#helen glazary

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Cannon Movie Tales: Red Riding Hood (1989)

@metropolitan-mutant-of-ark​ @princesssarisa​ @superkingofpriderock​

So, this was the last title released in the Cannon Movie Tales Series. Originally the team of Golan and Globus had planed to release sixteen titles, but ended up releasing only nine, presumably for falling of audiences.

In this adaptation, the title character is named Linet, a young, curious and adventurous girl who enjoys going out in the woods to search for fairies and elves, sometimes losting a shoe and terring her dress in the proccess. While she was raised learning to love the simple life of the peasants, Linet has noble blood: her father, Percival (Craig T. Nelson), is the twin brother of Godfrey (also obviously played by Craig T. Nelson), the local lord, and has been out fighting for seven years in a war for King, God and Country. Because of that, Godfrey has been rulling with a tiranical iron hand, going so far as to torture subjects if they don’t pay him taxes.

The person who secretly heals the tortured subjects is Linet’s grandmother, Bess (Helen Glazary), who has great knowledge of the uses for herbs and of fairy magic.

Godfrey wants to marry Lady Jean (Isabella Rosselini), Linet’s mother, but, brave and faithfull to Percival, she rejects his advances. So he constantly sends spies to watch her house. His favourite spy is Dagger (Rocco Sisto), a wolfman that he camed to posess by selling his heart and sould to vague Dark Arts. And Dagger’s next mission will be both to discover who is healing the subjects Godfrey tortures, and to get rid of Linet, whom Godfrey considers a nuissance...

Here are the things i liked about the movie: Amelia Shankley, who previously had given a great performance as Alice Liddell in the cult classic Dreamchild, is very energetic and likable as Linet. I need to ad that her dark short hair always have been the looks i enjoy imagining for Little Red Riding Hood. Isabella Rosselini also exibits an interesting quiet strenght as Lady Jean, breaking away from the usual mother portrayals by being the person who encourages her daughter to be brave, but still carefull, in the face of adversity, while also showing a vulnerable side in her longing for her husband. Helen Glazary’s Bess is the grandmother that everyone dreams of having, being both a good storyteller, a wise counsellour and a surprising badass who will help save you from danger. And Rocco Sisto’s wolfman spy Dagger is a delight, showing so much fun in playing a villain in a kids movie. My favorite scene is the song duet that he sings along with Linet, Never Talk to Strangers, where, once again making a refreshing take in an adaptation of the fairy tale, is the wolf character who says to Red Riding Hood to not talk with strangers, while Linet (Red Riding Hood) presents her point of view that: “If i don’t talk to strangers, how will i make friends”?

So they modernize a bit the moral to “Don’t ever talk to strangers” to “Be curious and brave, but take care with whom you will thrust”

Now, here is the thing i don’t like: see, the Cannon Movie Tales could have some trouble making the shortest fairy tales into one hour long movies, creating some slow padding filler in the proccess, and this feels as a problem here.

Specially because their soluction to stretch the time was to make the movie have two plots: the Red Riding Hood tale itself, and the “Robin Hood meets The Odissey” original plot of a woman who resists harassment of an opressive aristocrat while waiting her husband return from war to lead the people in a revolt. And that original plot is actually the A plot, while the actual Red Riding Hood plot receives B Plot treatment, starting way later! Wich is sad, because they made pretty good versions of the characters from the original tale.

I feel that they camed with the love triangle plot first to cast in the rising popularity of Isabella Rosselini first, and then camed up with “Oh hey, there are still those fairy tale musicals we are making, what is the next one? Red Riding Hood? Oh well, slap those two together and write a movie”!

My conclusion is: if you want to see a nice kids movie with good performances by Amelia Shankley, Isabella Rosselini, Helen Glazary and Rocco Sisto that happens to have some elements of in it, check this flick out.

But if you want to see an actual Little Red Riding Hood focused movie, i recomend that you go watch The Company of Wolves and Hoodwinked instead.