C. M. Rosens

Who Is Red Riding Hood?

Hold on to your little red hats, there are a lot of Red Riding Hood films. I don’t usually include all the cartoons, but there seem to be SO MANY that I thought I would, just to show how many there are.

This one seems really popular among filmmakers in the early part of cinematic history and I wonder if it’s because it’s a good one for drama and tension but also has a moral to it that fits with the social mores of the time. “Good Girls don’t talk to Strange Men or Bad Things happen to them” is the easiest moral to draw from the tale, and has been the one emphasised by many storytellers since [at least] Charles Perrault, but as we have seen in the previous post – it’s not the only one.

It’s not just about watching Bad Girls get their comeuppance, though. Méliès did not have a tragic end in his 1901 short film, but instead a victorious ending for Red Riding Hood, who is rescued in the nick of time and then shown at the end in the pose of St Michael Fighting the Dragon, skewering the wolf from her position on a pedestal of enormous galettes and butter pots, surrounded by cooking implements.¹

I guess it appeals for the ‘damsel in distress’ trope in silent films being rescued from the lecherous cad antagonist by the hero, and also has scope for a bit of feisty heroine action, and can be as titillating as censorship allowed, so it’s a very simple winning formula whether animated or live action. You don’t need many cast members, the set is pretty easy to throw up in a pinch, and it’s not a complicated series of scenes to shoot. So all in all, it’s a winner? Since multiple versions came out almost every single bloody year, it would certainly seem so!

Woefully lacking in the cannibalism department here, though. Tragically underrepresented.

What I do think is interesting here is how the retellings start to diverge – while Western Europe and the USA seem to be predominantly hung up on sexual interpretations, Soviet and Eastern European animations for children/families seem to use this tale as a political allegory, either warning about the ideologies that can devour innocents, or turn it into a narrative of cooperation and coexistence, domesticating the wolf and reducing its capacity for harm. I’m including some of the descriptions here because it’s really interesting to see!

This list is not comprehensive, but here it is:

1900-1920

• Le Petit Chaperon Rouge/Red Riding Hood (1901) dir. Georges Méliès
• Little Red Riding Hood (1911) dir. James Kirkwood, George Loane Tucker
• Red Riding Hood of the Hills (1914) dir. Gilbert M. Anderson – Gal from New York City heads to the Wild West on a train, gets out when the train stops for water, and it leaves without her. Shenanigans ensue.
• Little Red Riding Hood (1917) dir. ??? – a shadow play, silhouette acted.
• Little Red Riding Hood (1918) dir. Otis Thayer – live action, where a girl receives a red cape for Christmas and adopts the name ‘Red Riding Hood’, then has a dream that she is the Red Riding Hood of the folktale.

1921-1940

• Little Red Riding Hood (1922) dir. Walt Disney – One of Walt Disney’s first attempts at animation. The wolf is a human cad of a man, and she is rescued by a pilot.
• Little Red Riding Hood (1922) dir. Anson Dyer – animated film
• Big Red Ridinghood (1925) dir. Leo McCarey – a caper about a man who is trying to translate the Swedish version of Red Riding Hood for educational purposes, but can’t afford to buy the book, so shenanigans ensue when the book ends up in a car, and the car is stolen.
• Little Red Riding Hood (1925) dir. ??? – Stop motion version (USA)
• Le Petit Chaperon Rouge/Little Red Riding Hood (1930) dir. Alberto Cavalcanti – the big bad wolf is a lecherous [human] tramp she meets in the woods.
• Red Riding Hood (1931) dir. John Foster, Harry Bailey – Animation. Some “jazz tonic” restores Grandma’s youth. When the Big Bad Wolf pays a visit, he and Grandma decide to marry on the spot; but Little Red Riding Hood finds a way to stop the wedding.
• Dizzy Red Riding Hood (1931) dir. Dave Fleischer – Betty Boop animation. Betty Boop goes to Grandma’s through the woods despite wolf warnings; but Bimbo follows and gives the old story a new twist.
• The Big Bad Wolf (1934) dir. Burt Gillett – Disney’s animation with Red Riding Hood and the Three Little Pigs.
• A Modern Red Riding Hood (1935) dir. Paul Terry, Frank Moser – Terrytoons animated ‘modern’ version.
• Красная шапочка/Little Red Riding Hood (1937) dir. Valentina Brumberg, Zinaida Brumberg – Soviet animation by ‘the grandmothers of Russian animation’, in black and white.

