Red Riding Hood

Plot synopsis:
Valerie is a young woman who lives in the village of Daggerhorn, on the edge of a forest plagued by a werewolf, with her parents, Cesaire and Suzette, and older sister Lucie. She is in love with the town woodcutter Peter, but her parents have arranged for her to marry Henry Lazar, son of the wealthy blacksmith Adrien Lazar. Valerie and Peter plan to run away together, only to learn that the Wolf has broken its truce not to prey on the townspeople in exchange for cattle stock sacrifices and has murdered Lucie, who is revealed to have had a crush on Henry Lazar.
Suzette learns of Peter and Valerie's love, telling Valerie she too did not love her husband at first, but learned to love him – that she had loved another. Father August, the local preacher, calls for the famous witch hunter, Father Solomon, to help them but the townspeople decide to venture into the Wolf's lair to destroy it. They divide into groups, with one consisting of Peter, Henry, and Adrien. Peter separates from them moments before the Wolf attacks and murders Adrien. The Wolf is cornered by the men and killed. Valerie finds Suzette mourning Adrien and figures out that he was her love. She also realizes that Lucie, being the older daughter, should've been the first to wed and should have been engaged to Henry, but could not as she was the illegitimate daughter of Adrien, making her Henry's half-sister.
The following day, as the people celebrate, Father Solomon arrives and reveals that, had they killed the Wolf, it would have returned to its human form as it is a werewolf, but what they slew was a common grey wolf. He also reveals that they've entered the Blood Moon Week, an event that happens every thirteen years, in which whoever is bitten by the Wolf is cursed to become one as well. Father Solomon's men, led by The Captain (Adrian Holmes), isolate Daggerhorn and begin to investigate its people in search of the Wolf. That night, the Wolf attacks and, while the townspeople rush to the Church (as the Wolf is unable to step onto holy ground), Valerie and her friend Roxanne venture into the village to search for Roxanne's autistic brother, Claude. They are cornered by the creature and Valerie discovers that she is able to understand the Wolf's sounds. It threatens to kill Roxanne and destroy the village if Valerie doesn't leave with it. The Wolf then escapes, vowing to return to learn Valerie's decision.
The following day, Claude is captured by Father Solomon's men. Having witnessed Claude performing a card trick earlier, Father Solomon claims he's a student of the dark arts and attempts to force the frightened Claude to reveal the Wolf's identity. When Claude is unable to do so, Father Solomon locks him up in a large iron elephant brazen bull. In exchange for Claude's release, Roxanne reveals that Valerie is able to communicate with the Wolf but Claude is already dead by the time the Captain opens the elephant. Believing Valerie to be a witch, Father Solomon has her captured and displayed at the town's square in order to lure the Wolf out so he can kill it. Henry and Peter join forces and help Valerie to escape. Peter is captured by the Captain and thrown into the elephant, while Father Solomon orders Henry to be killed for helping Valerie. Father Auguste saves Henry and is then killed by Father Solomon.
Henry takes Valerie to the church, but they are attacked by the Wolf, who bites off Father Solomon's hand, which contains silver-coated fingernails. The townspeople shield Valerie from the Wolf, who is once again forced to flee, but not before burning a paw by touching holy land. Valerie dreams that the Wolf is her grandmother, who lives in a cabin in the nearby woods, so she goes to check on her. Father Solomon, having been cursed, is killed by the Captain.
After retrieving Father Solomon's hand, Valerie rushes to her grandmother's cabin, but is confronted on the way by Peter. She then notices that he is wearing a glove on his right hand, the same paw that the Wolf burned trying to enter the church, Valerie assumes Peter is the Wolf and stabs him. Arriving at Grandmother's house, Valerie is horrified to find her dead, and learns that the Wolf is her father, Cesaire. He reveals that the curse was passed to him by his own father, and he intended to leave the village but wanted to take his children with him. He sent a note to Lucie pretending to be Henry to meet him at night so he could ask her to accept her "gift". However, when he confronted her, she couldn't understand him. Realizing Lucie was not his daughter, he murdered her in a fit of rage. He then took revenge against Adrien, his wife's lover, and now wants Valerie to accept the curse.
Valerie refuses, just as Peter appears and confronts Cesaire, who bites Peter (thus giving him the curse) and tosses him aside. Peter is able to throw an axe into Cesaire's back, distracting him. Valerie stabs Cesaire to death with Father Solomon's hand. Valerie and Peter fill Cesaire's body with rocks so he can never be found and dump the body in the lake. Peter departs in order to learn how to control his curse, vowing to return only when he's able to ensure Valerie's safety. Valerie narrates that Henry found his courage and joins the ranks of the Captain's monster hunters. Valerie's mother finally accepts that her husband will never come home, and the village continues to live in fear even though the wolf never returned. She then moves to her grandmother's house, leaving her old life behind as she can't go back to the village because she is married to the wolf (Peter) and wants to keep that a secret.
