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adarkrainbow · 7 months

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Spooky season fairytales (3)

We saw how the myth of the witch was reinvented with "Hansel and Gretel". Our look at "Snow White" led us to vampires. To complete our triad of Halloween monsters, we just need a werewolf - and you know exactly which fairytale will come next in my "Spooky season" series.

It is no surprise that "Little Red Riding Hood" gave plenty of material to horror-movie makers and creators of dark fantasy. It is after all one of the darkest fairytales of France (because yes, fairytale historians have traced back the story's roots to France, before it was passed on by French immigrants eastward to Germanic countries). And when it comes to movies about Little Red Riding Hood, there is ONE movie that must be talked about...

"The Company of Wolves".

Who among fairytale fans hasn't heard of this brilliant, wonderful, poetic movie? It is one of those movies that truly manage to create a dark and haunting fairytale that FEELS fairytale-like. The plot is simple. It is a retelling of Little Red Riding Hood, in a "soft fairytale world" (things seem pretty normal, but there and there you have weird details, such as fur scarfs coming to life or eggs hatching jewels), and with a werewolf as the "big bad wolf". Or rather, the plot SEEMS simple - because this whole movie is framed as the dream of a modern-day girl, allowing for the story to unfold using dream logic and a heavy use of symbolism (perfect for a fairytale adaptation). Because this movie also explores the underlying motifs present in the original tale of sexuality, and the sexual maturation or blossoming of a young girl - this is due to the movie's original inspiration being the dark and feminists short stories of Angela Carter's "The Bloody Chamber". And because in the bigger Little Red Riding Hood tale, the movie intertwines folkloric European legends of werewolves, in all their disturbing glory.

This movie is truly great, and I cannot recommend it enough. It manages to be everything at once: a poetic dream, a magical fairytale, a disturbing horror piece, a sad tragedy... And it allies with greatness the creepy werewolf folklore of Europe with the fae charm of fairytales. Plus this 80s American fantasy movies goodness. And Angela friggin' Lansbury plays the grandmother! What else do you want? Even outside of a simple "Little Red Riding Hood" adaptation, this movie is one of the great "dark fairytale fantasies" of cinema.

This movie also calls for another piece, that is frequently put side by side with it (for... thematic reasons more than shared quality). I am talking of 2011's "Red Riding Hood".

I am placing this movie here not because I want to praise it, but just because... Well it exists, and I must make a mention of it.

This movie is not... not good. It's not bad, not good. It is definitively not the best Red Riding Hood movie, and if you want to see a werewolf Little Red Riding Hood movie, go watch "The Company of Wolves", it is the best and will never be overshadowed. But this piece... It is conventional and expected. It takes all the plot directions expected with a "dark fantasy mature take" on Little Red Riding Hood - nothing surprising or inventive. It is a "village plagued by werewolf" story, mixed with a "wolf hunt" making it a dark fantasy "whoddunit" which is not even trying its best to engage the viewer in the mystery, making everybody a superficial candidate... And it is also a very conventional "girl stuck between two boys" romance-teenage-triangle.

It has everything that is needed to explore Little Red Riding Hood, and everything that was well-done in "The Company of Wolves"... But it is all treated in a very flat and superficial way, making it a sort of "empty" piece. Little Red Riding Hood, the original tale, is meant to be a tale about desire and female sexuality and seduction, and so making the main character a young girl stuck in an impossible romance outside of the "straight path" of marriage is an interesting take... But it goes nowhere. Here and there you have this little sparks of interesting ideas or clever concepts - the pig-and-sheep masquerade at the celebrations, the silver fingernails of the werewolf hunter, the werewolf speaking telepathically to the character of Red Riding Hood (Valerie)... But they're just little crumbs in a big bland soup.

And there's also the problem of this movie taking itself too seriously and not having any self-awareness - making it so, personally, I couldn't take it seriously in the beginning. If you watch it,you'll see what I mean - by taking itself too seriously during specific moments, or playing too straight some passages, the movie makes itself ridiculous. Overall, not a great movie AT ALL, and to watch only if you enjoy your bland, neutral, average "dark romance in the middle of werewolf hunts" piece. But it exists, so it must appear somewhere.

After this stale piece, let's move on to...

Freeway, the 1996 movie

You'll frequently see it pop up in the lists of "dark fairytale movies" and "horror Little Red Riding Hood" adaptations - though to call this a "fairytale movie" is not a good description. As the tagline of the movie says, "Her life's no fairytale".

