15 Favorite Horror Movies: The Company of Wolves (1984)

This must have been on the shelves in the video store I worked in as a teenager, because I remember seeing it dozens of times in the '80s. I was so in love with the gothic aesthetic and the fairy tale and the werewolves and just the sheer weirdness of the plot. And maybe a little bit with Sarah Patterson, the actor who plays Red Riding Hood.

It was directed by avant-garde filmmaker Neil Jordan (his second film) and it feels deeply personal. Jordan worked with novelist Angela Carter to adapt her short story by the same name. The structure is cool and strange with Patterson playing a modern girl named Rosaleen who's sleeping and dreaming about her and her family in medieval times. In the dream, her older sister (whom she doesn't get along with in the real world) is killed by wolves, sending the forest village into a panic. David Warner plays her dad, Swedish actor Tusse Silberg plays her mother, and Angela Lansbury is her grandmother who of course lives deep in the woods by herself.

Inspired by the local interest in wolves, Grandmother tells Rosaleen lots of stories about wolves (which always turn out to be werewolves) and these are enacted on screen as well. So there are all of these stories within a dream, turning The Company of Wolves into sort of an anthology film. There's a werewolf transformation in every one and they're all different from each other and original. I don't think I've seen anything like them before or since.

The locations and sets in the film are wonderfully atmospheric and captivating, both the modern day manor and the medieval forest village. And Jordan does a great job depicting the wolves as both frighteningly deadly and alluringly social creatures, usually at the same time. Some films seem like they were made specifically with you in mind. This is one of mine.

Fairy Tale Friday | Fables, Part 3: Bag O' Bones

Fables #11 was a departure from the multi-issue story arc format as well as from the genre-hopping nature of the series. Rather than put fairy tale characters in a non-traditional genre like a murder mystery, the single-issue tale goes back in time to retell a couple of trickster stories from the Civil War. Fables has mashed them together and cast them with Jack as the "hero," but it's still straight up folklore.

Not that that's necessarily a problem. If you're familiar with these kinds of stories, Jack's 19th century adventures feel authentic if also not exactly original (because they aren't). The issue's an entertaining diversion with its personifications of the devil and death and Jack trying to outwit both, but I remember being eager to get back to present-day New York for more with Snow White, Bigby Wolf, and their neighbors.

The Fairy Tale Project | Fables, Part 2: Animal Farm

The second story in Fables takes a hard turn away from the murder mystery of the first story. Having established the human community in New York City, the series moves upstate to visit the remote farm where all the talking animals and other non-human fairy tale characters live. And since it's literally an Animal Farm, what better genre to explore than a political allegory a la George Orwell?

The story has Snow White going to check on the farm, because its human overseer hasn't reported in a while. And since the events of the previous story revealed a catastrophic rift in Snow's relationship with her sister Rose Red, Snow takes Rose along with her so that they can talk. Upon arriving at the farm though, they quickly learn that all is not well and that the farm's inhabitants are extremely dissatisfied with the human government of the fables community. Like, full-on revolution dissatisfied.

As much as I enjoy the mystery of the first story, the talking animals in this one are even more my bag. The Three Pigs, Three Bears and Goldilocks, Reynard the Fox, and the Jungle Book characters are all major players in the drama. This was the story that completely hooked me on the series back in the day.

The Fairy Tale Project | The Ice Storm (1997)

Who's in it?: Kevin Kline (Silverado, A Fish Called Wanda, Disney's The Hunchback of Notre Dame), Joan Allen (the Bourne movies), Sigourney Weaver (Alien, Ghostbusters, Working Girl, Snow White: A Tale of Terror, Galaxy Quest, The Village), Christina Ricci (The Addams Family, Casper, Gold Diggers: The Secret of Bear Mountain, Little Red Riding Hood, Sleepy Hollow, Speed Racer), Elijah Wood (The Lord of the Rings), Tobey Maguire (The Cider House Rules, Spider-Man, Seabiscuit, Satan’s Alley), David Krumholtz (Addams Family Values, 10 Things I Hate About You), Katie Holmes (Batman Begins), Henry Czerny (Clear and Present Danger, Mission: Impossible), and Allison Janney (Miracle on 34th Street, 10 Things I Hate About You, Spy)

What's it about?: Two families in the 1970s struggle with the effects of the sexual revolution over the course of a Thanksgiving weekend.

How is it?: This popped onto my radar because of the fairy tale project I'm working on and a connection the film has to the story of "Little Red Riding Hood." It's not a fun or easy movie to watch, but it's good and thought-provoking. I like it, but it's not something I'll rewatch often.

By coincidence, I watched it closely after seeing One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest for the first time. That was a cool juxtaposition of themes. Cuckoo’s Nest is a '70s film that documents society's questioning the rules and boundaries of the '50s and early '60s. Jack Nicholson plays a convict who's placed in a psychiatric ward for observation to see if he's actually mentally ill or just acting out. While he's there, he clashes with the head nurse on the ward, a no-nonsense, authoritarian woman who holds tight control over her patients and resents the element of chaos that Nicholson brings to her life. She represents the establishment, Nicholson represents American culture's push back against it, and the film presents both the uplifting and heart-breaking consequences of that conflict.

The Ice Storm, on the other hand, is a '90s film that looks back at the '70s and questions the wisdom of jettisoning all those rules and boundaries without replacing them with something else. The film is primarily interested in attitudes around sex, so the two families at the center of the story all struggle with that in various ways. Some of the adults are questioning the value of fidelity in marriage just as their teenage children are beginning to experiment with each other's bodies. But rather than feeling liberated by their new sexual freedom, the various characters are as trapped and unhappy as anyone in a '50s suburban melodrama.

The film gave me a lot to think about and it's presented extremely well with great acting and Ang Lee's typically excellent direction. I especially love the metaphors. For starters there's the symbolism of the ice storm itself that moves in over the weekend and makes everyone's life more dangerous. It suggests that navigating sex without rules is like walking or driving on ice. It feels exhilarating, but it's also an easy way to get hurt.

But more appropriate to my fairy tale project is that one of the families is named Hood and a couple of the teenage characters (Christina Ricci and Elijah Wood) wear red hoods throughout the film. Of course that calls Little Red Riding Hood to mind with the implication being that '70s America has naively wandered off the path and found itself in deep trouble.

