Red Hot Riding Hood

I feel Tex has not been given the full credit he deserves for his innovative cartoon work. While 'Bugs' and 'Mickey' continue running, Tex's creations rarely appear on commercial television. I wonder if Tex's work may be viewed as either risque of politically incorrect!

Tex, sex, and Avery Rex!! The king of cartoons sends the 1943 censors a message..when the armed forces actually bypassed the Hays office to get an uncensored version of this one off to our troops overseas, they preserved one of the greatest works of art ever committed to celluloid..and allowed resonances to echo into such disparate results as Jessica Rabbit, Cool World, and Ren and Stimpy. For the record, the plot is simple..the old fairy tale is worn out, and needs some new blood..the wolf is now really a wolf, and Red has more than goodies in her basket..now, go and watch this one three hundred times, and you'll see almost all the little jokes lovingly crafted into it..

The inclusion of Red Hot Riding Hood in Tex Avery's animated short film, along with her earlier appearance in Little Rural Riding Hood, has truly impressed me with this bold and alluring cartoon character. One of Avery's finest creations and a significant breakthrough in animation, it is celebrated as his legendary masterpiece in the world of animation.

The story begins with a standard Little Red Riding Hood story, but the characters rebel against the standard staging and demand a fresh approach. Now set in a contemporary urban setting, Red is a sexy adult nightclub entertainer, while Wolf is a debonair skirt chaser in love with Red. Red escapes Wolf, but his oversexed grandmother locks him in her apartment, chasing after him at every door.

Unlike my beloved cartoon character, Betty Boop, who embodied a charmingly innocent demeanor, Red personified pure sensuality, primarily serving the purpose of arousing the wolf (symbolizing males in general) into an intense state of desire. Red briefly introduced herself as a seductive distraction for the Wolf character, who had already appeared in the WWII cartoon "Blitz Wolf" and was obsessed with getting some action. She drove the sex-crazed wolf to do all the things that were to become trademarks of Avery's cartoons: the eye-popping, the jaw-dropping, and the gravity-deifying pratfalls. She gained such widespread popularity that she appeared in three more animated series. Her cartoons were originally entertaining to American soldiers during wartime but remained off television for a long time due to their explicit nature.

Actually, my comment for this should truly be a simple verbal genuflection, but that wouldn't be of acceptable minimum length here, so I'll actually say something.

This is Tex Avery's masterpiece in terms of the relation of his work to animation in general and the short form in specific. There are better cartoons (some even by Avery himself) and there are cartoons that I personally like better, but in terms of what Avery was attempting to do with the form, in terms of what animation was at the time and had been in the past and what its potential was for the future and the impact that Avery had and would have on his artform, this is the first truly successful Avery cartoon on all terms, both Avery's and animation. Avery blew out the valves, cranked up the engine and blew the doors off on this one for the first (but not last) time here. He turned everything up a few notches here, gang, and it works! It worked then, it works now and will work tomorrow, precisely because Avery had that most overworked and little understood word-genius. Remarkable cartoon and if you like animation and haven't seen this one, what are you reading me for? Go watch this. This is a great piece of work. Need I add, most highly recommended?

Once upon a time, little red riding hood... The characters are fed up with the same old story. The narrator agrees to tell it in a new way. It's a Tex Avery animated short. It's good alternative fun with some adult leanings.