subject: Adaptations Of Little Red Riding Hood [print this page] Literature and drama Literature and drama
Novels
Wolf by Gillian Cross (1990), winner of the 1991 Carnegie Medal. This is a very loose adaptation of the tale set in the modern day.
Caperucita en Manhattan by Carmen Martn Gaite (1990).
Witches Abroad by Terry Pratchett (1991) parodies a number of fairy tales, including Little Red Riding Hood. In this version Granny Weatherwax and Nanny Ogg stop the wolf before it has a chance to eat the grandmother (much to its own relief, as it's acting against its will). Nanny Ogg remembers hearing about the same thing happening a couple of villages away, when she was a girl. She also refers obliquely to an incident when she visited her grandmother in a red hood, involving "Sumpkins the lodger".
Little Red Riding Hood in the Red Light District by Manlio Argueta (1998).
Darkest Desire: The Wolf's Own Tale by Anthony Schmitz (1998).
Low Red Moon by Caitln R. Kiernan (2003).
Little Red Riding Wolf (Seriously Silly Stories) (2004), a children's novel by Laurence Anholt and Arthur Robins, in which the roles of the main characters are reversed, so that the 'Big Bad Girl' terrorises the innocent hero, Little Red Riding Wolf, before meeting her come-uppance from the terrifying Old Granny Wolf.
The Book of Lost Things by John Connolly (2006).
The Sisters Grimm series, in which Red Riding Hood is said to have gone insane after her encounter with the wolf.
Red Rider's Hood (2006) by Neal Schusterman.
Sisters Red (2010) by Jackson Pearce.
Picture Books
Lon Po Po: A Red-Riding Hood Story from China by Ed Young (1990).
Short stories
In 1940, Howard L. Chace, a professor of French, wrote Ladle Rat Rotten Hut, where the story is told using incorrect homonyms of the correct English words.
"The Company of Wolves" by Angela Carter, published in The Bloody Chamber (1979). This famous and influential version was the basis for the Neil Jordan film (below).
"Wolfland" by Tanith Lee, published in Red as Blood (1983).
"I Shall Do Thee Mischief in the Woods" by Kathe Koja, published in Snow White, Blood Red (1993).
"Little Red" by Wendy Wheeler, published in Snow White, Blood Red (1993).
The Apprentice" by Miriam Grace Monfredo, published in Ellery Queen's Mystery Magazine (November, 1993).
"The Good Mother" by Patricia Galloway, published in Truly Grim Tales (1995).
"Riding the Red" by Nalo Hopkinson, published in Black Swan, White Raven (1997).
"Wolf" by Francesca Lia Block, published in The Rose and the Beast (2000).
"The Road of Pins" by Caitln R. Kiernan, first published in Dark Terrors 6 (2002), reprinted in To Charles Fort, With Love (2005).
"Little Red and the Big Bad" by Will Shetterly, published in Swan Sister (2003).
James Thurber's short story "The Little Girl and the Wolf" features the heroine turning the tables on the Wolf by taking an automatic pistol out of her basket and shooting him. The moral says it all: "It is not so easy to fool little girls nowadays as it used to be."
"Little Red Riding Hood" published in James Finn Garner's Politically Correct Bedtime Stories satirises politically correct speech, focusing on such things as womyn's rights. See also Politically Correct Red Riding Hood, which features a very different outcome.
'Red Riding Hood', published under the Creative Commons License on Deviant Art and The Escapist Magazine, places the story in the modern day dealing with a young goth girl (Red) who meets the 'wolf' character, an indie girl called Luna, in the woods. The story was written by Trivun Luzaic and focuses mainly on the sexual aspects of the original story as well as providing a twist ending.
Poetry
"Little Red Riding Hood" by Olga Broumas, published in Beginning With O (1977).
"Little Red Riding Hood and the Wolf" by Roald Dahl, published in Revolting Rhymes (1983) - features a comical and violent twist in which Red turns the wolf into a wolf-skin coat.
"The Waiting Wolf" by Gwen Strauss, published in Trail of Stones (1990).
"On a Nineteenth Century Color Lithograph of Red Riding Hood by the Artist J.H." by Alice Wirth Gray, published in What the Poor Eat (1993).
"Journeybread Recipe" by Lawrence Schimel, published in Black Thorn, White Rose (1994).
"Little Red Cap" by Carol Ann Duffy, published in The World's Wife (1999).
"Silver and Gold" by Ellen Steiber, published in The Armless Maiden(1996).