One of my favorite relationships in the film is between Ricci's character Wendy and her dad, Ben, played by Kevin Kline. Ben is having an affair with their next door neighbor (Sigourney Weaver), but is very upset about catching Wendy fooling around with the neighbor's son (Elijah Wood). This strains their relationship and Ben has a hard time figuring out the appropriate way to feel about it. Wendy seems very grown-up and rational and Ben is the emotional one, so how can he parent her under those conditions? Especially when he has no moral high ground to stand on? So late in the movie after a big argument, they're walking home and Wendy intentionally steps in a big puddle just to show that she doesn't care and can do whatever she wants. They argue a bit more and the conversation goes nowhere until Ben asks her if she's cold and wants him to carry her. It's my favorite part of the movie when she agrees and climbs into his arms.

I don't love it because the parent has triumphed over the child. Ben doesn't even think of it as a victory. It's just a sweet, quiet moment where they both pull back from the freedom they've been so eager to explore and allow themselves the comfort of a structured relationship. That can't last forever and they both know it, but it's beautiful in the moment. 

Rating: Three out of five modern Red Riding Hoods

The Fairy Tale Project | Fables, Part 1: Legends in Exile

Writer Bill Willingham wasn't the first to mash various fairy tale characters together into a single story: The 10th Kingdom and Shrek being two notable, earlier examples and from just a year or two before. But he was the first to do it as an exercise that took the original stories seriously and tried to imagine what it might actually be like for these characters to interact in a shared world. Like in The 10th Kingdom, Willingham uproots the characters from their traditional homelands and replants them in modern New York City, but that's where the similarities end.

Willingham is interested in exploring these characters through a variety of genres, starting with a good, old-fashioned murder mystery. As the comic book series Fables opens, the classic fairy tale characters have been driven out of their traditional homelands by a mysterious and nameless Adversary. Some have been able to hold onto their wealth, but many haven't. Those who can pass for human live together in a Manhattan neighborhood called Fabletown. Those who can't (talking animals, gingerbread men, etc.) have to live somewhere else. Willingham gets to that later. The first story, "Legends in Exile," focuses on the human fables and an apparent murder that takes place among them.

The mayor of Fabletown is Old King Cole, but it's actually Snow White who runs the day-to-day operations. And the Big Bad Wolf (changed to human form through magic and nicknamed "Bigby") is the community's sheriff. The plot kicks off when Jack (of Beanstalk and Giant-Killing fame) comes to Bigby with the report that his girlfriend Rose Red has gone missing and there's blood all over her apartment. The story follows Bigby's investigation and it's pretty great as he knowingly hits all the beats of a classic detective story and calls attention to them in a meta way as he does. He doesn't get many opportunities to play this role and he's having as much fun investigating as Willingham clearly is writing it.

But the coolest thing about the series is Willingham's decision to conserve the number of characters by consolidating them when possible. So Bigby was not only the being who tried to seduce and murder Red Riding Hood, he was also the one who terrorized the Three Little Pigs. Any fairy story with a Jack as a main character (and there are a lot): those were the same person. In fairy tales, Snow White of the Seven Dwarfs is a different person from the one in "Snow White and Rose Red," but not in Fables. And you know how Snow White, Cinderella, and Sleeping Beauty all got married to a Prince Charming? Same guy. He may be charming, but he's also super unfaithful.

"Legends in Exile" introduces a ton of characters. Too many to mention them all, but some of my favorites are Beauty and the Beast, the Frog Prince (who works as a janitor at the Fabletown offices), Little Boy Blue (Snow White's assistant), and Bluebeard (the infamous wife-murderer who's still a terrifyingly threatening presence). Former villains like Bluebeard and Bigby are protected by a unity-encouraging amnesty that prevents them from being punished for any crimes they committed before the Exile.

There's a lot here, but it's just a hint at an even deeper world and mysteries that Willingham and his collaborating artists (Lan Medina in this first story) will eventually reveal. I read up to a certain point as the comics originally came out, but I'm looking forward to finally finishing the story as part of this fairy tale project I'm working on.

The Fairy Tale Project | Keeping Fairy Tales Fluid

I've started reading The Annotated Classic Fairy Tales, edited by Maria Tatar, and something jumped out at me in her Introduction. It has to do with the advantages of oral storytelling and the dangers of canonizing specific versions in an archive.

It's great that people like Charles Perrault and the Grimm Brothers recorded versions of fairy tales for posterity, but we lose something when we sit down alone to read a story that way. Hans Christian Andersen was famous for crafting his own fairy tales, but he also loved to read existing fairy tales to children and he was quite animated about it. He put his own personality into the telling and kids loved to listen to him.

Tatar writes, "Reading these stories (in the way Andersen did) is a way of reclaiming them, turning them into our cultural stories by inflecting them in new ways and in some cases rescripting what happened." She goes on to say, "The fairy tales in (The Annotated Classic Fairy Tales) did not require editorial intervention in an earlier age, precisely because they were brought up to date by their tellers and tailored to the cultural context in which they were told."

In other words, the reason that so many earlier versions existed is because oral storytellers kept changing them based on the needs and interests of a) them as storytellers and b) their audiences. That's a "no duh" kind of statement, but the implication of it hit me in a new way. If I only know one version of "Little Red Riding Hood" from a specific book and I only tell my child that one version of the story, then I'm limiting the kind of experience he can have. Knowing other variations helps parents adapt the stories for - and more importantly, with - their kids. For instance, the fates of Cinderella's stepsisters and Little Red Riding Hood are very different from version to version, even just from Perrault to Grimm. Which is the "correct" or "true" version is up to the teller, but also the hearer.

Different hearers focus on different things from the same story. According to Tatar, Angela Carter heard "Little Red Riding Hood" and giggled when her grandmother pretended to gobble her up while telling it. Luciano Pavarotti connected to the horror of it, saying, "I identified with Little Red Riding Hood. I had the same fears as she. I didn't want her to die." Charles Dickens wrote that Red was his "first love" and that "I felt that if I could have married Little Red Riding Hood, I should have known perfect bliss." Is "Little Red Riding Hood" a thrilling adventure, a horror story, or a romance? It can be all three and more, especially if the teller is observant enough to know what the listener wants to take away from it and is willing to modify it accordingly.