The last scene shows Valerie outside the cabin on a full moon. She hears a slight growl, turns around and sees Peter in wolf form as she begins to smile. In an alternate ending, Valerie is seen holding a baby, which is her baby with Peter.

Tags: murder

Review:
This movie was really impressive - we rented it expecting your typical low budget horror but it was not anything like that!
The DVD had absolutely no extras which was disappointing on a movie like this.
Red Riding Hood is about a little girl named Jenny (Susanna Satta) who has been abandoned by her mother and has come up with quite a warped sense of values.
tall and rides a bicycle and wears a mask.Eventually, Jenny's grandmother, Rose (Kathleen Archebald) comes to Italy to take her back to New York.
The demented little girl wants nothing to change in her life, as her mother left behind lots of cash and credit cards with an unlimited balance.Jenny's take on her life is that of the old nursery rhyme, Little Red Riding Hood, hence the name of the movie, but it is taken from the wolf's point of view.
So I suppose George is meant to be the wolf.The movie is halfway original I suppose, but Susanna's acting is a bit over the top for me and a little unbelievable.
Plus, I do not think anyone would really fear for their life from a little girl, even if she does have a knife (don't want to give away too much here).
Obvious rubber props used for body parts, and little things like that rubbed me the wrong way.
I could easily see from the beginning of the movie, what the desired effect for the character was, it was the clichéd innocent little girl with an evil twist.
The grandmother was the only good acting in the film to be honest.
I think George was created to add some form of horror and mystery into an otherwise dull plot.
"If this girl is so intelligent and all knowing why does she succumb to the things she does?" It made no sense, the director obviously just wanted to add some moral value into the flick, trying to get a reaction, which failed.
I rented this movie during a trip to the video store in which I was searching for some cheesy horror flicks.
Unfortunately, one of my selections happened to be Red Riding Hood.First and foremost, the music in this film is quite possibly the worst I have ever seen used in any motion picture, mainstream or independent.
The director had selected a 2 minute long show tune musical number that repeats the same lines at least a dozen times throughout the movie.
by far the worst use of music in any motion picture that I have ever seen.The repetitive and annoying music would have been bad enough on it's own to ruin a good movie, but Red Riding Hood is FAR from even being a halfway decent flick.
It stars a little girl who may one day may grow up to be a decent actress, but as of the filming of Red Riding Hood, she has a long way to go before she sounds like anything above what you would expect at a middle school play.
It's the predictable and boring plot that ruins this one for me.In the interest of not posting spoilers, I won't talk about the "twist" at the end, if you can call it that, but I will say that the only way you won't see it coming by the first 20 minutes is if you have fallen asleep from boredom.
Death scenes are unimpressive and one scene of violence is lifted directly from Misery.Maybe it wasn't quite 90 minutes long, but sitting through this movie felt like an eternity.
possibly more for the time it took me to explain to others just how bad this movie really is..
Special congratulations has to go to Kathleen Archebald who delivers a spectacular performance despite being so young (easily better than many actors, I should note.) All in all, this film is great, and puts a new, deadly spin on this tale and reinforces one fact- don't let your kids play with knives!.
There are some ridiculous parts to the film, but taken in the context of a twelve-year-old girl's mind, they actually make sense.Don't get me wrong, I'm not going to give too much credit to the filmmakers because a lot of the good elements of the film probably happened on accident.I didn't feel like I wasted my money renting this, but I probably would rent it with a bunch of friends over..
Really, really bad.I'll start with the story: psychotic 12 year old in Rome tries to exact violent justice upon those who break the law or sin with the help of George, a puppy of hers who grew up...
There's sort of an interesting sub-plot that as the movie progresses, the kills and fights that the little girl causes are more personal, and less for justice like originally, which shows that her perception's becoming more distorted.
Then again, it's entirely possible that that wasn't the original idea and I desperately made it up to try to salvage this movie.The acting is pretty awful too.
I guess they wanted a cordless phone, but simply couldn't afford one.All in all, I watched this movie with some friends, and it took us about 10 minutes until I finally blurted "What the hell did we just watch?" See it only if you're a horror movie completist when visiting Blockbuster..
The acting by the little girl (Jennifer) was horrific (and not in a good way).
It has nothing to do with the traditional story of Red Riding Hood other than the fairytale is mentioned once in the movie.