1941-1960

• Red Riding Hood Rides Again (1941) dir. Sid Marcus – Satirical cartoon in which the wolf is prevented from eating Red Riding Hood by receiving his draft induction notice [the US had instituted a draft lottery after Pearl Harbor].
• Red Hot Riding Hood (1943) dir. Tex Avery – Tired of always playing the same roles, Little Red Riding Hood, her Grandmother and the Wolf demand a new version of the tale. The story then plays out in a more contemporary urban environment, with Little Red Riding Hood working as a pin-up girl in a night club.
• The Story of Little Red Riding Hood (1949) dir. Ray Harryhausen – Animation.
• Little Red Riding Hood (1950) dir. George Freedland – live action, part of the ‘World’s Greatest Fairy Tales’ series.
• Crvenkapica/Little Red Riding Hood (1954) dir. Nikola Kostelac – the first colour cartoon and first award-winning cartoon made in Yugoslavia.
• Little Red Riding Hood (1953) dir. Don Patterson – A cartoon ballet that turns out to be, and I shit you not, a Coca Cola advert?!
• Red Riding Hoodwinked (1955) dir. Fritz Frelang – Tweety and Sylvester cartoon. Red Riding Hood is bringing Tweety to Granny as a gift – Sylvester wants to eat Tweety, and the wolf wants to ear Red.
• Red Riding Hoodlum (1957) dir. Paul J. Smith – A Woody Woodpecker cartoon where Granny decides the wolf is a good prospect for matrimony and drags him off to the altar after he’s thoroughly worn out by Woody’s niece and nephew.
• Петя и Красная Шапочка/Petia and Little Red Riding Hood (1958) dir. Boris Stepantsev, Yevgeni Raykovsky – Soviet cartoon. A boy finds his way into the Little Red Riding Hood cartoon in order to save the girl from the Big Bad Wolf.
• Caperucita Roja/Little Red Riding Hood (1959) dir. Roberto Rodríguez – Family fantasy adventure, live action.
• Caperucita y Pulgarcito contra los monstruos/Little Red Riding Hood and Tom Thumb vs the Monsters (1960) dir. Roberto Rodríguez – I think it’s a kind of sequel to the first one, but vs the Witch Queen, a vampire, an ogre, and the wolf.

1961-1980

• Naše Karkulka/Our Little Red Riding Hood (1961) dir. Jiří Brdečka – Czechoslovakian cartoon version of Little Red Riding Hood. Here, Red Riding Hood’s family finds a way to take care of the wolf.
• Little Red Riding Hood (1965) dir. Juan Fresan, Miguel Fresan – Venezuelan short version – available here on YouTube (runtime: 16mins)
• The Dangerous Christmas of Little Red Riding Hood (1965) dir. Sid Smith – Cartoon musical from the wolf’s point of view.
• Little Red Riding Hood (1965) dir. Jack Chambers – Unreleased (?) Canadian version, filmed with marionettes at the Labatt Marionette Theatre, London, Ontario.
• Little Red Riding Hood (1969) dir. Rhoda Leyer – Canadian animated family-friendly cartoon.
• Roodkapje verteld door 160 Nederlanders/Little Red Riding Hood Told by 160 Dutch People (1976) dir. Kees Hin – Residents of the same street in Haarlem, and acquaintances and relatives of Kees Hin, together tell the story of Little Red Riding Hood, each in fifteen words.
• Про Красную Шапочку/About the Little Red Riding Hood (1977) dir. Leonid Nechayev – USSR fantasy live action sequel to the fairy tale.