When I think about this as a writer, I get a little uncomfortable with it, because it gets very close to the attitude of fan entitlement. But collaboration between teller and hearer in an oral story is different from a reader (or viewer) demanding specific details in a piece of finished art. For one thing, the collaboration in oral fairy tales is traditionally between an adult and a child. And the adult did not create the story from whole cloth to begin with. There's no sense of ownership by the teller, so when they give the story to the child, the act is all about giving the child what she wants to receive. It's a selfless act, as is so much of good parenting. It's a very different thing when a storyteller presents her story to an adult audience as a finished piece of art and the audience childishly demands something other than what they've been given. The teller/hearer agreement is not the same in both situations.

Back to fairy tales, the very act of writing them down changes the teller/hearer relationship. With a written version, the teller is no longer the parent, but the person who wrote it down. The hearer is still the hearer, but there's no way to literally change the story as it's being told. That kind of action is done internally by the hearer as she develops her own head canon. Which is the same kind of thing we do with Star Wars and Game of Thrones. It's a valid activity (within limits), but it's not the same as interacting directly with the storyteller as the story is being told.

The Fairy Tale Project | Snow White: The Fairest of Them All (2001)

Who's in it?: Miranda Richardson (Sleepy Hollow, Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire), Vera Farmiga (Up in the Air, The Conjuring, Bates Motel, Godzilla: King of the Monsters), Kristin Kreuk (Smallville), Clancy Brown (Highlander, Shoot to Kill, Carnivàle), Vincent Schiavelli (The Adventures of Buckaroo Banzai Across the 8th Dimension, Better Off Dead...), Michael J Anderson (Twin Peaks, Carnivàle), Warwick Davis (Return of the Jedi, Willow), and Martin Klebba (Corky Romano, Pirates of the Caribbean, Scrubs, Mirror Mirror).

What's it about?: An Everything But the Kitchen Sink version of the fairy tale.

How is it?: I almost gave up a couple of times, but finished the film out of sheer stubbornness. Miranda Richardson is pretty great as the Queen and so is Vera Farmiga as one of her disguises, but Kristin Kreuk, while heart-breakingly beautiful, is also heart-breakingly empty as Snow White. She gives nothing to the performance and there's no way for me to connect to the character.

And even though she's fun, I don't connect to the Queen either, because unlike other versions and the original fairy tale, she's not trying to hold onto what her culture values about women. There's no social commentary, she's just evil and greedy. She doesn't actually care about what the King thinks of her; she's just trying to take over the kingdom. Boring.

I guess someone could argue that that's a more feminist take, but I'd argue back that it's not, because it doesn't actually address feminist issues. And that's not even considering that the power the Queen uses in her attempted coup comes from her older brother (Clancy Brown) who I guess is a genie or something?

The genie is indicative of my biggest problem with the film, which is that it just keeps layering on random elements for no reason. Like how the prince gets turned into a bear and then shrunk and put into a snow globe. Or how the dwarfs are named after days of the week, given the corresponding personalities from the "Monday's Child" song, then color-coded so that together they make a rainbow, but then they can actually turn into a rainbow and use it to travel long distances. Any one of these things could be interesting if there was a point to it, but it's all just thrown on top of the story without any consideration for what the story becomes.

I disliked the movie, but I'd have hated it more if not for Richardson and Farmiga's clearly having fun as their versions of the Queen. And the dwarf casting was pretty great, too. In an instance where a random, unexpected detail actually worked, Vincent Schiavelli is thrown in as one of the dwarfs alongside favorites Martin Klebba, Warwick Davis, and Michael J Anderson.

Rating: Two out of five Evil Farmigas.

The Fairy Tale Project | The 10th Kingdom (2000)

Who's in it?: Kimberly Williams-Paisley (Father of the Bride), Dianne Wiest (The Lost Boys, Bullets Over Broadway, Practical Magic), John Larroquette (Night Court, Star Trek III: The Search for Spock), Ed O'Neill (Married... with Children, Modern Family), Rutger Hauer (Nighthawks, Blade Runner, Ladyhawke, The Hitcher, Wanted: Dead or Alive, Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Sin City), Dawnn Lewis (A Different World), Ann-Margret (The Flintstones, Stagecoach, The Train Robbers, The Villain, Grumpy Old Men), and Warwick Davis (Return of the Jedi, Willow).

What's it about?: An evil queen (Wiest) turns a prince into a dog so that she can take over his kingdom, but he escapes through a portal to modern day New York City (aka the 10th Kingdom) where he meets a young woman (Williams-Paisley) and her shiftless father (Larroquette).

How is it?: This TV miniseries has been recommended to me for a while by friends and family who know my fondness for fairy tales. And I was super excited by the cast, especially Williams-Paisley because I love the '90s Father of the Bride movies and she's great in them. I was also curious about its being an early example of fairy tale mashups before that became a popular thing to do. It predates Shrek by a year, the Fables comic by two, and Once Upon a Time by over a decade.

Sadly, I couldn't finish the first episode. It's not really a mashup of known characters. The evil queen is generic and the prince she's fighting is Snow White's grandson. The "wolf" (Scott Cohen) she sends to New York in pursuit of the escaped prince is also generic. I see from the cast list that characters named Snow White and Cinderella (Ann-Margret) eventually show up, but I didn't get that far. The lack of specific fairy tale characters was a minor issue though compared to the overall tone of the story.

It's very silly and full of slapstick. The Queen sends two parties to New York: first a group of trolls (one of whom is Dawnn Lewis) and then the wolf (changed into human form) that I mentioned before. The trolls are bumbling; no threat at all. The wolf is more persistent and successful, but he quickly "falls in love" with Williams-Paisley's character, by which I mean that his desire to eat her conflicts with his desire to have sex with her. That could make some fascinating drama and commentary on the Red Riding Hood story if it was at all taken seriously, but it's not and the wolf is just ridiculous. Reading ahead, I see that Williams-Paisley later falls in love with him, which is a development I'm not curious to see. Even if he weren't super creepy, he's still dumb and weird. I couldn't get into any of these characters or their story.

Rating: Two out of five Annie Banks.



Addendum: I've been hammering hard on these entries to get ready for the next Filthy Horrors recording, but a couple of things have happened to make me slow down. One is that we're recording the fairy tale episode earlier than I originally thought, so I don't have as much time as I thought I would. The other thing though is that the next thing I'm planning to watch is Shrek, which has its charms, but is more silliness right on the heels of The 10th Kingdom. Frankly, my enthusiasm is a bit deflated. There's still some stuff in the queue that I'm super curious and excited about, so I'm going to keep this project going, but I'm not going to try to get it all done before we record the FH episode. So this is the last entry probably for a week or so until I get past some other deadlines.

