The Story of Little Red Riding Hood

I first encountered these semi-campy, semi-terrifying stop-motion fairy tale films from Ray Harryhausen on a VHS tape collecting hundreds of public domain cartoons. Sandwiched in-between Fleischer cartoons, Little Audrey, Felix the Cat, and Mighty Mouse, these things stuck out not only for their jerky animations but for their joyous expressions of terror and violence.

Granted, “The Story of Little Red Riding Hood” does tame much of the sex, violence, and gore of the original tale. The wolf doesn’t get cut open here only to have his stomach filled with rocks and sewn back together. Nope, he’s merely shot, but makes a quick escape. It’s possible he dies off-screen, but it’s slightly opaque, much like the sexual violence he commits to Red, which is noticeably absent here.

Yet it’s the wolf that’s the most fascinating piece. Harryhausen’s animation of people is rubbery and circumspect; none of them exhibiting much personality here, but his monster is glorious. The wolf looks like what would happen if a Smilodon and a brown mutt performed cross-species mating. His large canine teeth barely fit in his jaws, and he leers with menace and the threat of violence at any second. This comes to a head in the climax where he chases Red up the stairs of her grandma’s house, only to grab hold of the banister and begin to walk on his hind legs. The wolf stops being an exaggerated cartoon of a real animal and begins to drift into horror film territory, looking like a crazed werewolf about to carve into its prey.

But we’re sacked with following around Little Red Riding Hood, and her forced happy ending. Call me crazy if you want, but that wolf possessed more charm than she did and I wouldn’t have complained if he devoured her whole. This life-giving talent for monstrous creations, both mythological and exaggerations of real animals, would make Harryhausen’s career a definitive example of boundless imagination merging with virtuoso technique in the years to come.