"Freeway" is an attempt at completely deconstructing the "Little Red Riding Hood" story by removing all form of magic or wonder from it, only leaving a disturbing, bleak, though still excentric and extravagant story. It is a dark comedy constantly oscillating between a violent and crude slapstick comedy, and a realistic horror movie. Featuring stars such as Reese Witherspoon and Kiefer Sutherland (and with music by Danny Elfman, no less!), this little cult movie is still the story of a girl wearing a red piece of clothing going to see her grandmother's house and encountering on the way a predator... Except the little girl in red is here a semi-illiterate teenage delinquant with anger issues in a red leather jacket... She is on the run from child services after her prostitute of a mother and her junkie of a stepfather got arrested... The "huntsman" is a pair of inefficient, though well-meaning, cops... And the wolf is a sociopathic, necrophiliac, serial killer.

This makes it all sound as if the movie was a dreary full horror piece - but it is actually not. The main character is a very excentric, fiery, fierce, though not that bright, girl who constantly fights backs with sass everything and everyone, there is a dark and morbid humor all throughout the movie balancing very sad and uncomfortable moments, many of the characters are disturbingly realistic caricatures or stereotypes pushed to cartoonish levels, and overall it all feels more like a very violent and grand-guignolesque crime piece/road trip.

I want to mention another movie while talking about "Freeway" - the 2000s movie known as "Hard Candy". You will often find this movie on lists of Red Riding Hood adaptations - DO NOT GET FOOLED! "Hard Candy" is not a Little Red Riding Hood adaptation. It is a very bleak, very hard to watch, very creepy horror movie about mental and physical torture, and exploring the various aspects of human perversion, in a confined setting with a limited cast of characters - and yes, it does invoke a "Red Riding Hood" imagery... but just in the opening and advertising, and the movie has nothing to do with the fairytale. You can watch it if you want, but be ready, because it is one of those movies that mess up your stomach and your soul, and it is not for the faint of heart, as it is a VERY very bleak piece.

"Freeway" is also bleak, but in a more campy way (yes, you can have "campy bleak") typical of dark comedies. And "Freeway", unlike "Hard Candy", is an ACTUAL Little Red Riding Hood adaptation. Not only does it base its story and characters on the fairytale, making sure to have the key-moments of the original plot, and the character archetypes explored (the big bad wolf becoming a serial killer predator) or deconstructed (Little Red Riding Hood is still a dumb girl hunted by the wolf, but she fights back and is ready to kick ass and is used to the most vile sides of humanity), but it also fully embraces one part of the Little Red Riding Hood heritage. The cartoon adaptations of the first half of the 20th century - those little short cartoons that heavily explored the fairytale in a caricatural way, especially sexual (like the very famous Tex Avery short). Not only are there direct references to those cartoons in the movie, it also fully embraces the entire ambiance. The "slapstick" and "cartoonish" feels of this movie come right from there. Yes, they removed all the magic and wonders to have a sordid realistic tale, yes this is a borderline true crime story about a serial killer, and an ineffective police system, and what it is like growing up in poverty, drugs and prostitution... But it embraces the feel of the classic Looney Tunes/Tex Avery cartoon world, with extravagant caricatural characters, and an abundance of senseless unexpected violence that doesn't even feel real sometimes. And by making all that, the movie reinstills a form of "magic" in the tale - but this "cartoon" magic which is able to make disturbing moments about a human-looking monster trying to kill you look ridiculous and almost laughable as if it was some sort of clown performance.

Overall this movie is a really bizarre little piece that reflects a very specific type of cartoonishly-comedic-but-still-bleak-and-morbid small movies that tend to frequently pop up in the USA. You know the ones, these pieces that are about disturbed subjects or tragic characters, but are still made in such bizarre and unexpected ways they almost verge on surreal comedy - like Lynch's Wild at Heart (which itself was a "fairytale" take somehow, since it is technically speaking a Wizard of Oz movie) or the Harmony Korine movies.

And to close off this post, a special mention to a classic movie of the Halloween season...

Trick 'r Treat, THE Halloween horror movie by Michael Dougherty (the man who later was behind THE new classic Christmas horror movie, "Krampus")

Trick 'r Treat was Dougherty's attempt at creating an iconic "mascot" for Halloween, in the person of Sam, the little creepy-costumed child/demon enforcing the rules of the old Celtic holiday... This dark, fun, morbid, perfectly Halloween-y movie, developed out of previous animated short-films, is actually an anthology piece collecting a handful of various stories... And the reason this movie appears on this list is because of the segment "Surprise Party", which is heavily referencing "Little Red Riding Hood". An unsecure young woman is invited by her outgoing friends at an Halloween party in the woods, and she picks up a Little Red Riding Hood costume, but as she is making her way throughout the city in a full Halloween parade, she realizes a strange man is following her... There is a twist, so I won't reveal much (beyond the fact it all implies vampires and werewolves stories), but the important thing is how the twist is delivered, and how the segment ends. A scene wich has marked the cinematic lore of the creature it depicts, and which has also influenced a LOT of people on the Internet during the end of the 2000s (for example, boosting up the "Sweet Dreams" cover of Marilyn Manson)

#spooky season fairytales #spooky season #dark fairytales #horror fairytales #fairytale movies #halloween movies #little red riding hood #the company of wolves #freeway #trick 'r treat

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alectology-archive · 1 year

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most annoying breed of author is actually someone who doesn’t respect a genre and sets out to subvert it.

