursue her. The vultures hover above her, and, when she reaches the cliff, they land on a branch above her. After she has fallen to her death by the lightning striking the cliff ledge where she is standing while trying to crush the dwarfs with a boulder and saving them from that fate, they fly down. The vultures are last seen swooping down towards where Grimhilde fell to devour the lifeless remains of her (off-screen).
Melody Time
Vultures identical to the Snow White pair make an appearance in the Pecos Bill segment, in the classic role of vultures circling lone travelers in arid American deserts, waiting for them to meet their doom and provide a meal for the birds.
The Mouse Factory
The Vultures appear (via color-tinted archival footage from the 1937 film) in the fourth episode of the first season, Spooks and Magic. They are shown to be the pet birds of "Diller's Midnight Manor", a retirement home for "witches, ghosts, goblins and other death-of-the-party types" opened up by live hosts Phyllis Diller. Diller quips that while the Security Patrol (made up from the enchanted suits of armor from the climax of Bedknobs and Broomsticks) keeps an eye on the ground, the vultures keep an eye on the Security Patrol.
Disney Parks
Snow White's Scary Adventures
The vultures appear as audio-animatronics in the dark ride Snow White's Scary Adventures. They loom overtop of guests (representing Snow White) as they are pursued in the woods by the Evil Queen.
Seven Dwarfs Mine Train
The vultures appear in the Magic Kingdom roller-coaster Seven Dwarfs Mine Train. The figures found in this ride were recycled from the Vultures in Walt Disney World's defunct Snow White's Scary Adventures.
Trivia
- The sequence in which the vultures watch the Queen fall to her death, then fly down to her body, impressed Sylvia Moberly-Holland enough to inspire her to apply as an "Inspirational Sketch Artist" at the Disney studio.
- In Who Framed Roger Rabbit, Judge Doom was going to have a pet vulture named Voltaire (named after one of the French Enlightenment philosophers and a founding father of the ideas behind the French Revolution). Its design was going to be based on one of these two. It ended up being deleted from the final film due to the interest of finishing the latter on schedule. However, it still appears in the original Judge Doom action figure.
- A vulture has a skeleton neck in the Night on Bald Mountain sequence of Fantasia which follows the ghosts, octopuses, more vultures, and hanged criminals to fly up to Chernabog.
- The Vultures appeared again in Fantasia 2000, when they flew away with their bald eagle cousins when the animals march in the ark in the updated 2020 Pomp and Circumstance.
- Although the ending of the film implies that the vultures were going to feast on the Queen's corpse, her reappearances in comic adaptations taking place after that of the first film show this ultimately wasn't the case due to her survival.
- The appearance of the vultures in Seven Dwarfs Mine Train, looming over the heads of guests on a lift-hill in reminiscent of the Boothill Boys as seen in the (extinct) attraction Splash Mountain.
- The Vultures serve as a reflection for the Evil Queen as like her, they are only focused on only one thing (food for them as she's focused on being the fairest in the land) and they each show they couldn't care less over who dies to get what they want (they don't care if either Snow White or the Queen dies as long as they get to eat the dead body and the Queen doesn't care who she has to hurt to see that her endeavors succeed).
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