Fairy Tale Media Fix: Red Hot Riding Hood.

 

So, this one has been on the list to cover for a long time. I was just never sure when I'd get another chance to view it. But I got the blu-ray Tex Avery Screwball Classics Vol. 1 and there it was in all its glory.  (Update: Turns out a good chunk of it is right there on YouTube to watch from the official source.  And the whole cartoon is there cut into three parts by an independent user.  Who knew?)

Red Hot Riding Hood is a famous (infamous?) cartoon short produced by MGM and directed by Tex Avery. It was released in 1943 with the movie Dr. Gillespie's Criminal Case.

The cartoon starts with what seems like a standard approach to a “Little Red Riding Hood” adaptation, complete with a treacley-voiced narrator introducing the story. However, this doesn't last long because before the story can even get started, the Wolf objects to telling the same old version of the story and insists they change it up. His protests are joined by protests by Red and Grandma, with Red even claiming “Every cartoon studio in Hollywood has told it this way”.

The characters of "Little Red Riding Hood" airing their grievances.

So, the omniscient narrator changes it up.

Now, the story is set in Hollywood. The wolf is now a well-dressed “Hollywood wolf” (sort of like a pick-up artist). Red is a fully grown and red hot nightclub entertainer. And Grandma is an oversexed man-chaser who lives in a penthouse apartment.

Wolfie making his move on Red.

The wolf takes in one of Red's performances, in which she sings the 1941 song “Daddy". He then hits on her at which she demurs and says she has to go to Grandma's house. The wolf then tries to beat her to Grandma's. But then the tables are turned on him as Grandma starts chasing him. After barely escaping, the wolf swears he's swearing off women only to be driven wild by one of Red's performances again.

And . . . that's it.

Look, it's really hard to give the gist of a Tex Avery cartoon without describing the visual gags. And you really need to see the gags for them to be funny. And they are funny gags. Watch the cartoon for that if not for anything else.

Our title girl Red

If you don't know this cartoon, then you probably at least know things this cartoon influenced. Animators have cribbed gags and elements from this and other Tex Avery shorts for ages. A scene in a nightclub in the 1994 movie The Mask is done in imitation of the scene of the Wolf in the nightclub (he even turns into the Wolf). A chase scene in 1988's Who Framed Roger Rabbit was taken directly from this short. Not to mention how adult Red is the main inspiration for both the literary and movie versions of Jessica Rabbit in all forms of Roger Rabbit media.

It was really popular in its day, too. It was particularly popular with the Army while they were fighting overseas. It also spawned a whole bunch of sequel shorts, the ones most releveant to this blog being Swing Shift Cinderella and Little Rural Riding Hood.

I mean, I can see why maybe this cartoon wouldn't be to someone's taste today. Considering how much sexual politics have changed since 1943. And it wasn't without controversy back then either. Avery claims a number of cuts were made at the behest of Hollywood censors. Supposedly there was a completely different ending that involved the Wolf marrying Grandma in a shotgun wedding. But it was supposedly changed because the Hayes Code was harsh on stuff that made light of marriage or implied bestiality or both.

A shot from the deleted scene.

It is interesting to look at, though, in terms of what has or hasn't changed about attitudes toward the story of “Little Red Riding Hood” in the last 80 years. While 80 years sounds like a long time on a human time scale, it's a fairly small period of time compared to how long the story has existed. So, starting with the characters complaining that everyone has already told this story the “traditional” way and that it's time to change it up feels like a modern complaint but was just as valid a complaint back then. The narrator then reframes the story in a modern setting (a very common method of reimagining fairy tales now in the 21^st Century). And most notable of all, manages to create a sexed up version that comes very close to making the commonly agreed-upon subtext of the tale into text but managing to stop short of the full nastiness of it because . . . y'know . . . Hayes Code.

Honestly, I rather like the cartoon and at this point I'll easily take a “grown-up” version of fairy tales that makes them sexier rather than more violent. Playing up the violence and horror is as tired now as playing the story straight was in 1943. Even if there is still some 80-year-old baggage to unpack from it all.

Usually around this point in the post, I'd be talking about other media that the characters appeared in. But Red Hot Riding Hood doesn't seem like the kind of thing that would find itself parlayed into other media. Except it was. Apparently there was a miniseries of Wolf & Red comic books put out by Dark Horse Comics in 1995. I'm as surprised as you are.

Issue 2 of Wolf & Red

But anyway, that's it for Red Hot Riding Hood! Let's hear it for the little lady! [applause]