Little Red Riding Hood is a 1922 cartoon, the first of the Fairy tale-based Laugh-O-Grams and most notable for being the first cartoon for the Laugh-O-Gram Studio. The story was loosely based on the classic story by Charles Perrault. It was released to theaters on July 29, 1922. Long thought to be a lost film until a copy was discovered in a London Film library in 1998.
Synopsis[]
The cartoon begins with a shot of a kitchen, showing a cat, bearing a resemblance to Julius, and Red's Mom, who is kneading some dough on a table. One may notice an old man leaning out of a picture frame on top-right corner of the screen. Red's mom throws a circle of dough into the air so the cat can shoot it with a shotgun, instantly making it into a donut-type pastry. The camera pans on the old man, eagerly watching. Back to the cat and mom, the mom continues to throw the dough circles in the air, with the cat shooting holes into them, as he did with the first one. Another camera pan to the old man laughing at the sight of what's going on. After finishing, the cat fishes for a donut (with an actual fishing pole), eats it, then somewhat dies, with his nine lives going to Heaven and is put on a stretcher by two other cats. The mom then puts the donut-pastries in a basket, walks outside with a whistle. Blowing out off the whistle are dancing-anthropomorphic musical notes. She gives the basket to Red, who goes in her makeshift car consisting of a small dog with a hot-dog wiener so the dog will chase it, making her car go. Seconds after she goes, one of her car's tires go flat. As a substitute for her tire, she blows a donut up like a balloon, then the dog switches the two tires. The camera pans to a man in another vehicle, who hears Red's car horn. When Red pulls up, the man shows her his "Fivver" automobile. Red leaves, the man decides to follow her, another route. The man rides through meadows, small cliffs and even a shallow lake. Red tries to pick a flower, who runs away. The man who parks by Grandma's house goes up to the door and finds a note saying:
- Dear Little Red Riding Hood,
- I have gone to town to see
- the movie.
- Love,
- Grandma
The man crumples the note and throws it away and sneaks into the house with Red right behind. She walks in the house, goes off-screen, only her cries of "HELP!" can be seen coming out of the house. The dog runs away and shows a camera shot of the house jumping and shaking as being viewed by an aviator through binoculars. He then sees Red's dog running down a road. The dog tells the aviator what is going on. The dog and the aviator fly a plane with a fishing hook tied to the bottom which grabs the house up into the air. The man mistakenly drives under the plane, whose hook grabs the man and drops him in the river and the aviator saves Red. Then Red and the aviator kiss each other.
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