Le petit Chaperon Rouge

The plot summary pretty much describes everything that happens in this cartoon. Well, except that when the plane is flying, it literally flaps its wings! According to IMDb, this was also the first animated cartoon Walt Disney ever made. If that's true then what a find this is! I liked many of the beginning gags of the mother throwing the dough up in the air, the cat shooting holes in each dough that's thrown up, then the donut that becomes the result when it lands in the pan. And then the cat losing his nine lives and being taken away as a result of eating the donut (presumably because it was still greasy!). The plot summary also didn't mention the human wolf's car literally floating on air as it passes over cliffs! Or the old bearded man in the picture frame laughing when he watched the mother and the cat's antics or a couple of notes dancing when they came out of the mother's horn as she called for Red! While Little Red Riding Hood was primitive, since this was the earliest animated effort of the eventual legendary Walt Disney, it's worth a look at least once. Found this on YouTube.

Little Red Riding Hood (1922)

** (out of 4)

Entertainment wise, this first film from Walt Disney really isn't that good. There are a few interesting things here and there but there's no question that the legend would go onto much better things. That doesn't mean the film isn't historically important because, as I said, this was Disney's first movie and it was lost for decades until a print finally turned up. The story is pretty simple but don't expect anything like the classic fairy tale. Basically just a few pieces from that are borrowed for this film, which has a grandma making donuts when the little girl goes out to play and gets into some trouble. Again, entertainment wise there's really not too much here as Disney was clearly just learning his touch. The highlight of the film was seeing how the donuts were being made but even this is eventually ruined by it lasting way too long. Still, history and film buffs will still want to check this one out.

Walt Disney, a struggling 21-year-older, with the help of friend Ub Iwerks and a handful of underpaid animators, spent six months to complete his first fully animated short cartoon called "Little Red Riding Hood." The six-minute plus work, basically a demonstration film, showed investors and distributors the high-class product his team was capable of producing.

Disney's vision of a series of cartoons, which he called Laugh-O-Grams, was to update fairy tales in a modern setting. The "Little Red Riding Hood" movie introduces Disney's first ever named character, a Felix The Cat imitation called Julius the Cat. The cat is anonymous in his debut, but Julius received his name in the follow-up cartoon, The Four Musicians of Bremen. In Disney's contemporary view, Little Red Riding Hood is delivering a bunch of donuts to her grandmother's house when she meets a lecherous man tooling around in his car. He breaks into grandma's empty home and assaults the girl when she enters the house. The cat accompanying her runs to her pilot boyfriend, who comes to the rescue with his plane.

In the 21st century, we know Disney as the media conglomerate that makes "family" cartoons. But the man for whom the studio is named had to start somewhere. Walt Disney got his start with Laugh-O-Gram Studio in Kansas City, Missouri. In 1921 he released "Newman Laugh-O-Gram", which looked like drawings of advertisements. But his first "real" cartoon was 1922's "Little Red Riding Hood". Despite the poster, it doesn't follow the story that closely. It starts with Little Red's mother making donuts, and then the wolf is actually a lecherous human who goes after Little Red (grandma's house is shown shaking, so he probably tries to rape her, but we don't see anything). I understand that the cat featured in this cartoon is named Julius, and he became Walt Disney's first recurring character. I haven't seen most of Disney's early works, so I can't comment on that.

Laugh-O-Gram Studio closed not long after this due to lack of funds. Walt Disney moved to southern California, and the rest is history. Other employees of Laugh-O-Gram Studios were Ub Iwerks and Friz Freleng.

A really entertaining version of the story is the 1977 Soviet movie "About Little Red Riding Hood" ("Pro Krasnuyu Shapochku" in Russian). It's one of the wackiest movies that I've ever seen.

Being such a giant, IP-devouring powerhouse now, it's hard to imagine the Disney empire had its beginnings in a humble, only mildly successful studio run by a bunch of ambitious young cartoonists. While Disney would garner massive success by the end of the decade, its beginnings were mostly made up of average one-reelers. LITTLE RED RIDING HOOD is a fascinating find because aside from the fairy tale element, it seems so unlike the later, more sophisticated Disney that would emerge in the 1930s. As it is, it's a fascinating historical relic, but not as technically impressive as the ALICE COMEDIES or OSWALD shorts to come.