| Red Hot Riding Hood | |
|---|---|
Theatrical poster to Red Hot Riding Hood (1943) |
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| Directed by | Tex Avery |
| Voices by | Frank Graham Bea Benaderet |
| Music by | Scott Bradley |
| Animation by | Preston Blair (unc.) Ray Abrams (unc.) Ed Love (unc.) Irven Spence (unc.) |
| Studio | Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer |
| Release date(s) | May 8, 1943 |
| Color process | Technicolor |
| Country | United States |
| Language | English |
Red Hot Riding Hood is an animated cartoon short subject, directed by Tex Avery and released on May 8, 1943 by Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer. In 1994 it was voted #7 of The 50 Greatest Cartoons of all time by members of the animation field. It is one of Avery's most popular cartoons, inspiring several of his own "sequel" shorts as well as influencing other cartoons and feature films for years afterward.
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The story begins with the standard version of Little Red Riding Hood (with the wolf from Dumb-Hounded, the cartoon which saw the debut of Avery's Droopy) until the characters suddenly rebel at this done-to-death staging and demand a fresh approach.
The annoyed narrator accedes to their demands and starts the story again in a dramatically different arrangement. Now the story is set in a contemporary urban setting, where Red is a cute and beautiful performer and got her talent. The Wolf is a debonair skirt chaser who is in love with Red but she wants nothing to do with him. Red escapes the Wolf, saying she's going to her Grandma's house, but when the Wolf arrives Red is nowhere to be found. Grandma is an oversexed man-chaser who falls head over heels for the Wolf. Upon seeing him she whistles and says, "At last a wolf! Yahoo!" The Wolf tries to escape but Grandma blocks the exit and asks him, "What's your hurry hairy?" She locks the door, drops the key down the front of her evening gown, and poses provocatively for him. Soon after Grandma puts on a bright red shade of lipstick and tries to kiss the Wolf several times during his stay. He tries to escape but the lovelorn granny chases after him. Every door the Wolf opens Grandma is there waiting with puckered lips. He finally makes his escape by jumping out a window, severely injuring himself in the process. As this is a Tex Avery cartoon he immediately recovers, and makes his way back to the nightclub. There, the Wolf says, "I'm fed up! I'm through with women. Why I'll kill myself, before I'd even look at another babe." Immediately after this, Red takes the stage and begins another performance. He pulls out two guns and commits suicide, but his ghost rises from his dead body and howls and whistles at her like he did earlier.
The character of Red Hot Riding Hood closely resembled one of the top pin-up girls at the time, Betty Grable. She is considered an amalgamation of the then popular Hollywood stars. Her singing voice in this particular short was reminiscent of Lena Horne's, while her speaking voice emulated that of Katharine Hepburn.
The two supporting characters are Red Hot's sisters in the entry of the nightclub foyer, where the Wolf walks in. This is the shortest, who says, "Cigarettes, cigarettes!" And the other is the tallest, who says, "King-sized, king-sized!"
The most famous element is the musical scene where Red performs and "Wolfie", as she calls him, reacts in highly lustful wild takes. Those reactions were considered so energetic that the censors at the time demanded cuts in this scene and others.
The film's original conclusion had Grandma marrying the wolf at a shotgun wedding (with a caricature of Tex Avery as the Justice of the Peace who marries them), and having the unhappy couple and their half-human half-wolf children attend Red's show. This ending, deleted for reasons of implied bestiality and how it made light of marriage (something that was considered taboo back in the days of the Hays Office Code), was replaced with one (that, ironically, has also been edited, but only on television) where The Wolf is back at the nightclub and tells the audience that he's through with chasing women and if he ever sees a woman again, he's going to kill himself. When Red soon appears onstage to perform again, the Wolf takes out two pistols and blasts himself in the head. The Wolf then drops dead, but his soul appears and begins to howl and whistle at Red.
Prints with the original ending (where the Wolf is forced to marry the lusty Grandma) and the Wolf's racier reactions to Red are rumored to have been shown to military audiences overseas during World War II, though it is not known if this print still exists.