It strived so hard and, for much of the film, had what it wanted contained and captured but - yes - what it sought to grasp finally withered loose and  I don't know scampered and skittered in all directions so beginning never connected to end, or vice versa.
The acting of the young girl stunk, the effects were pretty bad, and it was an overall utter cheese fest.
If you like cheesy movies then you will love this one, check it out and laugh along.
Go out to your local video store, find this movie, and have a good time..
Unless, of course, you are looking for a terribly-god-awful-cheesy-not-even-to-be-considered-a-horror movie.
There are so many things wrong with this movie I don't even know where to start.For one, the movie cover shows exactly why directors and producers hire brilliant artists to make their crap movies come across as decent looking.
Never judge a book by its cover.Being somewhat specialized in movie editing, the general objective of a film is to let the story flow smoothly, both visually and audio-wise.
The first 30 seconds of the film has you regretting instantly - it looks like video camera footage, which is why I laughed my ass of in the credits when it said "shot on Kodak".
I know some of the greatest movie's of all time just kind of "end", but the director must've thought he was the next Queintin Tarintino...or Sergio Leone for that matter.
Murder scenes abruptly cut to happy scenes with the little girl on her bike humming along to Frank Sinatra like music at least 20 times.
And to top it off, the final scene drags the plot to all-time low of satisfaction and understanding...leaving this film unfinished would've been good enough.All in all, however, a friend and I picked this out because it sounded horrible, but instead we got much more than just horrible - we experienced a whole new meaning of a B-movie ...
The acting is awful, especially that of the little girl, and the effects are exceptionally fake.I suggest watching the movie on 2x speed.
Little does granny know, but the girl is a vigilante who fights injustice at night in a red riding hood.First, let me say this: 92 minutes, my eye!
But beyond that, I think this film was lacking.First, the thought of a young girl being this self-sufficient is absurd.
Not to mention I think I spent half the movie trying to figure out if George was real or not.
I think this is one movie I would like to add to my DVD collection..
This is possibly one of the worst "horror" movies I have ever seen.
You would think that they could find a little girl that had at least SOME acting skills.
The idea (little girl who goes around killing people as little red riding hood) could have been really good but the way it was executed was careless and lackluster.
Don't waste your time with this one and don't be fooled by the cover which makes it look like it might be halfway decent.
I guess I was hoping that I'd find some sort of hidden treasure or something, I mean it wasn't a movie that I'd ever heard of and the cover looked interesting (even if the tag line was a little cheesy) but I was utterly disappointed by it in the end.
This is about the worst movies of all times which I have ever managed to even go beyond the first 10 minutes.
This is absolutely a waste of a time going to local video store to rent the movie and of course the 4 bucks and change in renting it.
Here, Little Red Riding Hood is an obnoxious spoiled brat who is best friends with "the Wolf" (a mysterious figure with a cap and wolf mask, who she believes is her, well, dog.) Instead of venturing out to visit Grandma, they live with her keep her captive, torturing her.
Think "Freeway" meets "Misery." I really wanted to love this movie, but I couldn't because the lead actress was so terrible and obnoxious, performing as if she were in a junior high school play.
If you like twisted fairy tales, you probably want to check this out, but be warned, it can get very grating at times..
I would never rate this as the worst movie of all time.
When a film does not have a big budget, and you can't afford royalty fees, unless you know some really good musicians that'll play for free, don't rely on music as a major device for anything.This is one of the few movies where you can see extras and people on the street smiling at the camera in some of the earlier scenes.
The lead in this movie gives us what is easily one of the worst performances by any actor/actress, anywhere, EVER.
The movie tries to pay homage to other horror films like 'Misery' and 'An American Werewolf in London', but it seems contrived.
I mean come on, her father got smoked by a 15 year-old girl with a beretta in the start, and Jenny lived in that same area.
Who would be afraid of her with knives and baseball bats if they live in a neighborhood where the street kids have "gats"?There are some cool death scenes, but as another commenter said, I think the brilliance in this movie may just be by accident.The most amazing thing about this movie is that when you see the fantastic ending, and the credits roll, you will be astonished that you didn't chew through your own wrists or saw off your leg with a pizza box, just to stop the torture.In closing, this is a broken movie.
Next time I'll make sure that when I rent a movie called 'Red Riding Hood', it is in fact about an Irish hooker in the Ghetto.Oh yah, for all the people that think this movies stinks, don't bother worrying about people that say you just didn't get.
If wanna see a GREAT take on Lil Red Riding Hood, and wolfs too, check out the film 'The Company of Wolves', and see what a good movie should be.
