Tim Curry Voiced An Underrated Disney Villain In Beauty In The Beast II

In her tribute to her former Annie co-star Tim Curry, screen legend Carol Burnett remarked that “nobody could play lovable villains better than he could”.

And let’s face it, she’s certainly got a point.

The British actor – who died on Tuesday night at the age of 80 – was known for playing plenty of iconic baddies, dating right back to his film debut in the 1970s, starring as Frank-N-Further in the cult musical The Rocky Horror Picture Show.

From there, his villainous roles included the dastardly pirate Long John Silver in Muppet Treasure Island, the nightmarish Pennywise in the TV adaptation of It and, as mentioned, Miss Hannigan’s no-good brother Rooster in Annie.

But there’s one evil performance of the Emmy winner’s that we think is often overlooked, as he also lent his voice to one of Disney’s most underrated villains ever.

In 1997, Tim joined the cast of Beauty And The Beast: The Enchanted Christmas as its central villain, Maestro.

Now, we know what you’re thinking. Straight-to-video Disney sequels were rarely the stuff of cinematic greatness, and this Beauty And The Beast follow-up is probably no exception (not that we let that stop us from streaming it every single December, of course).

However, true to form, Tim’s voice performance as Maestro is as stellar as you’d expect, flipping from comedic sarcasm to unsettling fury with remarkable ease.

A Beauty And The Beast “midquel”, The Enchanted Christmas takes place during the events of the first film, around the festive season.

Tim’s character, Maestro, is a domineering pipe organ intent on keeping the Beast as miserable as possible, who tries to stop him falling in love with Belle so as not to break the spell that the enchanted castle is under.

While he’s overall a pretty shady and sinister fella (not helped by the nightmare fuel that is his early CGI appearance), he does get to deliver some brilliant one-liners, our favourite being: “Heavens, look, I’m bolted to the wall!”

Fittingly, the three-time Tony nominee also got the chance to perform his own villainous musical number with Don’t Fall In Love.

“I think writers have a lot more fun writing villains,” Tim once said while discussing his work in the Disney movie. “They’re just, on the whole, very much better written, and therefore a great deal more fun to play. You get to be the bad guy!”

He admitted: “My father was a minister, so I grew up in Methodist churches all over. So, I’m actually very fond of the sound of organ music. I just sort of tried to approximate that huge breathy sound [with my performance].”

“They said, ‘you could take it a bit further if you’d like to’, and I said, ‘that’s not a direction I hear very often’,” he added with a laugh.

As well as the returning voice cast from the original, Beauty And The Beast: The Enchanted Christmas introduces new characters voiced by stage legend Bernadette Peters and Paul Reubens, while Haley Joel Osment took over as the voice of Chip.

So, if you’re planning on revisiting Home Alone 2 this Christmas in tribute to Tim Curry, why not revisit this, too, and make it a double feature…?