"Grandmother" by Lawrence Syndal, published in Conjunctions #31 (1999).
"What Her Mother Said" by Theodora Goss, published in The Journal of Mythic Arts (2004).
"I Can't Believe I Fell for this Shit Again." By Christy L. Hopper, published in "Red River Review" (November 2006).
Drama and theatre
Stephen Sondheim and James Lapine's musical Into the Woods plays with the typical devices of a number of different fairytales, including Little Red Riding Hood.
Radio humorist Stan Freberg performed a radio play spoofing both Little Red Riding Hood and Dragnet called "Little Blue Riding Hood".
The tale seems to hold a particular attraction for Greek composers; opera versions of it have been produced by George Kouroupos (1988), Kharlampos Goys (1998), and Georges Aperghis (2001).
The Adventures of Goldilockpick and Little Red Riding Hoodlum by Todd Barty.
Many of the above short stories and poems (as well as many older texts) are collected in The Trials and Tribulations of Little Red Riding Hood by Jack Zipes.
Film
In the early 1960s, Mara Gracia starred as Little Red Riding Hood in a trilogy of Mexican films by director Roberto Rodriguez, which were then re-dubbed in English and released in the United States courtesy of K. Gordon Murray: the so-called "King of the Kiddie Matinee". These films were: La Caperucita roja (Little Red Riding Hood; 1960), Caperucita y sus tres amigos (Little Red Riding Hood and Her Friends/Little Red Riding Hood and Her Three Friends ; 1961) and Caperucita y Pulgarcito contra los monstruos (Little Red Riding Hood and the Monsters; 1962). The latter of these films also starred Cesreo Quezadas, who reprised his recurring role of Pulgarcito (Tom Thumb).
Liza Minnelli starred in the 1965 TV film The Dangerous Christmas of Red Riding Hood with Cyril Ritchard as the Wolf and Vic Damone as the huntsman. This revisionist fairy tale is told from the Wolf's point of view.
In 1977, Soviet film studio "Belarusfilm" made the film About Red Hat (Russian: ) (in Russian).
Filmmaker Neil Jordan's 1984 horror/fantasy film The Company of Wolves, based on the short story by Angela Carter (above), told an interweaving series of folkloric tales loosely based on Red Riding Hood that fully exploited its subtexts of lycanthropy, violence and sexual awakening.
In the 1987 Japanese live-action movie The Red Spectacles (aka Akai Megane), the featured "young lady" (as mentioned in the French and German versions of the tale), an allegory for Fate, is dressed like the Little Red Riding Hood. A anime version of this character appeared later in the film's sequel, Jin-Roh.
Freeway, a 1996 feature film adaptation, starring Kiefer Sutherland and Reese Witherspoon adapts the story into a modern setting in which the major characters become a psychotic but charming serial killer and a sexually abused teenage girl.
Christina Ricci starred in a 1997 short film based on the subject matter: Little Red Riding Hood.
The 1999 Belgian short film Black XXX-Mas translates the story to a nightmarish, futuristic urban setting. "The Forest" is the nickname for the jungle-like city and "Wolfy" is a crooked police officer who hounds this film's Little Red.
The 2001 Kenneth Liu short film Falsehood refigures the Little Red Riding Hood story as a legal drama, with the Big Bad Wolf on trial and Little Bo Peep as his attorney. Scenes between Peep and the Wolf pay homage to the Clarice Starling/Hannibal Lecter scenes in The Silence of the Lambs.
The 2003 horror film Red Riding Hood directed by Giacomo Cimini was a darker take on the classic story.
The 2003 film Little Erin Merryweather tells the story of a female serial killer who dresses as Little Red Riding Hood and kills "wolfish" college boys.
The 2004 Kevin Bacon film The Woodsman took its title from the woodsman of the fable. In a speech given by Mos Def's policeman character, he compared pedophiles to the wolf and observed that there seems to be no "woodsman" to save victimized children.
In the 2005 film The Brothers Grimm, a young girl is seen walking through the woods, wearing a red cape. Later on, another young girl repeats the famous lines "what big eyes you have, etc..." to a predatory horse. The wolf and the woodsman are portrayed as a woodsman who is enchanted to turn into a wolf.
Hard Candy (2005) is a film many interpret as a modern take on the Red Riding Hood story that "turns the tables." (a teenage girl tortures a man whom she is convinced is a pedophile). Although the main character wears a Red Hood, many people involved with the film (including the director, David Slade) have said that the costume choice was based on Ellen Page's (the actor of the main character) liking to hoodies, and the limited availability of costume pieces. The subtext of the Little Red Riding Hood story was not intentional.