In essence, the idea behind it all seemed to be good enough but the execution of it all is really poor.Yes, this movie really could had worked out well but it does so much wrong however.
It's lacking the required touch, look and feel to make this movie work out as a good fantasy movie and it's simply not being imaginative for that.
As an horror it's simply not good enough, since its lacking in all of its build up and tension and for an artistic movie it simply doesn't have any artistic value to it.
I still have no idea why the girl in this movie was being such a murderous, very young, psychopath.
Everybody seems to think that the main girl can't act, I thought she was great.
Balls to the wall greatness for those who love horror movies..
I must admit the end threw me off with her dad popping out as George, but then i realized maybe she had imagined Up George to replace her father and thats why he popped out, because it was her want.Oh and i would like to note to the person who was complaining about how the actress' eyebrows- WE ARE ALL DIFFERENT and it shouldn't matter in a movie if your a anorexic looking girl to an actually normal looking person..
But, like with Argento projects, there is a deliberate attempt at complex narrative structure.The mystery is not in discovering the answer at the end of the story, but the shape of the question.The thing is framed by our girl telling the story of Red Riding Hood to her grandmother in bed, "as the wolf would tell it."That is nested above and below some detailed discussion of "Don Qixote" from the girl to her tutor, who she adores.
Very fun low-budget horror movie!.
We'll this movie sure wasn't bad but it sure wasn't very good either.
The acting wasn't that bad but the main actress, she was so awful, she had no emotion in every line she spit or in her reactions (Gosh i was hoping for someone to kill her!).
The death scenes were very original and gory, also they look very good considering that this was a very low-budget movie.
Check it out, especially if you like horror movies..
if i could speak my mind, trust me...they wouldn't post it.the girl who plays jenny in this movie has clearly never acted before, and never should again.
the grandma over dramatized every action that she made, and her shrill scream rung in my ears even after she stopped.the plot in this movie had some potential, but the direction was horrible, the actors clearly could not act, and the camera direction made me feel like i was watching a poorly put together documentary..
the only reason that i watched the entire movie was to see who George was going to end up being, and then when i sit through an hour and a half of torture, i find out that it is the brats imagination..
the cover of the movie leads you to believe that this could be a decent horror flick, but then you push play...
i was like the entire movie has been crap and this you just load this on top of it to make it even worse..
This is seriously one of the worst movies, horror or otherwise, that I have seen in a long time.
Usually I like low budget and foreign horror films but this was really awful.
The lead actress needed some serious eyebrow plucking tips and the film makers attempt at symbolism through Don Quiote was done so ham handed that even de Palma would be shocked.I was lured into renting this movie because the box cover looked cool and I thought that I had nothing to lose.
The plot had potential, but the bad screenplay, bad acting, horrible soundtrack, messy editing and over use of peanut butter and gratuitous gore scenes make "Red Riding Hood" a sad example of what film students can produce.It's just bad, bad bad.Bad..
Red Riding Hood starts as twelve year old girl Jennifer McKenzie (Susanna Satta) moves to Rome after the murder of her father (Devin McKinney) a high ranking judge.
The title suggests that this silly horror film is a twist on the well known fairytale Little Red Riding Hood although apart from one or two ideas & concepts the two have little in common.
Jennifer rides around on a bike in a cloak & hood & wears red outfits, there's George who is supposed to represent the Big Bad Wolf & then there's Rose the Grandmother who eventually becomes bedridden but the actual plot has no connection to the fairytale.
Unlike the good old days when Italian horror films were dubbed into English with some unintentionally funny dialogue Red Riding Hood looks like it was shot in English & the dialogue is noticeably dull by comparison.
The acting isn't that great but I've seen worse, this is actress Susanna Satta's only credit & although I can't find any birthday date for her she certainly looks a lot older than twelve.Red Riding Hood is a very strange film that tries to be clever but isn't & comes across as lazy, cheap & not very good.
If you want to watch a horror themed take on the Little Red Riding Hood tale then check out Deadtime Stories (1986) AKA Freaky Fairy tales instead..
This film had a lot of potential, but it was lost in some poor acting and some poor directing.Susan Satta did an OK job as a psychotic 12/13 year old girl, but 25% of the time, it was as if she read her lines straight off the script, without any emotion.Her grandmother was quite unbelievable.
It made me feel like the movie was filmed in 3 days..
YES every time :)Not your usual horror flick - more of a twisted black comedy-slasher.This is the only film the girl in the lead part did (I found that she is now a model).If you have a taste for weirdness get your hands on this underrated gem!!!.
Since that's unlikely to happen, this movie will most likely go down as the worst version of red riding hood...ever...