1981-2000

• Little Red Riding Hood and the Wolf (1981) dir. Cassandra Einstein – the erotic version! Even the milkman gets involved!
• 赤ずきんちゃん/Little Red Riding Hood (1983) dir. Atsutoshi Umezawa – Japanese animation.
• Little Red Riding Hood (1983) dir. Graeme Clifford – fantasy TV movie in which a sheltered but adventurous young woman finds trouble when she encounters a wolf.
• Red Riding Hood (1989) dir. Adam Brooks – fantasy adventure, ninth entry in the Cannon Fairy Tales series.
• Серый волк энд Красная шапочка/The Grey Wolf & Little Red Riding Hood (1990) dir. Garri Bardin – A Soviet claymation short film created by Garri Bardin in 1990 that retells the story of Red Riding Hood while incorporating political metaphors and themes about the USSR’s demise; the wolf representing communism, devouring innocent creatures who have never known him.
• Red Riding Hood (1992) dir. Virginia Wilkos – children’s animation
• The Trial of Red Riding Hood (1992) dir. Eric Till – family fantasy adventure on ice, in which Red Riding Hood is tried for the murder of The Wolf.
• Little Red Riding Hood Saves the Big Bad Wolf (1993) dir. Ted V. Mikels – Short, low budget adaptation of the famed fairytale with a modern ecological twist.
• Little Red Riding Hood (1994) dir. Masaki Naito – dark fantasy-horror zombie fairy tale for adults with puppets.
• Little Red Riding Hood (1995) dir. Toshiyuki Hiruma – children’s animation
• Little Red Riding Hood (1995) dir. Donald Sturrock – Roald Dahl’s version, with fur suits. Watch on YouTube here.
• Little Red Riding Hood (1997) dir. David Kaplin – starring Christina Ricci, a dark comedy version.
• Redux Riding Hood (1997) dir. Steve Moore – Disney short animation. Years after failing to catch Little Red Riding Hood, the obsessed Wolf tries again.
• Le dernier chaperon rouge/The Last Little Red Riding Hood (1998) dir. Jan Kounen – dark musical short film; an old red riding hood, badly injured after killing a monster many years ago, comes up with a sinister plan to dance again by taking young Red’s legs.
• Black XXX-Mas (1999) dir. Pieter Van Hees – 12mins – Little Red in the urban jungle, accosted by Wolfgang, a cannibalistic cop.

2001-2015

• Red Riding Hood Meets Frankenstein (2004) dir. Ricky Lewis Jr. – 12min short live action film. It’s Halloween night in 1947 and foreign exchange student George travels through the fog-filled forest of Transylvania where he meets Red Riding Hood at a remote bus stop. They share tales of the night that brought them there. Tales where they have met Dracula, Frankenstein’s Monster and more of the classic movie monsters.
• Hoodwinked! (2005) dirs. Cory Edwards, Todd Edwards, Tony Leech – comedy animation retelling. Chief Grizzly and Detective Bill Stork investigate a domestic disturbance at Granny’s cottage, involving a karate-kicking Red Riding Hood, a sarcastic wolf and an oafish Woodsman.
• Red Riding Hood (2006) dir. Randall Kleiser – a modern retelling of the tale with a framed narrative of a grandmother babysitting a teen girl who would rather go to the mall. Starring Henry Cavill.
• Big Bad Wolves (2006) dir. Rajneel Singh – Five American mobsters sit in a diner and discuss the sexual politics of the fairytale: “Little Red Riding Hood”.
• 赤ずきんと健康/Little Red Riding Hood and Health (2007) dir. Ryo Inoue – Animation. Graduation Work of Inoue Ryo which won the Toronto Japanese Short Film Festival award in 2011. Little Red Riding Hood is eaten by a wolf and decides to help four fairies that live inside of it cure its disease.
• Straying Little Red Riding Hood (2008) dir. Miyako Nishio – Animation (short, 5mins runtime)
• Rotkäppchen: The Blood of Red Riding Hood (2009) dir. Harry Sparks – horror version, modern setting.
• Crvenkapa/Little Red Riding Hood (2009) dir. Zoran Tairović – A short, 26min Serbian docu-drama that takes the fable of Little Red Riding Hood and turns it into a modern and grotesque fairy tale, the baroque reflection of a dense national history that includes the Roma people; in Romansh, German and Serbian.
• The Red Hood (2009) dir. Danishka Esterhazy – A dark re-telling of the classic fable ‘Little Red Riding Hood’ set in the Canadian prairies during the Great Depression. Short film – 9mins runtime.
• Red (S) (2010) dir. Hyunjoo Song – 3mins short film. This story is about a wolf boy who loves Little Red Riding Hood. One day, the girl goes on a trip to deliver a pie to her grandma.
• Red Riding Hood (2011) dir. Catherine Hardwicke – glossy werewolf fantasy retelling with Amanda Seyfried and Gary Oldman, and Red Riding Hood: The Tale Begins (2011) dir. Ian Kirby – 13min short prequel to the feature film, set in Daggerhorn 20 years before the events of the film.
• Crvenkapica, još jedna/Little Red Riding Hood, Once More (2012) dir. Ana Horvat – 1min short animation, in which a distracted Little Red Riding Hood loses the food basket on the way to Grandma. Having observed this, the Wolf retrieves the basket, delivers it to Grandma and the two have a good laugh about the event.
• Little Red Riding Hood (2015) dir. Rene Perez – fantasy horror version of the tale.
• Little Red Riding Hood & The Big Bad Wolf (2015) – Lyric Theatre production, Ireland. Everyone knows the story of Little Red Riding Hood. But who has ever thought about the real events behind the story? Where Rosie’s dear old Granny lived, for instance, and whether the Big Bad Wolf was really killed by the Woodsman. Certainly not the ramshackle troupe of travelling actors who roll into a town in the middle of nowhere one day to perform their take on the story. Nothing seems to be going right for them, but they have no idea just how bad things are about to get.