The Fairy Tale Project | Ever After: A Cinderella Story (1998)

Who's in it?: Drew Barrymore (E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial, The Wedding Singer, Charlie's Angels, Whip It), Anjelica Huston (Lonesome Dove, The Addams Family, John Wick: Chapter 3), Dougray Scott (Mission: Impossible II, but not X-Men), Patrick Godfrey (A Room with a View), Melanie Lynskey (Over the Garden Wall, Castle Rock), Timothy West (I know him from an adaptation of Bleak House, but he also played the same character as Patrick Godfrey in a TV version of A Room with a View), Jeroen Krabbé (The Living Daylights, The Fugitive), and Toby Jones (Captain America: The First Avenger, The Hunger Games).

What's it about?: The "real" events that inspired the Cinderella legend.

How is it?: First of all, I love Drew Barrymore. I'm a big fan. And Angelica Huston is amazing as the stepmother who had the potential to become a good person if only she'd spent more time with Cinderella (called Danielle here) and her father (Krabbé). Huston's character clearly cares about her new husband, but loses him too quickly and the blended family never blends.

The entire cast is great and I love the weird addition of Leonardo da Vinci (Godfrey) to the story as a sort of romantic adviser to the prince (Scott). I mean, I disagree entirely with da Vinci's assertion that there is only one potential soul mate for each person, but he's such a charming, well-intentioned character and his ultimate advice is exactly what we want the prince to hear. And he makes boat shoes for walking on water.

I also like that Danielle's sisters aren't a homogeneous unit, but have their own personalities and that their mother has a favorite between them. It's not Lynskey's character and the result is that she gets a nice arc that most Cinderella stepsisters don't.

The deconstructive take is a fun experiment that succeeds. There's no fairy godmother, but Danielle has plenty of support to become her own fairy helper (including wings) and get herself to the ball. And it's cool that the whole thing is told in flashback by a descendant of Danielle to the Brothers Grimm, making this sort of an unofficial sequel to Terry Gilliam's movie about them.

The only think I don't like is that Ever After uses a standard romantic comedy plot to structure Danielle and the Prince's relationship around. It does this very well, but it's still annoying that their relationship is built on a lie she tells and that his discovering it leads to a tragic separation, followed by a dramatic apology and reunion. Again, the movie is really effective at pulling that off, but the predictability of it bruises an otherwise great adaptation.

Rating: Four out of five actually sooty Cinderellas.

The Fairy Tale Project | The Wonderful World of Disney: "Cinderella" (1997)

Who's in it?: Brandy Norwood (I Still Know What You Did Last Summer), Whitney Houston (The Bodyguard, The Preacher's Wife), Paolo Montalban (Mortal Kombat: Conquest), Bernadette Peters (The Jerk, Annie, Faerie Tale Theatre), Jason Alexander (Seinfeld, The Hunchback of Notre Dame, The Orville), Whoopi Goldberg (The Color Purple, Jumpin' Jack Flash, Star Trek: The Next Generation), and Victor Garber (Alias, Justice, Eli Stone, The Orville).

What's it about?: An updated version of the Rogers and Hammerstein televised musical.

How is it?: The Disney version makes some huge improvements over the original 1957 broadcast. First, it racially diversifies the cast in cool ways. It has King Victor Garber married to Queen Whoopi Goldberg in order to beget Prince Paolo Montalban and it just doesn't care how that works out genetically. It's a fairy tale. Likewise, stepmother Bernadette Peters' biological daughters are of different races. There are ways to explain that logically if you want to, but the story accepts it as normal. I like that a lot.

The production also fixes some of my issues with the way Cinderella herself was presented in the '57 version. Julie Andrews' character was especially powerless and I hated her song about how her only refuge is to retreat into "my own little corner in my own little chair." Turns out, Andrews and director Ralph Nelson affected my opinion about that more than I realized by having Cinderella sing the song mostly from her little chair. She felt very small and defeated. Brandy on the other hand (under the direction of Robert Iscove) is energetic and animated. She sings about being trapped, but she's bouncing all over the kitchen as she does it. She's not exactly subverting the lyrics, but she does demonstrate that she hasn't entirely given in yet, unlike Andrews.

Disney's version similarly overhauls the scene where Cinderella and her fairy godmother sing about the usefulness of wishing. In '57, Cinderella comes up with the outlandish ideas of hoping that a pumpkin turns into a carriage, etc., and then defends her dream to her apparently skeptical godmother. In '97, the godmother (Houston) plants the idea in Cinderella's head and nudges her towards the solutions she's looking for. The godmother is very much trying to get Cinderella to make decisions and take actions by herself.

That's similar to how Shelley Duvall's version of the story went, too. Houston's character insists that Cinderella is perfectly capable of winning the Prince over and escaping her horrible home life by herself (and those two goals aren't even necessarily connected); the godmother just gives her a supportive push.

As a production, the '97 version is top notch. The sets are great, the choreography around the songs is dynamic, and the whole cast is colorful and fun. I haven't mentioned Jason Alexander's role yet, but he's the royal... I don't know, steward? Party planner? Sidekick? He was a Grand Duke in the classic animated version. The guy in charge of planning the ball and eventually tracking down the owner of the glass slipper with the prince. Alexander is great as the stuffy, but sarcastic servant who deftly manages all the royal whims and protects the prince from the stepmother and her daughters at the ball.

Rating: Four out of five Bernadette Frickin' Peters

The Fairy Tale Project | Little Red Riding Hood (1997)

Who's in it?: Christina Ricci (The Addams Family, Casper, Sleepy Hollow, Speed Racer)

What's it about?: A short, artsy adaptation of "Little Red Riding Hood."

How is it?: I love the artfulness of it, but I've heard other viewers describe it as pretentious. It's more or less a silent film, narrated with a voiceover instead of having title cards. And it's filmed in black-and-white. But the most controversial choice is probably having ballet danseur Timour Bourtasenkov play the wolf. In the fairy tale, the wolf is a hyper-masculine figure to the point that some interpreters see his devouring Red as an allegory for rape. In contrast, Bourtasenkov's movements are sensual and seductive. He's wooing Red; not forcing her.