Singapore cult director Tzang Merwyn Tong directed a 45 minute short film in 2005 titled A Wicked Tale. Tzang's postmodern re-imagination of the fable is presented in a chilling style that combines the silent-era revivalism of Guy Maddin with the shock/sadistic horror of Audition-era Takashi Miike.
The 2006 film Red Riding Hood was a Musical film adaptation directed by Randal Kleiser, and test-released first in late 2004. The experimental virtual reality features were then enhanced for over an additional year. The film stars Morgan Thompson as "Red". Also among the actors are Henry Cavill, Ashley Rose Orr, Andrea Bowen, and music opera entertainers well known on Broadway Lainie Kazan, Debi Mazar and Joey Fatone.
The 2006 short film Big Bad Wolves takes a black-comedy-meets-fantasy approach by having the story told from the point of view of Tarantino-style gangsters who try to convince each other that it is actually a fable about female sexuality. This version features a more classic, fairytale approach to the narrative and visuals, but also utilizes a werewolf as a literal sexual predator.
Writer/director Joseph Bat is working on A Take of Little Red Riding Hood, which is expected to be released in 2009 and will feature a darker reimagining of the story.
The Slasher film Red Riding Hood - The Blood of Red Riding Hood based on the story.
SyFy produced in 2009 with Red a Gothic tale of the fable, which will premiered in summer 2010.
Animation
Walt Disney produced a black and white silent short cartoon called Little Red Riding Hood in 1922 for Laugh-O-gram Cartoons. Copies of this early work of Disney's are extremely rare.
Tex Avery's Red Hot Riding Hood recasts the story in an adult-oriented urban setting, with the suave, suited wolf howling after the night club singer Red. Tex Avery also utilised the same cast and themes in a number of other cartoons in this series, such as Little Rural Riding Hood, which set the story in the modern day and featured Red and the wolf as hillbillies.
Early Bugs Bunny cartoons such as Little Red Riding Rabbit utilise characters from fairytales such as Little Red Riding Hood. In one cartoon comic version {Red Riding Hoodwinked}, Little Red Riding Hood is accompanied by Tweety Bird while the villains are played by a Wolf and Sylvester, who almost come to blows over who is going to play "Grandma". Another Sylvester parody is Little Red Rodent Hood.
A few Loopy de Loop cartoons such as "Tale of a Wolf" feature Little Red Riding Hood.
The Japanese children's anime TV series Akazukin Chacha features the eponymous heroine Chacha who is visually reminiscent of Little Red Riding Hood ('akazukin' relates to her red hood and cape). One of the major themes of the series is a sort of pre-adolescent love triangle between Chacha and her two male friends, one of whom is a werewolf, the other a boy-witch.
The 1995 animated film from Jetlag Productions adapts the classic fairy tale and at the same time adds its own original twists and additions to the story in order to stretch the plotline to their regular 48-minute length. The film featured three original songs and was written by George Bloom and produced by Mark Taylor.
In 1996, Jan Kounen directs "Le dernier chaperon rouge" (The Last Riding Hood, literal translation), a french fantasy musical short film starring Emmanuelle Bart.
The 1999 Japanese animated film Jin-Roh (also known as Jin-Roh: The Wolf Brigade), about a secret society within an anti-terrorist unit of an alternative post-World War II Japan, makes several literary and visual references to the German oral version of the story (most notably a Rotkppchen book offered to the main character by one of the female bomb couriers), which is closer to the Perrault version, than the tale of Grimm, with an anti-terrorist commando as the wolf (the title is literally "Man-wolf" in Japanese"), and a former terrorist courier as the young lady.
An Anime named Otogi Jushi Akazukin has as main character a girl named Akazukin, who is a Fairy Musketeer and has to protect a boy named Souta, who's the Elde Key, from the world of Science. Akazukin comes from Fandavale, the world of Magic, and for protect Souta, she has help of Val, her Wolf Familiar and the others two Musketeers, Shirayuki (Snow White) and Ibara (Sleeping Beauty). The Enemies are Randagio (one of the Bremen Town Musicians), Hansel and Gretel, who works for Cinderella, who wants the Elde's Key.
A 2006 computer-animated children's film, Hoodwinked, uses the anachronistic parody approach to the tale typified by the Shrek films, envisioning the story as a Rashomon-like mystery in which the anthropomorphised animal police of the forest question the four participants of the story (Red, the Wolf, Granny and the Woodsman) after they arrive at Granny's house, with each participant telling their own version of how they arrived there and why.
