Little Red Riding Hood (1995 film)


Little Red Riding Hood is a 48-minute direct-to-video animated film produced by Jetlag Productions. It was distributed by GoodTimes Entertainment and originally released on VHS on July 31, 1995. The film was produced by Mark Taylor and directed by Toshiyuki Hiruma Takashi. Writer George Arthur Bloom adapted the script from Charles Perrault's version of the story of "Little Red Riding Hood". Though it has been released on DVD in many European countries, the film has never been released in that format in the United States. It is the only Jetlag Productions animated film to not have been released on DVD in that country.

Plot

Little Red Riding Hood, named so because of the red riding hood she wears, loves her grandmother. She's asked by her kind mother to take a basket of cakes and jam to her ill grandmother, who lives at the other side of the big woods. Her mother warns her to be careful and not to talk to strangers, and to walk straight to her grandmother's house without any distractions; the young girl promises to obey her mother and is on her way. However, Little Red Riding Hood has a hard time obeying her mother when she first hears the crying of a sad deer in the forest. The small creature had forgotten his mother's birthday and was very disappointed. Little Red Riding Hood gives her new friend a suggestion to make his mother a lovely bouquet of wild flowers, which he does happily. As she continues walking through the forest, the young girl meets another new friend, a pretty bird who is very talented at singing, but whose wing is wounded. Little Red Riding Hood encourages the bird not to be afraid, and when he finds the ability to fly without being scared and thus returns to his family, the grateful bird rewards the girl by teaching her how to whistle, telling her to do so should she ever be in danger. Finally, Little Red Hood meets a large family of beavers that are trying to build a dam but lack organization skills. Little Red Hood offers to help, and though she is first turned away, the beavers finally accept. Working together, they learn about teamwork and their dam is finished in no time. The young girl bids her new friends farewell, and they too promise to return the favor someday. Little Red Riding Hood's friends come to her rescue when upon reaching her grandmother's house, she meets the terrible wolf that she had been told was wandering around in the woods. Working together once again, the girl and her animal friends manage to defeat the wolf, and rescue the grandmother, who'd been put away in order to be served as dessert, learning many valuable lessons from the experience.

Voices

As a common rule in Jetlag Productions' films, Little Red Riding Hood featured a total of three original songs sung by off-screen voices: