Little Dead Rotting Hood (2016) and Other Adaptations of Little Red Riding Hood

Most people know the story of Little Red Riding Hood.  It has been passed down through generations.  There is a little girl who wears a red hood.  She has to get to her grandmother’s house on the other side of the woods and decides to take a shortcut through the trees to get there.  Along the way, she encounters a wolf.  When she gets to her grandmother’s house, the wolf has taken the place of the grandmother.  What big ears you have.  The better to hear you with.  All of that fun stuff.  Then, depending on whether it’s the Grimm version or a sanitized, grandma and the girl are either eaten or trapped, and it’s up to a woodsman or hunter to save them.

With the story being such a popular one, it is only natural that it has been adapted to film on many occasions.  Different filmmakers have taken their own stab at the tale and it has managed to go in many different directions.  Freeway was a modernized adaptation.  2011’s Red Riding Hood was a Twilight-esque adaptation that came out during the glory days of that franchise.  Hoodwinked! turned the story into a crime mystery.  This week’s movie was the Asylum version of the folk tale, titled Little Dead Rotting Hood.

I have seen numerous iterations of Little Red Riding Hood, including the four that I have already mentioned.  In this post, I will compare those four versions of the story, as well as two others named Rotkappchen: The Blood of Red Riding Hood and 2003’s Red Riding Hood.  Each movie did their own thing with the story and they all stand as individuals amongst the vast sea of Little Red Riding Hood movies.  They are as original as movies can be with established stories.  Much like Shakespeare’s works, this story has become an inevitable addition to the new releases each year.  There will always be something new that uses the story as a basis.  The first movie I discuss will be the newest one that I am covering.

Little Dead Rotting Hood

Produced by The Asylum, this movie came out at the beginning of 2016.  Much like anything from The Asylum, it took a story that everyone knows and completely changed things while having references to the familiar aspects.  The story is the same in only the bare blueprint.  There’s a woman in a red hood.  There’s a big bad wolf.  They battle each other.  That’s about the only real similarity between the classic tale and this movie.

In the small town of Stillwater, there were wolf attacks.  The wolves weren’t the usual red wolves that were sometimes in the area.  They were grey wolves that weren’t supposed to be anywhere around there.  The wolves were ripping out people’s throats for… I don’t know why.  Sheriff Adam (Eric Balfour) and Deputy Henry (Patrick Muldoon), for some reason going by their first names, went on a hunt to get rid of the wolves.  When the wolves attacked the hunting party, a girl in a red hood started hacking and slashing at the wolves.  Things only got crazier from there.

The story was modernized, as the setting was a present day small town.  But the thing that The Asylum did to make it their own was give it an action horror twist.  Of course, their usual sexy women and bad effects were there too.  It wouldn’t be an Asylum movie without that stuff.  They allowed their telling of the story to stand out amongst a pack of other movies using the same source.  Is it the best telling of the story?  Not necessarily.  It does manage to be semi-unique though, which is a good thing.

Hoodwinked!

The second movie that will be covered is a 2005 animated retelling of Little Red Riding Hood.  This iteration of the classic folk tale turned it into a mystery about the events surrounding the wolf being in the bed.  As the detectives questioned each of the people at the scene of the event (Red, Grannie, Wolf, and Woodsman), the audience was told the story of Little Red Riding Hood.  It was an interesting interpretation of the story that hadn’t been done before.

What helped to make the movie stand was the inspiration that it got from Roshomon.  There were four points-of-view for the same event, with each one adding to the story.  It began with Red telling the basic Little Red Riding Hood tale.  The Wolf revealed something new, adding new material to the story and taking it in a different direction.  The same was done with both Woodsman and Grannie.  Only Red’s story was the source material and the movie brought its own originality through the other characters.

A couple notes should be made about Hoodwinked!  It was an independently funded movie, and that shows through the animation.  It can sometimes be difficult to watch.  The other note is that there is a sequel to Hoodwinked! which has almost nothing to do with the Little Red Riding Hood story, outside of sharing the characters.  If you want to see a retelling of the original tale, only the first movie will provide that.

Rotkappchen: The Blood of Red Riding Hood

If you ever thought to yourself that Little Red Riding Hood was a good story, but it needed sex to liven things up, this movie is for you.  Rotkappchen: The Blood of Red Riding Hood was practically an adult version of the story.  It involved a 17 year-old girl named Rose who travelled to America to live with her grandmother.  She ended up being tormented at school and was caught up in a love triangle where a guy and girl were both in love with her.  Oh, and there were murders.

Obviously, what made this stand out was the sex scenes and nudity. Two sex scenes and various other pieces of nudity were sprinkled throughout the movie, turning a children’s story into something that children wouldn’t be allowed to experience.  It was an interesting way to change up the story and try something different.  The problem was that any momentum was brought to a halt whenever there was a sexy scene.