2016-2022

• Lon Po Po: A Red-Riding Hood Story from China (2016) dirs. Ed Mironiuk, Kris Tercek – animation combining ancient Chinese panel art techniques with a contemporary palette of watercolors and pastels to tell the story of Lon Po Po, the wolf pretending to be the children’s grandmother (a variant of ‘The Wolf and the Kids‘ folktale).
• Червона шапочка/Little Red Riding Hood (2016) dir. Anatolii Surma – short Ukrainian animated film (5mins runtime).
• Crvenkapica redux/Red Riding Hood Redux (2017) dir. Danijel Žeželj – Croatian short animation in a post-industrial setting.
• O Červené Karkulce/Little Red Riding Hood (2018) dir. Martina Holcová – short 5min animation in which the wolf tries to trick Red, but she deftly grabs the wolf, introduces it to her grandmother, and soon turns it into a pet.
• Rotkäppchen/Little Red Riding Hood (2018) dir. Lynn Oona Baur – an 8min short anti-propaganda dystopian film. Year 2032. Ten-year old Luise and her mother Anna live in Germany, a totalitarian state. When a school theatre play, with Luise involved, turns into a brutal propaganda campaign, Anna recognizes the need to protect her daughter. But it might be too late.
• Red Riding Hood: After Ever After (2022) dir. Tracey Rooney – Fifty years after her legendary brush with the wolf, an adult Red Riding Hood and her granddaughter face a new lupine problem.
• Красная Шапочка/Red Riding Hood (2022) dir. Artyom Aksenenko, Aleksandr Barshak, Lina Arifulina – modern Russian fantasy retelling: Saving her city from the wolves, Little Red Riding Hood will have to solve the mystery of the disappearance of her father Wolfboy, face her fears in the eyes and find her destiny.

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More Retellings/Reimaginings

I find the shifts towards ecological allegory, saving/domesticating/coexisting with the wolf really interesting, especially where they pick up steam from the 1990s on. Equally, I like the films with Red Riding Hood vibes, where she’s the one who turns out to be the wolf – very Angela Carter. Speaking of whom, I have not forgotten her, I’ve put The Company of Wolves (1984) down below, in the list of films that aren’t exactly direct adaptations of the films. I don’t think Ginger Snaps really counts, as not all werewolf films are Little Red Riding Hood. Dog Soldiers 100% is though, and I won’t change my mind. Plus – there are so many! So many possibilities.

