Scary Disney: Snow White: The Evil Queen

Once upon a time a sweet innocent, naive, young girl lived with her vain, wicked, self-centred, jealous step-mother. And jealous of Snow White she was. The Queen was cruel enough to want her own child killed just because a talking mirror told her she wasn’t the fairest in all the land. So she sends her Huntsman into the forest with Snow White and orders for him to kill her and bring back her heart in a box. But, the Huntsman doesn’t have the heart to do it, he tells Snow White the Queen is out to get her and she should run away. Deep in the forest she finds a cottage, a dwarfs cottage, she cooks and cleans for the dwarfs but the Queen finds her, turns into an old peddler woman, poisons her with an apple, runs away from the dwarfs but plunges to her death after falling off a rock. A prince finds her in the forest and wakes her with true loves kiss, they live happily ever after. Though they do live happily ever after, a few scenes from the movie do enough to give you nightmares.

1 – The Queens Entrance

2 – Snow White in the Forest

3 – The Queens Transformation

1. The Queens Entrance

At the start of the movie the Queen is seen approaching her magic mirror. The chilling, eerie music sets the tone of the movie making the audience feeling nervous and scared of what character we meet first. When she speaks she seems to have an intimidating and patronising tone to her voice. With a gust of wind, a crack of lightening and thundering noise the slave in the mirror appears. He speaks in a low, monotone voice and comes across as uncaring. For a beginning scene this may be a little over dramatic for young viewers, but certainly gets its message across that the Queen is a selfish, cruel and scary woman.

2. Snow White in the Forest

After the Queen finds that Snow White is the fairest in the land she orders her Huntsman to take Snow White into the forest and kill her and to bring her heart back in a box for proof. The Huntsman can’t bring himself to do it and tells her to runaway and takes a pigs heart back instead leaving the Queen furious. The scene turns dark quickly when Snow White enters the forest. The music turns fast paced, dramatic and leaves the audience feeling nervous for Snow White. The trees grow hands and grab at her feet, they also grow faces with gaping mouths and yellow eyes making the audience think trees will be the death of Snow White. This scene certainly draws in the top ten for traumatising young children. Snow White finally drops down crying into her arms then moments later we find that the yellow eyes all belong to cute, innocent forest animals. Walt certainly wanted to enter a horror element in his movies.

3. The Queens Transformation

The Queen learns that Snow White lives in the Dwarfs cottage in the forest so turns herself into an old peddler woman. She creates herself a potion and things turn nasty quickly. The music turns quick, eccentric and psycho like making the Queen look mad. The image of her youngself turning grey isn’t a great sight to see, then the camera zooms into the old hag she turns into, even the crow finds the sight of her repulsive.Not a film you would want to watch before going to bed. Brad Bird an animator and director said during a Q&A session about Walt Disney’s work said “In fact [after about a month] they had to re-upholster the seats in a very large movie palace in New York because little kids were peeing on the seats when the witch came on in Snow White.” That pretty much sums up the Queen as a character. One of the scariest villains Walt Disney has created.

The End

After Snow White bites into the apple she falls into a deathlike slumber, she proclaims she is the fairest in all the land and the dwarfs run after her. She runs up into a cliff, lightening strikes and she plummets to her death to the audience’s delight. The Prince wakes Snow White and they live happily ever after. The end.