Cruella De Vil's Original Origin Was Crazier Than What Disney's Doing

Disney finally dropped the trailer for Cruella, the newest villain-centric origin story starring Emma Stone as everyone's favorite puppy murderer. If anyone was longing for a version of Joker they could show a six-year-old well, here you go:

While Disney is taking the character to new Hot Topic-y levels of extremeness, embracing a punk rock anarchist vibe (to the annoyance of actual anarchists), whatever we get will no doubt pale in comparison with Cruella's literary backstory. In Dodie Smith's original novel The Hundred and One Dalmatians, we get some weird details about Cruella that never made the movie, like how she was thrown out of school for drinking ink. Which does seem pretty punk rock, actually.

She's also in a loveless marriage with some guy purely because he's a furrier who can hook her up with free coats. Weirder still is the implication that Cruella's "ancestor" was secretly torturing and maybe even murdering locals who also claimed that he had a "tail" -- the idea being that Mr. de Vil was literally The Devil, who disguised himself on Earth with the dumbest possible pseudonym.

Things got so bad that the villagers actually showed up at his gate with torches, and he responded by blasting them with lightning, Palpatine-style.

Cruella's demonic origins are further underscored by the fact that she puts pepper on all of her food and constantly has a fire going because she can't get enough heat. So no matter how many Clash songs they throw on the soundtrack unless Disney's Cruella includes a cameo from Satan himself, it will never be as edgy as a children's book from 1956.

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Top Image: Disney, Dodie Smith/Janet and Anne Grahame Johnstone