Cliff Vandercave is a one-time character and the main antagonist of the 1994 film, The Flintstones, based on the original series of the same name.
Background[]
Vandercave is a corrupt executive vice president of Slate & Co. in Bedrock and he is assisted by a seductive secretary named Sharon Stone.
Personality[]
Cliff Vandercave is best described as sinister, villainous, deceptive, tricky, treacherous, corrupt, conceited, sly, stingy, and very conniving. He’s ready to do anything to get what he wants with deception or trickery, or even murder. He constantly is one step ahead of Fred, going so far as blackmailing him into terminating Barney and even tricks Fred into firing all the other workers and framing him for embezzlement, even mocking Fred for falling into his scheme. Cliff also has no genuine loyalty to anyone but himself, as he even plans on double-crossing his devoted secretary Sharon Stone by taking the money for himself.
When his scheme is exposed, Cliff snaps and resorts to kidnapping Pebbles and Bamm Bamm and tying them to a giant mining machine, even turning it on when Fred surrenders the Dictabird to him without any hesitation and attempts to shoot Fred in cold blood later on. But when Cliff gets in a jam he can't weasel out of, he resorts to fearful running, only for Fred to easily subdue him with one hit. All and all, Cliff's overconfidence in his lies and treachery eventually leads directly to his downfall.
Physical Appearance[]
Cliff is a tall and slender caveman with fair skin, black eyebrows, brown eyes, black hair and he wears various business loin-cloth jackets with a torn hemline, a colorful tie and a matching pocket handkerchief.
Biography[]
Cliff was presumably hired by Mr. Slate some years after Fred and Barney. It is revealed that he cheated on his resume and became one of the heads of the company dishonestly. Along with Miss Stone, they decided to embezzle a fortune from the company through phony constructing machinery and fly to a beach resort called Rockapulco. All they needed was a "stooge" to put their plan into effect.
Cliff was the head of the company Fred and Barney work for, and he proposed that he would make one worker his vice-president, if the worker won the exam, he gave them. The workers took the exam, and Barney did exceptionally well, but feeling he ought to help his friend Fred who had failed, Barney switched the tests by putting the answer slabs in the opposite envelopes. When Sharon came in later with the test results, Cliff was shocked that Fred could win because he perceived Fred as dense and witless. But Sharon assured him that Fred would be perfect, so in the end Fred was hired. Sharon then became Fred's personal secretary to help seduce Fred to do Cliff's bidding including signing forged company documents.
To make sure Fred would do exactly what he said, he gave him his first task of firing Barney, mainly because he got the lowest on the test. Fred at first was reluctant to obey as Barney was his best friend, but Cliff replied if Fred didn't fire him, he himself would fire both him and Barney, so in the end Fred had no choice. Later during a meeting, Cliff announced that he would be making new modular housing units for the town using new age machinery that would also increase their profit margin fourfold. But Fred mistook the tiny houses on Cliff's model of the machine for the real thing and said if he built houses this small, who would live in them.
After learning from Sharon about Fred's suspicions about the new service Cliff was planning for the company, he decided to distract him with a huge bonus and told him that if he wanted to be a top executive that he had to start living like one, which Fred did. Eventually, Cliff tricked Fred into firing all the workers in the quarry which caused a falling out with Barney, his other friends and his wife Wilma.
The next morning, Fred was met with an angry crowd of employees and headed straight to the file room where he found the real documents and discovered Cliff's true nature and intentions and confronted him on it. Cliff told Fred that he had given him all the credit since it was his name on the forms including spending so much money on luxuries and marked Fred as an embezzler.
Fred was now a fugitive on the run who hid out at a hotel. A news broadcast was shown of Fred (or rather, an actor doing a terrible impression of him) embezzling, Wilma who was viewing this remembers the Dictabird in Fred's office and with Betty sets off to Slate & Co. to clear her husband's name. Fred, who is now in a disguise, finds refuge in a cave and chats with one of the employees who was fired, but he accidentally gives himself away and a huge mob chases him down the road.
Meanwhile, Wilma and Betty snuck into the office building and stole the Dictabird. However, Cliff saw both of them leave with the Dictabird from his office window, and realized that now that they had the bird, it would spoil everything and decided to go into another devious scheme.
The angry mob soon cornered Fred and attempted to hang him and Barney after he admits that it was because of him that Fred was promoted to the job, but before the two could be hanged, Wilma, Betty and the Dictabird arrived, and the bird forced Fred to say sorry. Then the mob realized that Cliff was the one who dismissed them, and they let Fred and Barney go.
With his embezzlement scheme exposed, an enraged Cliff then broke into Fred's house and kidnapped Pebbles and Bamm-Bamm, demanding the Dictabird in exchange for their safe return. Fred and Barney confronted Cliff at the quarry, where he had tied Pebbles and Bamm-Bamm to a huge housing construction machine. Though they handed him the Dictabird, Cliff went back on his word and activated the machine anyway. Barney headed to rescue the children while Fred destroyed the machine.
Cliff confronted Fred and attempted to shoot at him but was knocked out by Sharon, after finding out that Cliff had betrayed her by getting only one ticket to Rockapulco. Cliff tried to run away from Fred, but he picked up a large round boulder and rolled it at him, knocking him to the ground like a bowling pin. But as he tried to escape the cops, a huge amount of molten cement came spilling down over the ledge and buried him alive, turning him into a solid statue. When Mr. Slate saw the cement-covered Cliff, he exclaimed that he loved it, deciding to name it "concrete" after his daughter, Concretia, and declared the Stone Age over with its creation. Slate offered Fred the presidency of a new division in the company, but Fred turned it down in exchange for his old job back, Slate rehiring all the workers, and adding a few other improvements to the workplace he had originally desired as an executive.
Appearances[]
- The Flintstones (only appearance)
Notes/Trivia[]
- He was portrayed by Kyle MacLachlan, who also played Isaac Izzard in the 2018 film adaptation of The House with a Clock in Its Walls and voiced Donald Love in Grand Theft Auto III.
- It was unknown if Cliff was still alive while being encased in concrete or if he suffocated since it covered his entire body with no visible holes.