And Red reciprocates. Ricci is the perfect actor for this and seduces the wolf right back beneath a veneer of innocence. This isn't a Red who's learning to be wary. She's already quite confident and resourceful.

There's precedence for this interpretation in the oral tradition of the story. In The Annotated Brothers Grimm, Maria Tatar talks about a 19th century French version of the tale in which Red performs a striptease for the wolf and then escapes by going outside to relieve herself. In another version, the wolf puts parts of Grandmother in the pantry and invites Red to help herself, which she does. All of these things happen in this film. Red is especially deliberate and intentional about taking a bite of the Grandmother stew. She has the wolf exactly where she wants him.

Stories are funny creatures and oral stories have especially strange histories. It's easy to pin down Charles Perrault's point because he spells it out for you in his morals. And once you know what mattered to the Grimms, it's not that hard to figure out what they wanted their audiences to learn either. But nameless storytellers across a wide range of history are tougher to define. Was Red originally a trickster character who was modified by Perrault and the Grimms to become more innocent? Or was she initially innocent, but changed by some storytellers who wanted a more kickass version? Fortunately, there's a book by Catherine Orenstein called Little Red Riding Hood Uncloaked that can potentially answer that. The subtitle is "Sex, Morality, And The Evolution Of A Fairy Tale." I haven't read it, but I'm going to.

Rating: Four out of five Red Riding Riccis.

The Fairy Tale Project | The Grimm Brothers' Snow White, or Snow White: A Tale of Terror (1997)

Who's in it?: Sigourney Weaver (Alien, Ghostbusters, Galaxy Quest, The Village), Sam Neill (Jurassic Park, Crusoe, Hunt for the Wilderpeople), and Monica Keena (While You Were Sleeping).

What's it about?: A widowed nobleman (Neill) marries an insecure woman (Weaver) with dark powers, but his daughter (Keena) is less than welcoming to her new stepmother, instigating a series of horrifying tragedies and betrayals.

How is it?: I'm not clear on which name came first, but the print I watched has The Grimm Brothers' Snow White in the titles and that's also the name on what appears to be the original poster (above). Every place else though, it's called Snow White: A Tale of Terror. But even though IMDb lists that as the "original title," it feels like a post-release marketing move; letting home video audiences know that this is a dark, horrific version of the classic fairy tale. Whichever was first, I like the version with the Grimms' name, because Michael Cohn's film is clearly working from their version as his inspiration.

Like in the Grimms' story, Weaver's character is the protagonist, at least at first. She's not a queen, nor are Neill and Keena a king or princess. This is a grounded version of the story that keeps the fantastical elements to a minimum. Snow White is never called Snow White, she's just Lilli Hoffman. Her father is Frederick Hoffman and her stepmother is named Claudia. The Hoffmans are wealthy, live in a castle, and are clearly influential in their area, but they aren't royalty. And though Claudia is a witch with a mirror, her powers have more to do with potions and sympathetic magic than actual sorcery. Her mirror's power is ultimately undefined, but the film leaves open multiple interpretations about it. I like to think that it's all in Claudia's head, but that's a tough reading considering that the mirror does affect another person at one point.

Claudia clearly enters her new marriage with good intentions, but when she's rejected by young Lili (played by a 12-year-old actor named Taryn Davis in those scenes) and Frederick continues to dote on his daughter and talk about how much she reminds him of his deceased wife, Claudia's low self-esteem becomes unmanageable and she starts plotting ways to increase her security in her new home. This is very much in line with the motivations suggested in the Grimms' story and it's impossible not to feel sorry for Claudia until she takes things too far.

There's no huntsman in this version. Instead, Claudia has a brother whom she orders to murder Lili. And when Lili escapes, she discovers a secret hideout in the forest belonging not to dwarfs, but to a group of bandits, many of whom have been unjustly outlawed and outcast for various reasons. Some of them have deformities, which causes Lily to question the value of physical beauty.

And that's the real message of the film. Lili has grown up hearing that she's beautiful, including the story about how her mom wished for her after seeing red blood on the white snow through a black window frame. The story of the wish is straight from the Grimms, but in the film it's a childish tale meant to make Lili feel loved and connected to her mother. Add that to a thousand other attentions and Lili becomes a bit spoiled and focused on physical attractiveness. Which then combats explosively with Claudia's hangups about beauty. By the end of the film, Lili has taken over as protagonist, because she's the one who learns something from these experiences.

This is never going to be a definitive version for me, because of all the deconstruction it does to the fairy tale, but it's a fascinating and powerful take.

Rating: Four out of five Sandra Bullock's sisters-in-law.

The Fairy Tale Project | Freeway (1996)

Who's in it?: Reese Witherspoon (Friends, Legally Blonde, Monsters vs. Aliens), Kiefer Sutherland (The Lost Boys, Young Guns, The Three Musketeers, 24), Dan Hedaya (Cheers, The Addams Family, Alien Resurrection), Brooke Shields (The Blue Lagoon, Brenda Starr, Suddenly Susan), Brittany Murphy (Sin City), and Bokeem Woodbine (Underground, Spider-Man: Homecoming).

What's it about?: A modern version of "Red Riding Hood" in which a teenage girl has to deal with a metaphorical wolf on her way to her grandmother's house.

How is it?: Much darker than I expected, but that's probably on me. "Red Riding Hood" is a dark story to begin with.

Witherspoon plays an illiterate teenager named Vanessa Lutz who refuses to go back into the foster care system when her mom is arrested (again) for prostitution and drug possession. Vanessa steals a car and heads to the Interstate to find her grandmother, whom she's never met, in hopes of being able to stay with her. But when her car breaks down, she's given a lift by a seemingly kindly child psychologist (Sutherland) who turns out to be a serial killer. And then it gets weird.

There was a point in the film where it felt like everything was wrapping up, but it seemed early, so I checked the time. The film was only half over. To talk about this, I need to spoil a couple of things, but I won't talk about anything from the final act. If you think you might want to watch it though and remain completely clean going in, stop reading now. Otherwise, I have more to say about the plot and some of the themes of the film. I ended up liking the movie.

SPOILERS BELOW

About halfway through the film (not even quite that), Vanessa gets away from Bob Wolverton (Sutherland) and shoots him a bunch of times. I mean, a bunch of times. She'd prefer to turn him in, but he's convinced her that it would be her word against his and that people would believe him. Class discrimination is a big theme of the film with Vanessa as a poster child for the disadvantaged. She's uneducated and has her own criminal background, but she's smart, brave, and oh so very capable of taking care of herself. At any rate, she believes that killing Bob is the only way to prevent him from hurting more girls.