One other interesting creative choice was the use of black and white.  The only other colour that appeared on a regular basis was red.  The contrast of the red within the black and white cinematography highlighted how integral that colour was to the story.  Rose was Little Red Riding Hood.  She loved anything red.  Her love transcended the black and white limitations of the world.  Blood was also able to show through the colourless movie, accentuating the violent acts.  This stylistic choice was something the movie did well.

Red Riding Hood (2011)

Fresh off of the first Twilight movie, Catherine Hardwicke moved onto another movie involving supernatural creatures.  The thing is, she brought the romantic story to the Little Red Riding Hood tale when she made her new project.  Instead of being torn between her love for a vampire and a werewolf, Red Riding Hood (played by Amanda Seyfried) was torn between her love for a woodcutter and everyone wanting her to instead be with a blacksmith.  Cullen to cutter, Black to blacksmith.  There were werewolf attacks too.

The clear inspiration for Red Riding Hood was the Twilight series.  The success of those movies was something that studios wanted to capitalize on and this was one of the copies.  It was meant to tap into that teenage romance that teen girls were paying big money for.  It was the alternative to the continued young adult adaptations.  Instead of coming directly from a young adult novel, it was a movie trying to fit a different kind of story into that model.  For the most part, it succeeded.  It just failed in being anything memorable or entertaining.

Red Riding Hood (2003)

For some reason, filmmakers like to drop the Little off of Little Red Riding Hood.  Maybe they’re thinking like Sean Parker in The Social Network.  The title might seem cleaner without the first word.  The 2011 reimagining of the story dropped that word, as did this 2003 telling of the story.

Red Riding Hood was not good.  There were moments where the music drowned out what the characters were saying.  It is difficult to invest in what is being said when you can’t hear the words.  That can be partly attributed to the acting.  If a better performance were directed, the character’s word could cut through the music and hit the audience in a meaningful way.  It would have strengthened the movie.

There was one thing that made Red Riding Hood stand out.  Red Riding Hood was the bad guy.  The girl that we were following sided with the wolf and helped keep her grandmother hostage.  This change is possibly the largest change of any movie that will be discussed.  The main character wasn’t an innocent girl stuck in a bad situation.  She was a terrible person who was causing trouble.  It made the story darker and brought a new perspective.

Freeway

Most of the movies that were chosen for this post stayed close to the source in one specific way.  Each movie featured a wolf or a werewolf.  They kept that element intact when changing other aspects.  With Freeway, any sort of anthropomorphic animal element was removed.  The big bad wolf was a man named Bob Wolverton.  It was the biggest change in the wolf character.

Freeway wasn’t entirely a remake of the classic tale.  Much like Hoodwinked!, it used the tale as a basis for some scenes, but did its own thing with the characters.  Most of the movie revolved around Wolverton trying to murder the main character and successfully denying the attempt to the police.  The original story came through in the climactic moments as the grandmother scene played out.  Wolverton’s actions were the same as the wolf’s.  It was a modern thriller that utilized a classic story to portray its action.

The setting in Freeway was 1990s Los Angeles.  The main character was a juvenile delinquent.  Her family was involved in prostitution and other crimes.  This was not the wholesome tale (with violence) that you were used to.  Little Red Riding Hood was no longer an innocent girl trying to get to her grandmother’s house.  She was a troubled young criminal trying to survive on the streets.  She came upon a bad man and her life got even worse.

There are more movies based upon Little Red Riding Hood.  These are the six that I remembered watching when thinking about the adaptations.  They were six different versions told in their own way.  No two movies felt the same or told the same exact story.  That is how adaptations should be done.  There is originality found in the way a story is told, not necessarily in the story itself.  The people behind these movies knew that and put their own stamp on an established tale.

Little Red Riding Hood has been around for generations.  It is a story older than any living person.  It has gone through many iterations as people have told it in different ways.  Stories like this stand the test of time.  People like them.  People find them interesting.  People want to make the stories their own.  Little Red Riding Hood is a story that people like to tell.  Sometimes their version is good and sometimes it is bad, but they are always interesting if they’re finding a new way to tell the story.

Here are some notes for those of you wanting them:

• One actor from Little Dead Rotting Hood was in another Sunday “Bad” Movie.  Patrick Muldoon was in Blackwoods.
• The Asylum made a werewolf movie long before Little Dead Rotting Hood.  It was called The Beast of Bray Road.
• The Asylum has also covered another fairy tale in Grimm’s Snow White.
• Have you seen Little Dead Rotting Hood?  Have you seen any other Little Red Riding Hood adaptations?  What other stories get repeatedly adapted into new, interesting versions?  You can discuss any of this stuff in the comments.
• Suggestions are something I’m always looking for with the Sunday “Bad” Movies.  If you have any, you can let me know in the comments or on my Twitter page.
• I have a snapchat account that I use to share clips of bad movies that I watch.  If you want to see the clips, you can find me with the username jurassicgriffin.
• Next week’s movie is going to be something called I Bought a Vampire Motorcycle.  I chose it based on the title, and I assume that it describes what the movie is about.  I don’t know anything more about it.  It should be fun to watch though.  With a name like that, how couldn’t it be?  See you next week when I write about that one.

