Recommendations of the Editorial team
“Little Red Riding Hood” offers the outstanding payoff in the fairy tale story. A lovingly constructive dialogue of blind understanding, in which the surprisingly attentive victim (the girl) makes the opportunity for the escalating staging possible through interested questions about the changed appearance of his counterpart (the wolf masked as a grandmother), which is to the detriment of the selfless victim: “…so that I can eat you better!”.
For his “Little Red Riding Hood” variation, Neil Jordan dispensed with this legendary conversation dynamic. But the – admittedly hackneyed – Grimm’s moral, that as a young woman it is better to always stay on the beaten path and not give in to seducers who perform in an “animalistic” way, can also be found here. Even before the Oasis brothers Liam and Noel Gallagher, like in “Time of the Wolves,” it was said to distrust men with knit eyebrows. What Rosalie (Sarah Patterson) won’t be able to do.
A complete wolf’s head peels out of a man’s mouth
Like two other (major) productions of the mid-1980s, David Lynch’s Dune and Ridley Scott’s Legend, Neil Jordan’s work also suffered from failed marketing. His 1984 film was not in the tradition of “The Animal” and “American Werewolf.” It’s not a werewolf horror flick. But a fairy tale about adolescence – overloaded with symbols. Backed by George Fenton’s longing strings.
No one understood that the werewolves only looked like normal wolves in the end. The fact that they sit in baroque festive clothes like people at a banquet and are served food by baroque-powdered servants is also not true.
The transformation scenes, on the other hand, are fascinating in their surreality. A complete wolf’s head peels out of a man’s mouth. This promptly ended up on the movie posters. For the 40th anniversary now as a 4k version including audio commentary by director Jordan. (Pandastorm).
