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]

Fairy Tale Media Fix: Snow White (2025)

 All that trouble for this movie?

Okay, let's just get straight to the review.  I'll cover "what trouble" further in.

The poster for Snow White (2025)

Disney's 2025 Snow White is a live action remake or reimagining of their 1937 animated film Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs. The story concerns a young princess named Snow White (adult version played by Rachel Zegler), so named because she was born during a blizzard, who was raised to be a kind and just ruler until her mother died and her father remarries a beautiful but wicked queen with magic powers. Her father then supposedly leaves to confront some potential invaders at the southern border and disappears. The Evil Queen (played by Gal Godot), who is never given a name other than “The Evil Queen”, then takes over and makes some unsavory changes. After receiving some negative news from her Magic Mirror, the Queen conspires to have Snow White killed but she runs away into the forest where she meets seven centuries-old dwarfs with magic powers as well as a band of bandits who've been fighting against the Queen.

Snow White with the seven magical Dwarfs

That's basically it. It's a “Snow White as a revolutionary heroine” take, which we've seen a few times before. And overall . . . it's fine. Not a particularly good movie, but not a terrible one either. I didn't feel bored watching it. It's a musical with a couple of songs taken from the original animated film. Notably “Heigh Ho” and “Whistle While You Work”. The famous “Someday My Prince Will Come” is notably absent because there's no Prince in the movie. His role has been shifted to a character with a different fairy tale archetype. There are a whole bunch of new songs added. “Good Things Grow” is the new set-up song from when they're showing Snow White's past. “Waiting on a Wish” is the new 'I Want' song. “Princess Problems” is the song she sings with the new love interest when she meets him. Not to be confused with “A Hand Meets a Hand”, which is the new love duet. The Evil Queen even gets a villain song in the form of “All is Fair”. And they're fun songs in the moment, but if you think the mark of a Disney song is that you still remember it when you leave the theater, then you might be a bit disappointed (I think that's kind of a high bar, personally). Rachel Zegler does a good job and has a wonderful voice. Gal Godot chews the scenery like a champ among Disney villains but her chops as an actual actress are still questionable. They don't pull anything new from the original fairy tale, but I understand why they didn't. Things like repeating storytelling motifs are hard to pull off in movies. The biggest issue in the actual movie is the two sets of supporting characters. It feels like there might have been two different versions of the script at one point, one with Seven Dwarfs and one with Seven Bandits (note: I've read variants of the Snow White story that have gone either direction. And I've seen one movie where the dwarfs were bandits). But in the end, we ended up with a movie with both. Also, the Dwarfs might be “uncanny valley” territory for some, so be warned.

Snow White with the new male lead.

In anything, the biggest problem with Snow White wasn't anything in the actual Snow White movie. It's that for about a year the internet and even sources outside the internet lost their collective minds over this movie. Especially more Conservative sources. They were upset that a Latina actress was cast as Snow White. They were upset because they thought the Dwarfs might be cut from the movie. They got really upset when Rachel Zegler give a poorly worded interview in which she talked about how much more modernized this take on Snow White would be. It was such that The Daily Wire, a right-wing media outlet, even made a competing, traditionalist Snow White movie. And the trouble hasn't even really ended. In more Left-leaning spaces like Bluesky, it feels like Snow White has become an avatar for Hollywood's more callous attitude toward animation, especially as it's opening opposite the 2-D animated Looney Tunes movie The Day the Earth Blew Up. On the internet, this movie not only can't win, it can't even exist and then be forgotten like most “fair-to-middling” movies should.

Look, I've seen my fair share of Snow White adaptations. I've seen ones that are surprisingly faithful but have other regrettable aspects, like the Cannon Films version from 1987. I've seen and read versions that have changed up big things like the setting. Heck, this isn't even the strangest thing that Disney's done with characters from Snow White (anyone remember The 7D?). Like I said, it's another “Snow White as revolutionary heroine” take. One that actually eschews violence, which is nice. It's more fun and less dreary and aggro than Snow White and the Huntsman. It makes more narrative and character sense than the Snow White storyline in Once Upon a Time (the clip doesn't capture how strange that story got). It's about on par with Mirror, Mirror, but it does have some things that movie doesn't, like songs. But overall it's an “okay” movie that deserves to be treated as an “okay” movie. Go see it if you're interested. But I wouldn't fault you for waiting until it's on streaming or just getting it from the library once it's out on physical media.