Death Tube (2010)

Computers have taken a large leap forward since the creation of the Electronic Numerical Integrator and Computer (ENIAC) during World War II. It was a warehouse sized computer that needed many people to run it.  We have since gone through home computers that ran on Disk Operating System (DOS) in the 1980s and the public release of the internet in the 1990s.  Computers went from text to graphics and are now integrating large video formats that anyone can watch.

In 2005, a new website was created that would cause video streaming to explode in popularity.  This site was YouTube, a place where people could upload, share, and watch videos of almost anything.  It became an easy tool to use for procrastination.  All of the viral videos could likely be found in some dark corner of YouTube.  It has become the most popular place to watch videos online.

Horror snapped up the chance to use streaming to their advantage.  Feardotcom was one of many horror movies to bring scares out of streaming.  Another was the thriller Untraceable.  Neither of the movies were all that tapped into YouTube however.  They were about individuals using their own streaming sites to show death.  Even more recent movies that involved streaming, such as Unfriended or Open Windows, failed to capture the YouTube craze.  But the movie I watched this week took YouTube into consideration.

Death Tube was released in 2010.  It was a Japanese production that followed a group of people trapped in an unknown warehouse.  They were tasked with participating in a series of games where the loser(s) would die.  The games and deaths were broadcast on a website called DeathTube.  The website was like YouTube, except the clips were murder and the site was only online for two weeks at a time.

The movie was easy to break into various parts, since there were a series of games and tasks for the characters to go through.  I don’t remember how many tasks there were.  We shall find out at the end of the post.  Also note, there may be spoilers.  I’ll try to avoid them but I cannot guarantee it.  Let’s get started.

Rubik’s Cube

This was where the main story kicked in.  Eight characters woke up in eight isolated rooms and had to complete a Rubik’s cube in a given amount of time.  They were then supposed to remember the rule on their cube.  The rule had to be followed at all costs.

The importance of the Rubik’s Cube task was to ensure that everyone would follow the rules of each game.  It was important to the unknown people in charge that their victims be able to behave in accordance to the rules.  Without that, there would be mayhem.  It wouldn’t make for good viewing.  There needed to be panic.  There needed to be emotion.  They couldn’t just refuse to do things, or else nothing would happen.  If they were required to complete a task, they should complete it or die trying.  That is what this game signified.

This movie had similarities to the American horror franchise Saw.  The main character woke up in a room and was told to complete a task by a strange figure on a television.  In the Saw franchise, it was sometimes on a television, sometimes a tape recorder.  The strange figure in Death Tube was a cartoon bear, while it was a weird clown looking guy in Saw.  Lessons were also a big thing in both franchises.  The characters were placed into the games because of mistakes in their lives and were meant to learn from them in a deadly way.

Various Tasks

For the second challenge in Death Tube, the characters were given seven tasks.  If they completed four of them within an hour, they would move on.  The tasks included doing 100 curls of a weight, spinning around 10 times and walking across the room, stopping a timer at ten seconds, writing out the prelude to the constitution, hula hooping for a full minute, shoving a nail in their hand, and one other one that I can’t remember.

The idea for this challenge was for the hostages to work as a team.  They needed to use their strengths to clear themselves into the next round.  It involved everyone working together instead of playing only for themselves.  They were trying to survive together.  This is much the same as any movie where a ragtag group of people must use their skills to accomplish a task.  The first that comes to mind is Fast Five, where everyone on the team had a reason for being there.  Some were good drivers.  Others were good with tools.  There was someone good with technology, and another guy who had charm.  Everyone had a purpose and needed to use that purpose to succeed.

Obstacle Course

The obstacle course was straight forward.  The hostages raced through a few small tasks.  They ate a donut, ran across a slippery floor, carried some stacked blocks around, and drank a glass of water.  The slowest died.  This was the first challenge in which the characters were in the same room.  It was also the introduction of the villain as a person in a mascot costume depicting the bear from the television screens in the individual rooms.

The idea behind this challenge was to bring equality to the group.  The people were not supposed to make their lives more important than the others.  One of the rules was that the game would not begin until someone stepped across the red line.  There were no rules saying that they had to step across the red line.  If they didn’t, there just wouldn’t have been a challenge.  It was as simple as that.  But one of the hostages stepped across the line, causing the challenge to commence.  Equality would have had them all safe.  They broke the equality, trying to place themselves in first, second, third, and so on.  They were no longer equals.