Punahilkka (1968) dir. Timo Bergholm – Tells the story of young Anja, a teenage girl living in an approved school (otherwise known as a reform school), and the problems she faces in the outside world after running away.

赤頭巾ちゃん気をつけて/Take Care, Red Riding Hood (1970) dir. Shirō Moritani – Japanese social commentary feature film (live action).

A high-schooler involved in turn-of-the-decade student movements works to escape his comfort zone and apply himself.

Red Riding Hood (1973) dir. Joan Kemp-Welch – A repressed junior librarian, frustrated with looking after her sick father, finds herself drawn into a dangerous relationship with the man who might have murdered her mean-spirited grandmother.

Possibly in Michigan (1983) dir. Cecelia Condit – 12mins short film. A musical horror story about two young women who are stalked through a shopping mall by the cannibal named Arthur. He follows them home, and here the victims become the aggressors.

Watch on YouTube.

The Company of Wolves (1984) dir. Neil Jordan – An adaptation of Angela Carter’s fairy tales. Young Rosaleen dreams of a village in the dark woods, where Granny tells her cautionary tales in which innocent maidens are tempted by wolves who are hairy on the inside. As Rosaleen grows into womanhood, will the wolves come for her too?

Bye Bye, Chaperon Rouge/Bye Bye, Red Riding Hood (1989) dir. Márta Mészáros – Fanny lives in the forest with her meteorologist mother. One day on her way across the forest to visit her grandmother and great grandmother, she has three encounters that will change her life forever: an apparently kind and gentle wolf, a city boy and an ornithologist who bears a striking resemblance to the father who long ago abandoned her and her mother.

Freeway (1996) dir. Matthew Bright – A twisted take on “Little Red Riding Hood”, with a teenage juvenile delinquent on the run from a social worker traveling to her grandmother’s house and being hounded by a charming, but sadistic, serial killer and pedophile.

Freeway II: Confessions of a Trickbaby is a loose Hansel and Gretel inspired movie!

人狼 JIN-ROH/Jin-Roh: The Wolf Brigade (1999) dir. Hiroyuki Okiura – A member of an elite paramilitary counter-terrorism unit becomes traumatized after witnessing the suicide bombing of a young girl and is forced to undergo retraining. However, unbeknownst to him, he becomes a key player in a dispute between rival police divisions, as he finds himself increasingly involved with the sister of the girl he saw die.

Promenons-nous dans les bois/Deep in the Woods (2000) dir. Lionel Delplanque – A group of artists, composed of the young actors Wilfried and Matthieu and the actresses Sophie, Mathilde and the dumb Jeanne, is hired by a millionaire, Axel de Fersen, to present a performance of Little Red Riding Hood in his isolated castle to celebrate the birthday of his grandson. Meanwhile, the police advises that a serial killer is raping and killing young women in the woods around that area. During the night, the group feels trapped and threatened in the castle, guessing who is and where might be the killer.

Dog Soldiers (2002) dir. Neil Marshall – Not every werewolf film is Red Riding Hood, but there’s a wood, wolves, and a cottage in this one, so it counts. Plus, it’s my favourite werewolf film – Howl is also up there, but I can’t claim that as a RRH movie I don’t think. Although it’s strangers on a train in a forest. So… maybe.

A squad of British soldiers on training in the lonesome Scottish wilderness find a wounded Special Forces captain and the remains of his team. As they encounter zoologist Megan, it turns out that werewolves are active in the region. They have to prepare for some action as the there will be a full moon tonight…

Red Riding Hood (2003) dir. Giacomo Cimini – A retelling of the classic tale, with Red as a psychotic teenage vigilante.

Little Erin Merryweather (2003) dir. David Morwick – Local golden boy Peter Bloom investigates grisly murders as the stakes grow higher and the body count mounts. Suddenly, Peter’s search becomes a fight for survival in a fairy tale world full of nightmares. A low-budget Red Riding Hood slasher.

Hard Candy (2005) dir. David Slade – STRANGERS SHOULDN’T TALK TO LITTLE GIRLS.

Hayley’s a smart, charming teenage girl. Jeff’s a handsome, smooth fashion photographer. An Internet chat, a coffee shop meet-up, an impromptu fashion shoot back at Jeff’s place. Jeff thinks it’s his lucky night. He’s in for a surprise.