#princess stories and fairytales are especially so susceptible it. I especially hate it when a man decides he can do better and writes a #story that insults the genre as a whole. do not fucking touch the genre please and thank you.#text #edit: if you’re here to check my tags pack it up kids I was ranting about brandon sanderson very tangentially.#but the people saying horror is subjected to the worst of this treatment are right

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thermojam · 9 months

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if you stray from the path, i must ask that you know,

that you may find the wolf of the wood,

so fear not this slug - he is fat, blind, and slow,

but the little red girl in the hood.

#fantasy #thermart #character design #fairytales #red riding hood #horror

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fantasyfair · 5 months

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“Slay The Princess~”

Talk about a complicated love story.

But I’m for it xD

#grimdark #dark fantasy #traditional art #fantasy #romance #slay the princess #fanart #raven #birdman #horror #dark fairytale #black tabby games

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moonlightfaust · 1 month

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デッドオブザブレイン死霊の叫び Dead of the Brain: Shiryou no Sakebi (PC-98, 1992)

#デッドオブザブレイン #Dead of the Brain #Nightmare Collection #FairyTale #Horror Games #Adventure Games #PC-98

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nightfaeses · 1 year

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"You ask why I had loved her,

I ask; how could I not?" ☀

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kalliope-amorphous · 1 month

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Photography: Kalliope Amorphous

#art #photography #original photography #photographers on tumblr #artists on tumblr #contemporary art #black and white #dark art #surrealism #lensblr #dark aesthetic #dark fairytale #moodyports #horror art #spooky #surrealart #contemprorary art

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theboarsbride · 5 months

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She saw the thing hunched in the far corner, lapping up something that glistened beneath her lamp's light - fresh gore, discarded flesh, and viscera.🌕🐺🩸🦴

Based off a scene from my gothic werewolf novella-in-progress THE BONES WE HAUNT! It's meant to have a very, like... Bluebeard's Bride feel to it.🤭

(Alt version beneath the cut!)

#WIP : the bones we haunt #werewolf #gothic horror #gothic romance #werewolf wednesday #werewolf transformation #illustration #werewolf oc #monsterlove #monster romance #gothic novel #lycanthrope #monster bf #fairytale retellings #gothic art #werewolf art #monster art

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mrokat-art · 6 months

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Hell House Linocut Prints (aka Baba Yaga)

Grab one here!

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solarismelody · 6 months

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Little goody two shoes🌾🍇

#drawing #illustration #digital art #fanart #art #rommy art #digital artist #digital illustration #rpgmaker horror #rpgmaker #game #little goody two shoes #fairytales #astral shift

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princess-ibri · 5 months

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King Magnifico Backstory : Part One

Ok! Here goes part one for my ideas for Magnifico’s backstory with the DisneyVerse! I based it on the fairytale “The Carnation/ The Pink” as recorded by the Brothers Grimm, the tale of a young man who’s every wish comes true…

Link to the fairytale I’ve based this on here

Once upon a time, a lonely, childless queen wished upon a star, and the star answered. The Fairy of the star said that for the Queen’s great kindness and pure heart, the child would be blessed with beauty, charm and that he would have the power to grant the wishes of his people, in order to bless the kingdom he would one day inherit.

(This is me justifying that “Mirrors love my face/got these genes from outer space” line xD)

The queen was overjoyed with her son, and marveled at the magic he already displayed. She intended to keep his gift secret from the kingdom until he was older, in order to protect him, but it was too late. Word of his gift had leaked out, and one day the child was kidnapped.

He grew up under the watchful eye of his “parents”, granting them whatever they desired, wish after wish, day after day. Gowns and jewels, a manor house on the kingdom’s border, a fleet of fine hunting hounds to tear up the countryside. A covering of protection from any who might try and discover their whereabouts.

The child gave it all to them, for he felt the power of Love inside him when he used the gift that was meant to bless, and thought the love came from them.

