Little Red Walking Hood

"Little Red Walking Hood" is one of the strangest Looney Tunes cartoons I have ever seen. Unlike other cartoons, this one has backgrounds that are all hand drawn using colored pencils. It's a jarring thing to see...not bad at all but very unusual. Sadly, the animation that accompanied it was very poor by Looney Tunes standards...very poor.

As far as the cartoon goes, it is directed by Tex Avery and seems like a very early incarnation of Avery's later, and genius, "Red Hot Riding Hood"...which he made for MGM. But this Looney Tunes cartoon isn't nearly as clever or fun to watch. On the other hand, it does break the 4th wall, which is clever...and I think it's best seen as an experimental film and not as enjoyable or pretty as most Looney Tunes films of 1937.

I would call "Little Red Walking Hood" a VERY interesting take on that famous story. Egghead's popping in and out, later letting the wolf have it, was amusing. Indeed the whole idea of having Red, the wolf, and Grannie in a modern setting, the wolf driving through town (and then into the woods to Grandma's place), then placing a phone order to the local grocery store, was interesting, showing how MANY versions there are of fairy tales. The inclusion of "Put On Your Old Gray Bonnet" was characteristic of MANY of the Warner Brothers cartoons of that period. All in all, very interesting twist on a familiar story. Fairy and folk tales have SO MANY variations. In that way, they can compare to "The Star-Spangled Banner", of which there are SO MANY editions (as I recall from years of band-playing experience.

Tex Avery and other animators must have liked this fairy tale, because it was used frequently as the basis for a number of cartoons. Avery himself did more than one, this one and a couple he did at MGM, as well as using it as a brief gag elsewhere in other shorts. Fairy tales were commonly used by animators as the jumping-off point for cartoons. This one features Egghead in a running gag seen throughout the short. Well worth watching. Recommended.

Little Red is walking over to her Grandma's house through town. A wolf is busy playing pinball in the local pool hall when he spots her. He pulls up in his car and tries to chat her up, when she gives him the cold shoulder he goes to Granny's to wait for her there.

What starts out as a nice idea isn't totally delivered to the screen. The portrayal of the wolf as, well, a wolf is a clever idea that is quite funny – especially with his gangster/pimp clothing, car and lifestyle! It does make the relationship with Red a little uneasy – she is clearly a child and he is a fully grown adult trying to chat her up! Maybe that's a bit of modern perspective speaking but it did bother me a little.

After the initial start the film doesn't really go anywhere – part of the fault is the characters. The wolf is quite funny but none of the rest really work. Red is amusing the first time, but her hamming gets annoying after a while, Grandma is OK but a bit when she gets a call everything slows down. The `hero' of the piece is a guy who walks round whistling – he is weird and funny the first time but his running presence without explanation gets a little annoying.

Overall this was a good idea which is amusing but it lacks a certain something and doesn't really work as well as it starts out. Old jokes and some lack lustre moments don't help either.

As I understand it, more than just another twist on Little Red Riding Hood, Tex Avery's "Little Red Walking Hood" takes a slightly different approach in its portrayal of the wolf. Having gotten released in 1937, the cartoon opens with the wolf playing a pinball game that apparently came out in the early '30s; ergo, the wolf is supposed to not be very up to date on popular trends. But then again, when he comes on to Little Red, his speech almost sounds like jazz lyrics. This is one complex wolf.

It's worth noting that Tex Avery's fairy tale parodies were like a karate chop on Disney's versions. It was in fact Disney who decided that cartoons should be "cute" and frequently used fairy tales and nursery rhymes as the plots (fairy tales are also easy to use because they're public domain). Warner Bros. cartoons turned this "children's entertainment" into jokes...and really good ones, I might add.

Otherwise, the main highlights were Little Red talking like Katharine Hepburn and giving the wolf a literal cold shoulder. Backgrounds drawn with color pencil were an unusual trick; I wonder why more cartoons didn't do that. As for Egghead, he was always a fairly enigmatic character, but I think that most Looney Tunes fans will agree that he reached his full potential once the Termite Terrace crowd turned him into Elmer Fudd.

Anyway, worth seeing.