Unfortunately, Bob lives. He's severely disfigured, but that and his upper-middle class status - with his attractive, supportive wife (Shields) as his spokesperson - enables him to claim victimhood from Vanessa. The sheriff (Hedaya) arrests her, there's a trial, she goes to jail... and the movie keeps going. (Woodbine has a small role as Vanessa's boyfriend; I just wanted to mention him in the Who's In It? because I really like that guy.)

Writer/director Matthew Bright made it really tough to root for Vanessa unconditionally. She's had a really tough life and I empathize with her a lot, but she ends up hurting some people that I wish she hadn't (not Bob; he deserves everything). I feel like that's Bright's point though and I enjoyed the conundrum that he and Witherspoon put me in. Vanessa is a great character, even if she isn't a total hero.

Rating: Three out of five badass Reese Witherspoons.

The Fairy Tale Project | Snow White (1987)

Who's in it?: Diana Rigg (The Avengers, On Her Majesty's Secret Service, The Great Muppet Caper), Sarah Patterson (The Company of Wolves), and Billy Barty (Legend, Masters of the Universe, Willow).

What's it about?: A surprisingly faithful adaptation of the Grimm Brothers' story by way of Rankin-Bass specials and '80s fantasy movies.

How is it?: I wanted to see this because it's the one other thing that Sarah Patterson did in the '80s besides The Company of Wolves. And of course Diana Rigg as the Queen was irresistible. Billy Barty as one of the dwarfs sounded promising, too. I love him in Legend.

I got real nervous when the first character broke into song though. And a pretty bad song at that. This was made by Cannon Films, the notoriously low budget company, during the Golan-Globus era when they were cranking out stuff like Delta Force, the Sho Kosugi ninja trilogy, and Breakin’ 2: Electric Boogaloo. Not that those aren't all fun and great in their own ways. It just demonstrates the level of quality we're talking about here. And indeed their Snow White is fun and great in its own way, too.

That first song was horrible and none of the songs would make it into a Disney film, but a lot of them are charming enough. The best of them are about the same level of quality as a Rankin-Bass Christmas special. Any time the dwarfs sing is pretty cool and Snow White herself has a couple of good numbers. If that's really Patterson's singing voice, I don't know why she didn't have a longer career.

The dwarfs are pretty awesome in an '80s fantasy movie way. They look terrifying in the poster above, but the filmmakers spent some money on makeup, so the dwarfs are more than just costumes. They're charmingly acted, quite physical, and just generally a joy to watch.

Patterson is also good, though she's only in the last third of the movie. Snow White as a child is played by a younger, equally good actor named Nicola Stapleton who's gone on to have a successful TV career in the UK. She stays in the film up to when Snow White discovers the dwarfs' cottage; at which point years pass and she grows into Patterson. That interpretation is possible in the Grimms' story, which is vague about Snow White's age. She appears to be a young girl when the Queen orders her death, but is clearly of marrying age by the end. Where the growth takes place is open to interpretation and I like that this version makes an unusual choice with it.

In most ways Cannon's version sticks very close to the Grimms; sometimes to its disadvantage. Snow White comes across pretty dumb when she falls for all three of the Queen's appearances at the cottage. The Queen wears different disguises in each, but Snow White ridiculously takes the dwarfs' warnings extremely literally, so if they say, "Don't let anyone in the house," Snow White thinks it's fine to stand in the door and let a stranger comb her hair. This is absolutely in keeping with Snow White's intelligence in the Grimms' story, but I expect better out of adaptations.

And while Riggs' Queen is deliciously campy, the script isn't at all interested in her motivations as an actual human being. We're told up front that she's Evil and so she is. She's vain of course, but that's as deep as it goes. Similarly, the hunter decides not to kill Snow White for no other reason than because that's how the story goes.

With all this faithfulness to the source material, I was looking forward to seeing if the Queen would die by dancing herself to death in hot, iron shoes, but sadly the film doesn't go that far. It does have her show up at the wedding and die there, but it's due to a mistake she's made in her own anger, not because Snow and the Prince take revenge. It's satisfying, but like so much else with the film, it's not all that it could have been.

Rating: Three out of five droll dwarves.

The Fairy Tale Project | The Company of Wolves (1984)

Who's in it?: Angela Lansbury (Gaslight, Bedknobs and Broomsticks, Murder, She Wrote) David Warner (Time Bandits, the George C Scott Christmas Carol, Star Treks V and VI), and Stephen Rea (The Crying Game, The Musketeer, Underworld Awakening)

What's it about?: A sleeping girl (Sarah Patterson) dreams of another life in which she experiences an expanded version of the events of Little Red Riding Hood.

How is it?: This must have been on the shelves in the video store I worked in as a teenager, because I remember seeing it dozens of times in the '80s. I was so in love with the gothic aesthetic and the fairy tale and the werewolves and just the sheer weirdness of the plot. And maybe a little bit with Patterson herself.

It was directed by avant-garde filmmaker Neil Jordan (his second film) and it feels deeply personal. Jordan worked with novelist Angela Carter to adapt her short story by the same name. The structure is cool and strange with Patterson playing a modern girl named Rosaleen who's sleeping and dreaming about her and her family in medieval times. In the dream, her older sister (whom she doesn't get along with in real life) is killed by wolves, sending the forest village into a panic. David Warner plays her dad, Swedish actor Tusse Silberg plays her mother, and Angela Lansbury is her grandmother who of course lives deep in the woods by herself.

Inspired by the local interest in wolves, Grandmother tells Rosaleen lots of stories about wolves (which always turn out to be werewolves) and these are enacted on screen as well. So there are all of these stories within a dream, turning The Company of Wolves into sort of an anthology film. There's a werewolf transformation in every one and they're all different from each other and original. I don't think I've seen anything like them before or since.

The locations and sets in the film are wonderfully atmospheric and captivating, both the modern day manor and the medieval forest village. And Jordan does a great job depicting the wolves as both frighteningly deadly and alluringly social creatures, usually at the same time. Some films seem like they were made specifically with you in mind. This is one of mine.

Rating: Five out of five wedding wolves.