They told him to never be selfish and wish for himself, though this was only to keep him from one day wishing in anyway that might undermine them. They lived in luxury and he in loneliness, for they of course allowed none to get to close to their prize lest another steal their good fortune.

Finally though, when the boy had become a youth, his loneliness became too great, and he wished deep in his heart for companionship. And the wish was granted. A beautiful young woman stood before him, shocked to be suddenly in a strange place before a strange man. But the youth was so comely, and spoke to her kindly and with assurances she would be safe with him, that soon she lost her fear. She still wished to return home, but the youth persuaded her to remain with him a while longer.

(He’s not evil yet obviously, but he’s always been a smooth guy and now he’s got a taste of having something he wants he’s loath to let it go. Which is understandable but can and will of course turn darker…)

For a time the youth hide the girl within the hallow of the pink rose bush in the center of the garden, and their loved bloomed with the roses they both found sanctuary in.

But eventually they were discovered by the youth’s “Father”. The boy confessed he had wished for a companion, and the man feigned acceptance. He asked the girl her name and origin, and she told him she was called Amaya, and that she hailed from the Kingdom of Córdoba. Upon further questioning, the man realized his stolen ‘son’s wish had pulled a woman to him from a completely different world.

Realizing the youth’s power would soon grow out of any control they could exact over him, the man and his wife determined to cut their losses and finally do away with him, lest their treachery be uncovered. Unbeknownst to them, the youth had overheard their plot, and began to plot his vengeance against the people he had believed to have been his parents.

Meanwhile, the leacherous man had taken a fancy to the girl, Amaya. He told her that if she aided him in getting rid of the youth he would aide her in returning back to her own world. Amaya had no interest in either the foul man nor in betraying the youth she had come to love, but she knew if she did not do as the man asked both she and her lover would be killed. So she took the heart of one of the man’s beloved hounds and brought it to him, claiming it to be the heart of the youth.

She rejected the man’s advances though, refusing him vehemently and reminding him their bargain was for him to help her to return home. Pretending to accept her rejection, the man waited until night to steal into her rooms within the manor, with a dagger drawn to plunge into the sleeping girl.

But he was met with the livid face of his erstwhile ‘son’ instead.

“So, ‘Father’, at last you show your true face. Your heart is a coal of envy, your wishes are cruel and selfish, you would take and kill with no more thought then your beloved hunting dogs do. So I wish that your outward self might reflect the beast within you!”

And with those words, the man’s bones shook and snapped, his hair darkened and spread, and soon enough a great beast spawns tearing around the manner, fire pouring from its insides as it burned all the ill gotten gains in the manor, and itself along with it.

The youth attempted to return to his true mother, but tragedy has struck while he grew up ignorant of his heritage. The King, furious that the son he had waited so long for had been stolen, blamed the Queen for the tragedy, and locked her within a doorless tower. A bird came twice a day to bring her food, but her heart was broken, and she eventually wasted away. The people, who had loved the kind queen, rose up against the cruel king, and the kingdom was left broken and destroyed.

The youth had no wish to stay in this place, full of the memories of all the good that had been destroyed by two greedy thieves. The youth, a man now, innocence scorched from him, kept a part of the banner that once hung in the grand hall to remind himself the folly of granting the wishes of the undeserving

He was ready however to grant the wish of the one who had not betrayed him, his beloved Amaya. Her wish brought them a ship that would carry them across the waves of sea and space, and together they sailed off into another world…

Edit: Part 2

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adarkrainbow · 7 months

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Spooky season fairytales (4)

This series of posts is supposed to be about movies and a few television series, but given it is about dark, spooky, creepy or eerie fairytale-inspired works, I am bound to explore some non-movie pieces. More specifically three works.

The Book of Lost Things

I talked previously about my great love for this 2006 book. John Connolly had already proven his talent at making teenage fantasy mixed with dark comedy (not to say burlesque horror) with his series of "Samuel Johnson" series, but with this book he also left his mark within the world of fairytales. Dark fairytales.

There is still a bit of humor and comedy in this book - but not much. One chapter maybe. The rest is dark, creepy, sad, disturbing... but also very touching, very poetic and very beautiful. "The Book of Lost Things" tells the story of David, a young boy living a hard life in 1930s England. He had to live with the long sickness and death of his mother, he cannot stand his stepmother and her new baby, his father is away from home due to his work involving him with the nascent World War II, the threat of said war forces the family to move to a remote countryside house with a tragic past... And David thinks he is going insane because strange things are happening. He can hear books talk for example, and a strange shadowy "crooked man" keeps appearing at the corner of his eye...

