When looking at their vast catalog of musicals, most Disney villain songs are usually fun songs that give you an idea what the villain’s ambitions are, with the villains themselves never usually being very complicated. But what if a Disney song was able to portray the inner turmoil of a villain as they struggle to figure out their own desires, covering subject matter much more mature than the average Disney film? I present to you Hellfire.

The film itself, the Hunchback of Notre Dame (1996), although underrated, is not without its flaws and it is not as good as many of the other 90’s Disney films created during the Disney Renaissance. However, its villain Claude Frollo is the film’s strongest asset, and to understand why his song is so important, you must understand his character.

At the end of the first act of The Hunchback of Notre Dame (1996), the peak of Disney musical villainy takes place. As the rest of France sleeps, Claude Frollo watches the night sky, singing a prayer as he searches for an answer to calm his restless soul. His prayer will begin as an innocent plea for guidance, but as as his emotions rage, on, his original plea is mangled into a demented demand, sealing his own mortal fate.

 Although this song is meant to be a plea to the heavens, the title of the song is Hellfire, and it is, without a doubt, Disney’s most complex, dramatic, and overall greatest villain song to ever be put to screen, but what is it about this song that makes it so special?

Frollo sees himself as a righteous and holy man, and as one of the most powerful men in France with an army at his disposal. He also believes himself to be second to only God Himself, giving him a vast superiority complex. Frollo believes all others to be sinners and impure, and there is no group of people he believes to be more impure than the Romani. With this in mind, we can begin to understand his actions throughout the film.

Within the first several minutes of the movie, Frollo already proves himself to be one of the most evil villains ever produced by Disney. As a group of Romani people enter Paris, they are quickly surrounded by soldiers led by Frollo himself to arrest them. One of the Romani, a woman with her baby, runs away from the soldiers and Frollo, being chased by Frollo on horseback. The woman makes it to the steps of the Notre Dame cathedral, where she bangs on the closed doors, screaming for sanctuary. 

However, Frollo catches up to her before she can get inside and is killed by Frollo on the Cathedral’s steps. Frollo snatches the baby from the woman’s lifeless corpse and unwraps the swaddling blanket from around its face to gaze upon its face only to discover that the baby is hideously deformed. Believing it to be a demon, Frollo immediately attempts to drown the baby, but is stopped by the archdeacon of Notre Dame, who convinces him that what he is doing is a sin. Frollo agrees not to kill the child, and, under the orders of the Archdeacon, is told to raise the child. Frollo agrees, but decides to hide the child away in the belltower of Notre Dame, shielding him away from the outside world.

Frollo names the child Quasimodo and raises him to believe that his deformity is a sin and that the world will hate him if he ever dares to go outside, but on the day of a city festival, Quasimodo escapes and joins the crowd while hiding his face, where both he and Frollo, who doesn’t know Quasimodo escaped, watch the performance of a Romani woman named Esmerelda as she performs a provocative dance, which anger’s the devout Catholic Frollo. After her performance, Quasimodo is discovered and is tied up for the amusement of the crowd, but Esmeralda, taking pity on the poor man, tries to free him. Frollo orders her not to, but in an act of defiance, she disobeys and frees him anyway.

Furious, Frollo demands her arrest, but she claims sanctuary in the Notre Dame cathedral, much like quasimodo’s mother tried to so many years prior. Frollo, unable to arrest her within the cathedral, posts guards around each exit. Unbeknownst to Frollo, Quasimodo helps Esmerelda escape that night. Immediately following her escape, Quasimodo sings a song about his love for her in a song called Heaven’s Light, where he compares her to an angelic being that he feels he doesn’t deserve. The song is lighthearted and whimsical, but after it ends, the transition to Frollo’s song, Hellfire, begins.