The Fairy Tale Project | "Little Red Riding Hood" by The Brothers Grimm

Illustration by "KC" (uncredited artist from a 1923 anthology)

The Brothers Grimm add a rescue story to the end of Charles Perrault's horror version, but otherwise their point is more or less the same: "Don't talk to strangers." When Red Riding Hood's mother sends her to Grandmother's house, she instructs, "Look straight ahead like a good little girl and don't stray from the path." Excessive curiosity it apparently a problem for the child, because Mom also says that when Red get to Grandmother's, she shouldn't "go poking around in all the corners of the house."

Of course, Red's overly curious mind also makes her dangerously trusting and it's the squashing of these traits that the story is all about. In fact, the Grimms include an epilogue in which Red makes another trip to Grandmother's and is again accosted by a wolf, but reacts with confidence and sufficiency, leading to a much different result.

There's a lot more that can to be gathered from the story. It's simple enough that scholars have assigned endless meanings to it. Some of them are ridiculous, like how the wolf eats Grandmother and Red whole because he's got pregnancy envy. Others I quite like, for instance how the cakes and wine that Red carries to Grandmother might represent Christian Communion.

I don't want to read too deeply into that one, but even if Communion isn't the intended meaning of the meal, the Grimms clearly state that the food is intended to heal Grandmother in some way, with the most natural reading being physical. When the wolf gets to Grandmother's house, Grandmother can't come to the door, because she's too sick to get out of bed. For all her naivety, Red is an heroic figure out to rescue Grandmother.

If the cakes and wine do represent Communion, then it just adds a spiritual element to Grandmother's physical condition. She's also sick in her soul and Communion is supposed to help with that. Lending some support to this idea is the Grimms' changing the location of Grandmother's house. In Perrault, she lives in a village on the other side of the woods, so that Red has to go through the forest to get there. In the Grimms' version, Grandmother lives smack in the middle of the forest. She's part of the Wild, which suggests that she may be lost herself, in a spiritual sense.

There's so much to unpack with this story. I'm looking forward to watching some adaptations and see how they handle it.

The Fairy Tale Project | "Little Red Riding Hood" by Charles Perrault

Illustration by Warwick Goble

Charles Perrault's version of "Little Red Riding Hood" is a straight up horror story. His stated moral for it is all about Stranger Danger. There's no last-minute save by a woodsman (even though some are mentioned earlier in the story as being in the area). The final words of the tale are:

"The better to eat you with." 

Upon saying these words, the wicked wolf threw himself on Little Red Riding Hood and gobbled her up.

His moral is equally terrifying. It includes a warning that "not all wolves are exactly the same. Some are perfectly charming [...] following young ladies right into their homes" and ends with, "Watch out if you haven't learned that tame wolves are the most dangerous of all."

Chilling.

The Fairy Tale Project | Faerie Tale Theatre (1982)

In the '80s, Shelley Duvall produced an awesome series of fairy tale adaptations for Showtime. It was shot on video and the sets weren't always lavish, so the look doesn't necessarily hold up as top tier, but Faerie Tale Theatre had top talent working on it, in front of the camera as well as behind.

The sets were often designed to imitate the work of famous illustrators, so "The Frog Prince" looks like Maxfield Parrish's work, "Goldilocks and the Three Bears" is inspired by Norman Rockwell, "Hansel and Gretel" has an Arthur Rackham vibe, and "Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs" is based on NC Wyeth. I understand that the "Beauty and the Beast" episode was designed to mimic Jean Cocteau's excellent 1946 adaptation of the tale.

Duvall also got great directors to work on the episodes. Eric Idle directed "The Frog Prince," Roger Vadim did "Beauty and the Beast," Nicholas Meyer did "The Pied Piper of Hamelin," Tim Burton did "Aladdin," and Francis Ford Coppola did "Rip Van Winkle."

And the actors are a Who's Who of '80s (and beyond) celebrities like Robin Williams, Teri Garr, Hervé Villechaize, Jeff Bridges, Mick Jagger, Mako, Edward James Olmos, Anjelica Huston, Mary Steenburgen, Malcolm McDowell, Ricky Schroder, Joan Collins, John Lithgow, Pee Wee Herman, Carrie Fisher, Susan Sarandon, Christopher Lee, Jeff Goldblum... As impressive as that list is, it's maybe a third of the top-name people who appeared in these stories.

I watched three episodes for this project and I bet you can guess which ones they were.

Elizabeth McGovern (She's Having a Baby, Downton Abbey) plays Snow White and she's certainly beautiful, but her performance isn't as inspired as the true stars of the show: Vanessa Redgrave (The first Mission: Impossible movie) as the Evil Queen and Vincent Price (oh, you know) as her Magic Mirror. Price is charming and droll as he rolls his eyes at the Queen's vanity, but Redgrave is next-level amazing with the way she prances and primps in front of the mirror. I'm pretty sure Buffalo Bill in Silence of the Lambs learned everything he knows about preening from Redgrave's Queen. She's marvelous and tragic as a woman who deep down understands that Snow White has replaced her, but is fighting it with every ounce of will that she has.

Other cast members in this one are Tony Cox (Spaceballs, Bad Santa) as one of the dwarfs, and Rex Smith as the Prince. Smith's coolest other role has to be Daredevil in the Trial of the Incredible Hulk TV movie from 1989, but he also appeared opposite Linda Ronstadt in the '83 movie adaptation of The Pirates of Penzance. He puts those singing skills to good use in Faerie Tale Theatre.

"Cinderella" has Jennifer Beals (Flashdance, The Bride) in the title role, Jean Stapleton (All in the Family) as her fairy godmother, and Matthew Broderick (Ferris Bueller's Day Off) as the Prince. A highlight of this one is how much time it spends building a relationship between Cinderella and the Prince. It shows a lot of the ball and Beals and Broderick do a nice job convincing me that they're falling in love. That's especially good since the theme of the FTT version is that Cinderella is perfectly capable of winning the Prince over by herself. The Fairy Godmother just gets her in the door.

There's also a fun bit between the stepsisters and the prince at the ball, since one of them is played by Edie McClurg. She was also Ed Rooney's secretary in Ferris Bueller the following year, so we get to see Grace hit on Ferris. Another actor worth mentioning is James Noble as the King. If you're familiar with the sitcom Benson, Noble is basically still playing Governor Gatling in this.

