Modern uses and adaptations of Little Red Riding Hood

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Modern uses and adaptations of Little Red Riding Hood are many as the Little Red Riding Hood fairytale is popular and well known. Modern adaptations range across numerous media and genres. This page lists many notable or famous examples.

1 Literature and drama
2 Film
3 Animation
4 Comics
5 Video games
6 Music and music video
7 Other
8 See also

[edit] Literature and drama

Little Red Riding Hood is transplanted into a modern, urban setting on several occasions.

[edit] 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 Martín Gaite (1990).
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 Caitlín R. Kiernan (2003).
Little Red Riding Wolf (Seriously Silly Stories) (2004), a children's novel by Laurence Anholt and Arthur Robins, in which a game warden arrives at the last moment to save the wolf from poachers.

[edit] 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 Caitlín 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. 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.[1] See also Politically Correct Red Riding Hood, which features a very different outcome. [2]

[edit] Poetry

"Little Red Riding Hood" by Olga Broumas, pubished 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.[3]
"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).

[edit] 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), Charalampos Goyios (1998), and Georges Aperghis (2001).

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.

[edit] Film

The DVD cover for the Neil Jordan and Angela Carter film The Company of Wolves.

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.
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.
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.
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.
Christina Ricci starred in a 1997 short film based on the subject matter. See Little Red Riding Hood.
The 2003 horror film Red Riding Hood directed by Giacomo Cimini was a darker take on the classic story.
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.
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.
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.
Hard Candy (2005) is a modern take on the Red Riding Hood character that turns the tables: a teenage girl tortures a man whom she is convinced is a paedophile. The film is only loosely based on the tale, however, the film ends with the girl wearing a bright red hoodie (an image also used for the film's marketing poster), acknowledging the story's influence.
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.

[edit] Animation

'Red', as she appears in the cartoons of animator Tex Avery.

Walt Disney produced a black and white silent short cartoon called Little Red Riding Hood in 1922 for Laugh-O-gram Cartoons. This early work of Disney's is 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 stripper Red. Tex Avery also utilised the same cast and themes in a number of other cartoons in this series.
Early Bugs Bunny cartoons such as Little Red Riding Rabbit utilise the characters from fairytales such as Little Red Riding Hood.
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 Rotkäppchen 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, or, better still, could be translated as "a Wolf as a Man"), and a mysterious woman as the young lady.
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.
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.
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 flash animation by Dirty Doll Creations also shows a much darker version of the tale here.

[edit] 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, order the girl to undress and lay 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[4].
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.
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.
The webcomic Everafter by illustrator Shaun Healey features well-known fairy tale characters who have been placed in an asylum because of their traumatizing experiences in the fairy tales. As the main character, Little Red Riding Hood must deal with her harrowing experiences with the wolf. The webcomic can be viewed here. His rendition of Little Red Riding Hood is known as "Red" and is not exactly the little nice you girl you know. She is also usually accompanied by a little pig named "Iggy"
Tamaoki Benkyo created a twisted and dark version of Red Riding Hood in the manga Tokyo Akazukin. It is about a demonic girl dressed as red riding hood who wanted to be devoured by the big bad wolf himself.
A comic created by Hector Sevilla and Mike S. Miller called Lullaby features a Red Ridng Hood character who is half girl and half wolf (Because she got bitten by The Big Bad Wolf). The art can be viewed here 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". The protagonist Sogeking wears a red cloak and is almost killed by a "wolfman", Jyabura. He is saved by Sanji, "the hunter".

[edit] Video games

The fighting game series Darkstalkers has a twisted take on the story: A girl named B.B. Hood (called Bulletta in Japan), a young girl who is actually a bounty hunter of werewolves, who killed her parents. She carries an Uzi, hides land mines underneath her dress, and her basket conceals a variety of weapons, from knives to a built-in rocket launcher and a flamethrower disguised as a wine bottle. She is also good friends with a very large huntsman and soldier.
The video game Fable also features a reference to the story, in the form of Scarlet Robe, "slayer of Balverines (werewolf-like creatures featured in the game)." A flashback in the game shows a young Scarlet engaged in battle with a group of Balverines, dressed in the familiar red hood and cloak.
World of Warcraft: The Burning Crusade features The Big Bad Wolf as one of the random encounters in the Karazhan opera event. The Wolf transforms a random player into Red Riding Hood and chases her around the room.

Amy Lee of Evanescence dressed like Little Red Riding Hood and surrounded by wolves in the music video for "Call Me When You're Sober".

An East Asian company produced an unlicensed Nintendo Entertainment System game called Little Red Hood.

[edit] Music and music video

Implicit adult sexuality is a theme of Sam the Sham & the Pharaohs 1966 hit song "Lil' Red Riding Hood".
The last four tracks of Japanese black metal band Kadenzza's The Second Renaissance follow the plot of Little Red Riding Hood.
Evanescence's music video for the song "Call Me When You're Sober" is heavily inspired by Little Red Riding Hood.
Nerdcore rapper MC Frontalot retells this story in his song "Start Over".

[edit] Other

Probably the most famous use of Little Red Riding Hood in television advertising is the Chanel No. 5 commericial directed by Luc Besson with music by Danny Elfman and starring Estella Warren. In this advertisement, Warren plays a modern-day Red Riding Hood getting ready to enjoy the Paris nightlife, much to the lamentation of her household wolf. The commercial can be viewed here.
Todd McFarlane's "Twisted Fairy Tales" action figure line includes a more voluptuous Red Riding Hood holding a dead wolf with its entrails and Grandma dripping out of its stomach. A similar but less gory figure is part of the "Scary Tales" line of figures (not by McFarlane).