Little Red Riding Hood

I figured this would be the best place to start my adventure through "Disneyland." In the 1920's Walt Disney founded an animation studio known as Laugh-O-Grams in Kansas City. Disney himself had been around animation and the film industry for a while prior to this, but the Laugh-O-Gram studio is really a significant landmark in the journey that would eventually lead Walt to the world wide success he eventually achieved.

Little Red Riding Hood (1922) is an interesting little piece of work. I guess we'll start with the play by play. We're all fairly familiar with the story of Little Red Riding Hood. In the original French folktale the protagonist, 'Red', is confronted by a wolf on her way to her Grandmother's house. The wolf gets to the house before her, eats her grandma, and then eats her. And THEN a hunter kills the wolf, slices it open, and Red and her Granny come out of the body fairly unscathed (though some of you might know the story in a little less brutal fashion.... society these days). Pretty straight forward story. However, the Laugh-O-Gram version is almost nothing like that.

The film opens with Red's mother making doughnuts. To be honest, this is probably the most memorable part of the whole movie. The sequence almost seems to never end. The mother is rolling up dough and then tosses it over her shoulder into a frying pan across the room. As the dough flies through the air, her house cat uses a gun to shoot holes in the dough. And this goes on. And on. And on. And on. Then there's this picture hanging on the wall with an old bearded man in it who keeps leaning out, watching, and cackling. This is all beyond strange. It's never explained who this man is, or if it's really a picture or some kind of window built by a peeping tom... we never really know. But it's way weird. And the climax of this doughnut nonsense is actually pretty rewarding (in my opinion). The cat uses a fishing pole to retrieve a doughnut for himself, and he eats it. And it kills him. It not only kills him, but we get to watch a number-ticker count down as all nine of his lives are depleted from the questionable treat. This whole opening literally takes up a whole third OR MORE of the film and I really found myself wondering if I'd accidentally started the wrong movie. But no, it soon starts to attempt some sort of semblance to it's source material. Mommy puts all the treats into a nifty little bundle and tells Red to take them to her Grandmother's house. Red accepts and embarks on her mission. But this version of Red won't be seen hoofing it on foot through the woods. She has a car! Red takes off to the garage and gets in her car which doesn't run on gasoline but is actually pulled and/or pushed by a small Dog. So Red and the Dog take off and shortly get a flat tire. Luckily, while the doughnuts may or may not be healthy for consumption (they did kill the cat nine times over... why are they feeding these to Granny?!) they DO make excellent spare tires. A little while further and the story picks up as they are confronted by the wolf! Except it's not a "wolf" exactly. The "Wolf" is a filthy man who passes Red and asks her where she's is headed. It's a pretty interesting take on the story. I remember once hearing that the original story was actually intended to illustrate to young girls the dangers of lusting men with sexual appetites like a wolf... it's sort of odd to see that Disney took this route with his Laugh-O-Gram. Anyway, the naive Red tells him and then goes along her merry way- while Wolfy speeds off to get to Granny's first. When he arrives he finds a note left by the old buzzard saying she's out for the moment, and so he sneaks on in and waits. And then this weird take on the classic tale takes a turn for the grittier, because Red shows up and goes inside and... well we're not exactly sure what happens. There's clearly a scuffle and Red screaming for help, but we see all this from outside the house as the Dog freaks out in worry. He scampers off and finds a nearby pilot. They get in his plane and head off to save Red by lowering a giant hook from the aircraft and using it to rip the house aside, revealing the dark shadow of the man doing... something... to Red. The man-wolf-predator jumps in his car and hurries away while Red climbs aboard and proceeds so make out with the pilot while the Dog covers his eyes in embarrassment... and then it ends!

To be honest with you, even though I made this thing sound more strange than a rollerskating serpent, there are some good qualities here. Firstly, it's good just for the mere fact that it was Walt Disney's first major step into his career. And it's pretty impressive that a kid in his early 20's was able to put this thing together (this was before the days of the macromedia flash player, mind you!). Not only is it fairly decent animation for a film of its stature, but it takes a major step in the fact that it tells a story. In the early days of animation- and even the early days of Laugh-O-Gram studios -cartoons largely did NOT tell a story. They consisted of short jokes and gags or speed-drawings commenting on the current events. But this cartoon- despite being heavily loaded down with weird "funny" sequences that have nothing to do with the plot at hand -chooses to stay closer to the plot-driven side of the equation.

So all in all, is Little Red Riding Hood a good film? I can't honestly say it is. It's strange and downright creepy at times. I could have done without the whole opening scene with the cat and the doughnuts and the dying. And even though I dig the creepy stalker "men are wolves" idea here, it would have been nice to see an ACTUAL wolf (because Wolves are awesome). And I will probably always now look at paintings and wonder if the creepy men who reside in them are real or not... However, for what it is- Walt's first real step into 'the biz' -it's actually pretty amazing. If you can appreciate it for it's historical significance, I'd say it's quite a decent piece of work. So I guess it all depends on how you look at it. And at it's worst, at least you can get a couple of chuckles from how absurd it really is.