"Sleeping Beauty" was easily my favorite of the three episodes, mostly because it has Bernadette Peters as the princess and Christopher Reeve as the prince. It also keeps Perrault's Don't Rush Into Love as a theme and presents it in a really fun way. Most of the story is told in flashback by a woodsman to the prince and his squire (Ron Rifkin from Alias), but we also get flashbacks to the prince's past. We see both the prince and the princess trying to find potential spouses, but failing because their parents throw them at awful people, who are also hilariously played by Peters and Reeve. Other actors in this one include Rene Auberjonois (Benson, Deep Space Nine) and Sally Kellerman (MASH, Back to School) as Peters' parents, Beverly D'Angelo (National Lampoon's Vacation) as the evil fairy who curses the princess, and Carol Kane (The Muppet Movie, Taxi) as the good fairy who modifies the curse.

The Fairy Tale Project | Fractured Fairy Tales (1959)

In the '50s, the Rocky and Bullwinkle Show had a segment called Fractured Fairy Tales, which were humorous adaptations of the classic stories. I wasn't around at the time, but Rocky and Bullwinkle were still in heavy syndication when I was a kid. And Fractured Fairy Tales was always one of my favorite parts of any episode.

I didn't want to watch all of them for this project, but I thought I might watch at least the three stories that I've read up to this point. I was surprised to find the silly, little spoofs actually insightful.

Like in the Grimm Brothers' version, "Snow White" focuses on the Queen and her obsession with holding onto the value her culture assigns her as a woman. When her magic (coin-operated) mirror sends her to the dwarfs' house to find Snow White, the princess isn't there, but the dwarfs have just opened a gym that they're happy to sell the Queen a lifetime membership to. When that doesn't return her to Fairest In The Land status, she goes back to the dwarfs again. This happens several times. Snow White is never there and the dwarfs have some new scheme to help the Queen find her value: dance lessons, health food, charm school. At the end it's revealed that the whole thing is a scam with one of the dwarfs working inside the mirror to drum up business and capitalize on the Queen's insecurities.

FFT's "Cinderella" is about appearances and materialism. Cinderella is actually pretty lazy and just wants an easy way to get the lifestyle she craves. (Her sisters are barely in it, but they're hardworking scullery maids, so Cinderella is solely responsible for her attitude.) The fairy godmother shows up to grant Cinderella her wishes, but there's a catch. Cinderella has to sell a huge supply of kitchen utensils by midnight or she'll lose her fabulous prizes. Meanwhile, the prince is going bankrupt and has to pay off his creditors by midnight or he'll lose the castle. When Cinderella shows up to sell the prince some pots and pans, he's fooled by her appearance and thinks she's rich. So while she's trying to get him to buy utensils, he's trying to get her to marry him, both getting increasingly desperate as 12:00 approaches. Both Perrault and the Grimm's versions are about more than marrying a rich prince, but Cinderella certainly uses appearances to obtain her escape from her stepfamily. There's a lot more to her than just looks, but the other characters in the story don't see that. FFT's commentary on appearances is a valid focus.

Finally, "Sleeping Beauty" also gets a materialistic makeover. It rushes through the early part of the story to get to the prince's arrival. We're told that he's supposed to kiss Sleeping Beauty (borrowed from Disney, possibly, since this episode didn't air until the early '60s), but the prince decides at the last moment that an awakened princess is after all just a princes. A sleeping princess is a novelty, so he turns the castle into a tourist attraction. That's darkly fascinating when I consider that the Grimms' version of the story is about pausing the princess' maturation process. In FFT, the prince keeps it paused even longer than it needs to be, simply for financial gain. And it occurs to me that modern Disney sort of does the same thing with the young teenage girls that it turns into stars.

The Fairy Tale Project | Sleeping Beauty (1959)

Who's in it?: I was pretty dismissive of the casts for Snow White and Cinderella, but I'm starting to recognize some recurring voices now. For instance, Eleanor Audley who plays Maleficent was also the voice of Cinderella's stepmother. And Barbara Luddy who plays the delightful fairy Merryweather was also the voice of Lady in Lady and the Tramp and would go on to be the voice of Kanga in Disney's Winnie-the-Pooh films. Verna Felton is another fairy and came to the role with experience as Cinderella's fairy godmother (among other Disney roles like the Queen of Hearts in Alice in Wonderland).

What's it about?: It credits Charles Perrault's version as its inspiration, but it's a very loose adaptation, restructuring the whole story around some familiar elements.

How is it?: I don't envy Erdman Penner and his fellow screenwriters for the job of adapting "Sleeping Beauty" for an all-ages audience. In both Perrault and Grimm, the themes are rather grown up. Perrault advises his audience to take romance seriously while the Grimms more or less celebrate puberty. But there's so much cool imagery in the fairy tale that it's begging for Disney to put it on the big screen. The result is a beautiful spectacle with a light story.

It's remarkable how great the characters are though. Maleficent of course is an A+ villain, but the fairies (Flora, Fauna, and Merryweather) are also super memorable and fun. Prince Phillip is the best developed and most Charming of all the Disney princes so far. And the film spends a surprising amount of time with the two kings Stefan and Hubert who pledged their children to each other as infants and are rethinking that decision now that their kids are older and able to think for themselves.

It's too bad that the title character doesn't have more to do. Aurora (named after the daughter of the title character from Perrault's version, while her alias - Briar Rose - is the title character of the Grimms') is beautiful and pleasant and has her own opinions about things, but she never gets to do anything about them. Penner and Company add a nice element by having Aurora meet Phillip before they're supposed to so that they fall in love without realizing who each other are. This calls into question the arranged marriage and leads to some nice teen rebellion, but of course it's all temporary and ultimately meaningless since the conflict isn't real. It's just an easily resolved misunderstanding.

Outside of just how gorgeous the film is (artist Eyvind Earle's concept designs and background paintings are breathtaking and it's amazing how successfully they're incorporated into the film), its hard to see the point of the story. No one learns anything. The stated message in the film is that Love Conquers All (primarily illustrated by Phillip's determination to defeat Maleficent and rescue Aurora, but also in the power of Love's First Kiss to awaken the princess, something that this film came up with as far as I can tell), but it's a hollow idea. Phillip and Aurora barely know each other, so while I believe that they're attracted to each other and have the beginnings of a fine relationship, it's too flimsy to hold the weight of the professed theme.

Rating: Four out of five crazy kids in love.