The culmination of these supernatural events results in David entering the world of fairytales, a gigantic forest filled with knights and princesses and talking animals and dwarfs and witches... Except that it is a world where fairytales went wrong. Very wrong. It is a dreadful and horrifying world where all the grimmness and terror of the original tales are played at full force, and David only has one hope to return home: find the good king's magical "Book of Lost Things"...

This book deals with a lot of serious topics - which is what makes it at the same time hard and beautiful of a read. It is a book that doesn't just twist fairytales for the sake of it (though there is a perverse game about reinterpreting the folktales in the most shocking ways). But it does so to help us, and David, explore themes such as grief, disease, war, the loss of the people you love, the desire to return to a nostalgic past... It is a great book.

(And how come I just learn TODAY upon writing these lines that Connolly just RELEASED A SEQUEL! 13 YEARS AFTER THE ORIGINAL! I'm going to buy this for Halloween)

Dimension 20: Neverafter

"Dimension 20" is a web-series by the team of CollegeHumor. In the same way as "Critical Role", "Dimension 20" is a D&D role-playing show, with each season following a campaign where the members of CollegeHumor, using their talent as stand-up and improv comedians, make their reole-playing adventure as entertaining and engaging as possible for the viewer.

Each season has a different theme, setting and universe, and the season known as "Neverafter" is, as you can guess, the "dark fairytale" season. Neverafter takes place in the world of fairytales and nursery rhymes - but things are starting to... be wrong. Happy endings go missing. Gruesome deaths spoil the magical happiness. The peace of the kingdoms is troubled by monsters popping out left and right. Armies are rising up. A storm is coming. The Time of Shadows falls on what was supposed to be a "happy ever after", and in this upcoming chaos, a group of travelers gather together to try to survive... Before discovering a cabal of manipulative fairies, tyrannical lords, creepy princesses, ancient witches and other abstract monsters trying to deal with world-threatening troubles, plunging a simple dark fantasy tale into a cosmic horror epic...

In 20 episodes, the campaign depicts the adventures of six characters. Princess Rosamund du Prix - the Sleeping Beauty princess, who had to free herself from her thorns when her prince failed to come, and is now searching for him. Ylfa Snorgelsson, Little Red Riding Hood, whose fairytale went off to a very traumatic end and left some of the wolf inside of her... Prince Gerard of Greenleigh, the prince from the "Frog Prince", who is now returning to being a frog as the love of his wife wanes... Puss in Boots, forced to return at being a scheming and scamming scoundrel after his kingdom and master were destroyed by giants... Timothy "Mother" Goose, an old man who inherited a magical book after the death of his son Jack and is haunted by a terrifying black gander... And Pinocchio, the magical puppet-boy, now a warlock who uses as a staff his own broken nose and whose patron is a disembodied and mysterious "mother" figure...

Little Nightmares

Ah, Little Nightmares... Who hasn't heard of this groundbreaking video game that marked 2017 with its unique, eerie story?

A little girl in a yellow raincoat wakes up in the dark and humid depths of some sort of industrial area, near the corpse of a hanged man... She wanders with a little light throughout pipes and cells, infested with deadly vermin, filled with the remnants of the presence of other children, overseen by mechanical eyes turning flesh into stone... And soon she discovers herself inside a nightmarish, impossible structure inhabited by child-killing giants, deformed monsters that are out to get her.

Little Nightmares is primarily an attempt at capturing and translating into a video game primal childhood fears and the type of nightmares a little kid can have. It is about a small, helpless child, confronting monsters that are grotesque caricatures of adulthood, in a world too big for her and designed to destroy her... But Little Nightmares also take a strong inspiration from traditional fairytales, making the video game a dark fairytale epic. I don't think it will be a spoiler by now due to the game's huge success but...

... A little girl exploring a dark and haunted supernatural world. A blind giant looking around for his victim using his other senses. A pair of monstrous cooks killing and preparing children for the gargantuan and repulsive feast of obese clients. An intense focus on food and hunger and cannibalism. Helpful little gnomes straight out of a children's fairy book. A beautiful but evil sorceress with a special relationship towards mirror, antagonizing the female protagonist while having some maternal untertones towards her... What if the evil queen of Snow-White was the head of a restaurant for ogres? And no need to add that the games has strong Del Toro tones evoking his fairy-related movies (Pan's Labyrinth, Hellboy II), while also disturbingly twisting the Ghibli movie style, making this the horror version of "Spirited Away".

The game received an acclaimed sequel, but I couldn't see very obvious fairytale tones in this one, much more focused on a dystopian feeling and ambiance.

#spooky season fairytales #spooky season #dark fairytales #horror fairytales #fairytale books #fairytale video games #creepy fairytales #little nightmares #the book of lost things #dimension 20 #neverafter

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