In the film Shrek the Third, she is portrayed as one of the villains; she is seen pickpocketing in one scene. Interestingly enough, the Big Bad Wolf is considered one of the good guys.
"Red Riding Hood" is a character in Super Why! in which she calls herself "Wonder Red," wears roller blades, and has "Word Power".
Comics
Little Red Riding Hood in one of a number of comic book adaptations. Art by Al Rio, published by Zenescope.
Neil Gaiman worked a darker, more erotic, pre-Perrault version of the Red Riding Hood tale in The Doll's House arc of the Sandman comics. In this version, the wolf kills the old lady, tricks the girl into eating her grandmother's meat and drinking her blood, orders the girl to undress and lie in bed with him and finally devours her. According to Gaiman, his portrayal of the tale was based on the one reported in the book The Great Cat Massacre: and other episodes in French cultural history by Robert Darnton.
Both the Big Bad Wolf and Little Red Riding Hood are characters in the Fables comic book universe. The Big Bad Wolf has taken on human form and become known as Bigby Wolf. He is the sheriff of Fabletown when the series begins. The figure of Red Riding Hood ('Ride') appears three times. The first two instances are actually spies working for the Fables' enemy The Adversary, magically disguising themselves as Little Red Riding Hood (the second of which is actually the witch Baba Yaga). The third Red Riding Hood seems to be the genuine article.
In the manga Ludwig Kakumei by Kaori Yuki, Red Riding Hood is an infamous assassin whose first victims are her parents after she was tricked by the Prince.
The webcomic No Rest for the Wicked has a character called "Red". She lives alone in the woods and always carries an axe with her. After being attacked by a wolf (presumably killed and eaten) she has gone and systematically killed many of the wolves in the forest.
Tamaoki Benkyo created a twisted and dark version of Red Riding Hood in the manga Tokyo Red Hood. It is about a demonic girl dressed as red riding hood who wanted to be devoured by a creature only known as Mr. Wolf.
A comic created by Hector Sevilla and Mike S. Miller called Lullaby features a Red Riding Hood character who is half girl and half wolf (Because she got bitten by The Big Bad Wolf). The art can be viewed here .
An adaptation of Little Red Riding Hood in the Grimm Fairy Tales comic series by Zenescope depicted Red Riding Hood as a teenage girl nicknamed Red who is going off to bring food to her sick grandmother who lives deep in the woods. She gets attacked by a werewolf who kills her grandmother and attacks her there. She is saved by the woodsman, named Samson, and the wolf turns out be a former lover. This story was a teenager's dream sequence after she gets into a fight with her boyfriend who wanted to have sex with her.
The manga One Piece references Red Riding Hood in chapter 413: "The Hunter". One of the protagonists, Sogeking, wears a red cloak and is almost killed by a "wolfman", Jyabura. He is saved by Sanji, "the hunter". Later on, Jyabura, attempting to bluff his way out of a fight, depicts Nico Robin (in a red hood) as his sister.
Streetfables published a modern, urban adaptation of Little Red Riding Hood called Red.
Issue #1 of the Marvel Comics series Spider-Man Fairy Tales is an adaptation of Little Red Riding Hood with Mary Jane Watson as the protagonist.
In the webcomic EverAfter, by Shaun Healey, Little Red Riding Hood is depicted as having gone insane inside the Big Bad Wolf's belly, emerging a violent sociopath who chopped up the woodsman with his own saw, and needed to be placed in the EverAfter Maximum Security Asylum, along with other twisted fairy tale characters ranging from Tom Thumb to Goldilocks, Hansel and Gretel, Miss Muffet, etc., all under the care of President Dumpty Humpty Dumpty and Dr. Crooked (from a nursery rhyme).
Serena Valentino and Foo Swee Chin wrote and illustrated an adaptation of Red Riding Hood in Nightmares & Fairy Tales #8 where Red is known as Luna. This comic version focuses on Luna's struggle to cope with her fellow villagers' intense disdain for wolves. When a supposedly "dead" wolf kills her father, she sympathizes with the animal more than her parent, causing her mother to throw her out of the house in a fit of rage. Luna befriends a kind young man on the way to her grandmother's house and eventually discovers that her grandmother is a werewolf. When Luna's mother arrives and kills her wolf-grandmother, Luna also begins to change into a white wolf but is spared a gruesome d