Naming Places

This was a game that I am unfamiliar with.  The remaining people had to work out a series of place names and recite them while a balloon was inflated with poison.  Whoever held the balloon when it popped would die.  If they got through all of the names before the balloon popped, they would all be safe.  It was a fatal version of hot potato.  I don’t know where the names came from, though.

There was no real point to this game.  It was building upon the team aspect that had already been covered.  Each person had to know their locations and get the balloon to the next person so that they could live.  The challenge didn’t have much more to it.  It seemed like a quick and easy way to kill another person and dwindle the numbers down.  It wasn’t much of a lesson.

The Question

There’s a little bit of a backstory to this one that gets into some slight spoilers for Death Tube.  I’ll try to be vague.  Basically, there is hope for the characters to be saved by some outside force.  That hope was squandered when the people in charge of the games found out what was happening.  They kidnapped a loved one, and asked one of the “contestants” a tough question about the person.

Honesty was what this game was about.  It was meant to break down one character who had not yet realized the reality of the situation.  There was no hope of someone saving the hostages.  The people in charge were too good at their jobs to let that happen.  They needed to let this character know that there was no savior.  Nobody was going to find them and free them.  They were doomed to participate in the challenges.  This game was a turning point for the main character as he needed to find honesty in his feelings.

The Vote

Like every other game in Death Tube, this was straight forward.  The remaining characters voted on who they wanted to keep in the game.  Any character that got zero votes would be killed.  The people in charge gave each person a piece of paper and they were told to write down the name of one other person in the room.

This was another game about equality.  As long as no two people voted for the same person, everyone would get one vote.  It was as simple as that.  Everyone would get one vote.  Everyone would be equal.  It also required teamwork and honesty, as people needed to work together and be honest with one another to succeed.  By this point, all of the challenges needed to be a culmination of the lessons.  It took all of the previously obtained knowledge to accomplish the task.  It was a mental McGyver.  Kind of like how McGyver would have his few random items and be able to use them to succeed in any scenario, the characters would need to use the few lessons they learned in order to succeed in the game.

The Lottery

The final game was a lottery that would decide life or death.  It was the end of the entire Death Tube experience.  A bunch of sticks were placed in a cup, and the right stick had to be chosen for survival.  Each stick had a letter.  Knowing what letter was right would prevent death and allow escape.  It was a tricky challenge that would involve the characters having paid attention.  The letter was important to what they had been doing throughout the movie.

Forget all of the other lessons that had been learned.  The lesson for the lottery was completely different.  The whole point was revealing that the characters hadn’t helped someone else in the same situation before.  They had been brought into DeathTube because they had refused to give another DeathTube hostage the answer.  They needed to suffer for causing someone’s death by experiencing the same game.  That was the point of the lottery.

Death Tube was about teaching people how to work as a team and be equals.  It was about helping other people without thinking solely about yourself.  That was a noble lesson that was somewhat lost in the weird games and horror setting.  Sure, characters mentioned what the lessons were.  Yes, I picked up on them enough to write this post.  But most people probably went into this movie for the death and dire situations.  They went into it for the horror.  Sometimes when you do that, you focus only on that and the other stuff skips right by.  I know that has happened to me.  You enjoy the movie and don’t care about the message it tries to send.

YouTube had a big influence on Death Tube and how enjoyable it was.  It captured the live aspect more than anything, but was clearly playing off of YouTube’s specific live streaming.  In a world where we are going increasingly into a streaming direction, this movie has the ability to become more important to the horror genre.  It probably won’t, but that doesn’t mean that a remake couldn’t happen.  If done the right way, this could be a great addition to the movie world.  Here’s hoping someone finds this movie and does the idea justice.  We need more horror movies that capitalize on the internet and how computers use it.

Here are a few notes:

• Death Tube was suggested by @NayfHunter.
• Another Japanese movie that I’ve watched for the Sunday “Bad” Movies is Funky Forest: The First Contact.
• Attack of the Super Monsters was an American movie made up of footage from a Japanese television show.
• Have you seen Death Tube?  Did you like it?  How about the other stuff I brought up in this post?  You can talk about any of that in the comments.
• There are many movies out there that I don’t know about.  Let me know.  Suggest them for me to watch.  You can suggest away in the comments or on Twitter.
• If you want to follow me on snapchat, and maybe get some clips of bad movies in my story, find me.  My username is jurassicgriffin.
• Next Sunday’s movie is going to be Little Dead Rotting Hood.  It’s the first movie from 2016 that I will be covering.  It comes from The Asylum, who have made a bunch of movies that I’ve seen.  Wolves, women, and horror.  Get ready.