Throw us a bone, Disney: Cruella needs this version of “Who Let The Dogs Out”

This post contains spoilers for Cruella.

There are some things you expect when you walk into Disney’s Cruella, the relitigation of the life and times of the Magic Kingdom’s most infamous puppy killer. For one thing, you expect to see Cruella de Vil because, without her, there is no movie. Another thing: you know some dogs are going to kill her mother. That’s a part of the canon that everyone needs and wants to see. It’s like the Clone Wars in Star Wars. From the jump, we all know that some dalmatians will wreck the elder Ms. de Vil. Finally, you expect that a minor-key version of the Baha Men’s 2000 hit “Who Let The Dogs Out” will play over said mommy murder. If that song hadn’t already appeared in Rugrats In Paris, you’d swear the Men wrote it for Cruella.

We’re not the only ones who think this.

Over the long weekend, voiceover actor Phillip Reich, disappointed by Cruella’s lack of songs about who liberated these canines, tweeted through his frustration. “The fact that the Cruella movie doesn’t have a sad cover version of “Who Let The Dogs Out” in a minor key for its trailer or for that opening death scene is just a huge missed opportunity,” Reich wrote. Here’s the thing: He’s right. This was a huge opportunity. Thankfully it’s an opportunity that Reich was fully prepared to correct.

Paired with Matt Mulholland’s haunting rendition of “Who Let The Dogs Out?,” the scene in which a pack of hungry dalmatians pushes Cruella’s mother off a cliff into the storming seas below garners a mysterious quality. Finally, the film asks the question we’ve been pondering since Disney announced Cruella: Who let the dogs out?

Hopefully, now that Disney is in the business of editing butts out of Splash, maybe they can add this song to Cruella for the digital version. They can even label it, “The version that was too hot for theaters.” That always makes a new edit better.