The Vultures are minor characters in Disney's 1937 animated feature film, Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs.
Appearances
Snow White and the Seven Dwarves
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 to eat her corpse (off-screen).
Melody Time
The vultures make an appearance in the Pecos Bill segment.
Disney Parks
The vultures appear as audio-animatronics in the dark ride Snow White's Scary Adventures, as well as the Magic Kingdom coaster Seven Dwarfs Mine Train.
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 similar to these two appears in the Night on Bald Mountain sequence of Fantasia which flies away from the gallows it was sitting on, only for ghosts of hanged criminals to fly up to Chernabog.
- 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.
Gallery
v - e - d  | ||||||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
|