A Wicked Tale (2005) dir. Tzang Merwyn Tong – A Wicked Tale is a 45min thriller based on the story of the Little Red Riding Hood, a tale about manipulation, seduction and innocence lost.

Kdopak by se vlka bál/Who’s Afraid of the Wolf (2008) dir. Maria Procházková – A 6 year-old girl is transfixed by the Little Red Riding Hood story, which her mother dutifully recounts every night. The tale’s themes of identity confusion and betrayal mirror her own story – who her real mother is and a potential love triangle implicating both her parents.

Molina’s Ferozz/Ferozz: The Wild Red Riding Hood (2010) dir. Jorge Molina – Cuban film, Spanish language.

A young, attractive widow is protected from her vicious mother-in-law, by a male relative who practices Satanism, and lusts after the old woman’s sexy adolescent granddaughter.

Red: Werewolf Hunter (2010) dir. Sheldon Wilson – The modern-day descendant of Little Red Riding Hood brings her fiancé home to meet her family and reveal their occupation as werewolf hunters, but after he is bitten by a werewolf, she must protect him from her own family.

本当はエロいグリム童話 レッド・スウォード/Red Sword (2012) dir. Naoyuki Tomomatsu – Sexy sword-fighter Beniko battles a pack of lecherous wolf-men in this “pinku eiga” version of the Little Red Riding Hood fairy tale.

Rauða Hettan/Trials of the Red Hood (2013) dir. Sam Mardon – Based on the Gothic fairytale of Red Riding Hood and Norse mythology, ‘Trials of the Red Hood’ is an Icelandic language, (English subbed), Science Fiction short that follows a young woman on her journey and through her trials to find a way to save her home planet from the Second Ragnarok.

Rotkäppchen: eine Erzählung von Blut und Tod/Little Red Riding Hood: A Tale of Blood and Death (2013) dirs. Martin Czaja, Florian von Bornstädt – When Markus finds a filthy girl in front of his house and takes her into his flat, his wife Annika quickly realizes something must be wrong with her. She does not feel comfortable with the idea of having her in the flat for the night and is proved right. The girl knows details about the couple she could not and should not know and starts an unnatural mind game, which goes far beyond rationality and must come to a bloody conclusion.

A Girl Walks Home Alone At Night (2014) dir. Ana Lily Amirpour – this was suggested as a Red Riding Hood is the Wolf type story, and I see it, so I’ve included it here.

In the Iranian ghost-town Bad City, a place that reeks of death and loneliness, the townspeople are unaware they are being stalked by a lonesome vampire.

Into The Woods (2014) dir. Rob Marshall – Based on the musical.

In a woods filled with magic and fairy tale characters, a baker and his wife set out to end the curse put on them by their neighbor, a spiteful witch.

곡성/The Wailing (2016) dir. Na Hong-jin – This is another suggestion for something preying on children, I’m not sure this fits so well, but I’m including it as a suggestion!

A stranger arrives in a little village and soon after a mysterious sickness starts spreading. A policeman is drawn into the incident and is forced to solve the mystery in order to save his daughter.

Little Dead Rotting Hood (2016) dir. Jared Cohn – The residents of a small town discover that something more sinister than killer wolves is lurking in the backwoods: first the wolves start turning up dead…then people.

Roh/Soul (2019) dir. Emir Ezwan – I wasn’t sure about The Wailing, but it made me think of Roh, which I really enjoyed and definitely has the child in the jungle going on, and the hunter/woodcutter character arriving to (maybe) save the day. Malaysian folk horror, slowburn, I thought really worth it.

Cut off from civilisation, a single mother puts her children on high alert when they bring home a young girl caked in clay. She tells of spirits and spirit hunters, but these are not mere superstitions. As more strangers show up on her doorstep, she quickly finds another reason to fear the forest.

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Next Time: POLL CLOSED

I’ll be doing these 3 tales in the poll below and then stopping for a while, so choose which of the following three you fancy next.

Catch up on the whole series of fairy tale posts here.