Steve Moore’s “Redux Riding Hood,” The Short That Disney Hid For 15 Years, Is Finally Online

By
on

Director Steve Moore has finally posted one of my favorite (and rarely seen) Disney shorts of recent (or semi-recent) vintage. Moore recounts the making of the film – a product of Disney’s Television Animation unit, that went on to be nominated for an Academy Award in 1997 – on his Flip Animation blog. Written by Dan O’Shannon (now of Modern Family), narrated by Garrison Keillor, and voiced by Mia Farrow, Michael Richards, June Foray and Adam West, here at last is Redux Riding Hood:

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  • http://dailygrail.com/ Red Pill Junkie

    Amazing re-interpretation! :-D

  • http://bestanimatedshort.blogspot.com ajnrules

    No idea what happened that let Steve Moore post the video, but I’m sure glad that he did. The film is hilarious with great verbal and visual humor. I love the cutout background animation, which is reminiscent of Frank Film and the ending for It’s Tough to Be a Bird. And the ending is great! Good job on such a great accomplishment, Mr. Moore!

  • Dino

    Bet Michael Richards wishes he had a time machine too.

  • http://www.onanimation.com Daniel

    Very cool!

  • http://oye-studios.daportfolio.com Seni

    Uuuuh . . . okie dokie.

  • Chris Sobieniak

    Thank you Steve for giving me a chance to finally see this after hearing of it for so long.

  • Deaniac

    That was oddly humorous and undoubtedly bizarre…and I loved every minute of it.

  • TK

    I really hope the master print of this exists. So crisp. So bizarre. LOVED IT!

  • http://art-candy.blogspot.com/ Andrea

    Why create a whole cartoon and then hide it? It’s pretty awesome too.

    • Chris Sobieniak

      I’ve been telling myself that for the past 14 years already.

      Just googling for old “rec.arts.animation” posts on the matter reminded me so much of how it was to have learned about this film, but seeing how half and half the viewers were to it at the start.

  • Taco Wiz

    That was amazing. It was not just a great cartoon, but a great morality tale. I really wish I had seen it in October instead of right now.

  • DonaldC

    What style.
    So distinctly 90′s urban.

  • http://croovman.deviantart.com/gallery/ Stav Levi (croovman)

    The wolf shall lay down with the lamb.
    Absolutely charming.

    I LOVED that he has three joints.

  • Mapache

    And thank you Sharon Morrill for making this possible.

  • anonymous

    The style is so un disney, its really fun for a change. It would be neat if they released this.
    what happened to Richards happened a long time ago(hopefully he’s learned a lesson) and Disney would be endorsing their film not the actor….i.e, Mel Gibson-Pocohantas

  • tedzey

    Certain things in this short were really awesome, though Red’s design was just annoying (probably intentional, but still). Overall, I liked it! Brought back memories of reading stories like “The True Story of The Three Little Pigs!”

  • wever

    Aside from some…… interesting design decisions, this was pretty good. Of course nowadays, the timing would be twice as fast.

    I guess this was still in the phase where Lacey Chabert tried to work in cartoons. ….WAIT THEY GOT FABIO TO VOICE THE HUNTSMAN???

  • Snagglepuss

    The idea of Michael Richards living in regret!? Preposterous!

  • Clint H.

    Great cartoon! I’ve always wanted to see it ever since that clip was shown here a while back. :)

  • http://www.Segaltoons.com Steve Segal

    This is one of the funniest and most original cartoons to come from Disney. They should bundle all their recent shorts and release them on DVD or Blu-Ray. They have a lot to choose from (in no particular order):

    Oilspot and Lipstick
    Off His Rockers
    Harold And His Amazing Green Plants
    Fun with Mr. Future
    Soccermania
    Petal to the Metal
    Stand by Me
    Recycle Rex
    Lorenzo
    Tangled Ever After
    Destino
    How to Hook Up Your Home Theater
    Tick Tock Tale
    Glago’s Guest
    Let It Begin
    The Ballad of Nessie
    Super Rhino
    Tiny’s Big Adventure
    The Little Matchgirl
    The Cat That Looked at a King
    A Dairy Tale
    One By One
    John Henry
    Three Little Pigs (1997)
    Paperman

    Some of these, like Moore’s other short Stand by Me, have never been released on home video, others are spread out on various feature DVD’s (not all of us want to purchase 3 Ninjas to watch Petal to the Metal).

    • Chris Sobieniak

      I keep saying this all the time, they need to put out a DVD set like this with all the material that came out over the past quarter century.

      • http://dailygrail.com/ Red Pill Junkie

        A DVD set sounds so 90′s —like that cartoon ;)

        Why can’t Disney put up an online store for all their wonderful shorts and content, like iTunes?

    • beamish13

      That’s a great idea! FUN WITH MR. FUTURE has been buried for 30 years.

    • Steve Gattuso

      I’m not sure you can even FIND a copy of “3 ninjas’ at this point.

  • Toonio

    So this is what could have happened if Disney hired and kept guys like Bashki and Krickfalusi huh?

    Hope they re master this and put it on DVD or something. It’s freaking hilarious.

    • not a fan

      No. If they hired Bashki, it would be raunchy, cheaply animated, nonsensical, and obsessed with random social commentary.

    • tedzey

      How does this resemble John K or anything Spumco produced? If anything, it’s disney doing fractured fairy tales. I’d bet if John K saw this cartoon, he’d write a lenghty blog post about how the designs are too flat and angular and should focus on having characters squirm like spaghetti.

      • Geoff

        And yet, the whole look made me think of Nickelodeon.
        Really hated the style.
        But I loved the story, the gags were great (I laughed quite a bit).
        Visually it was just ugly, like John K’s work.

  • Michel Van

    this is fantastic !
    why was this hide for almost 15 years ?!
    Why why why ?

  • http://erikbutter.blogspot.com Erik Butter

    What’s wrong with the wolfs arms?… :P

    • Chris Sobieniak

      Nothing really, he’s just got two sets of elbows on each arm, also a matching pair of knees for each leg too!

  • http://www.moviecappa.blogspot.com Mike Caracappa

    For Television animation, there’s some really great animation in this. There’s a scene with the wolf sitting on his bed feeling miserable that looked terrific. I also liked the kinda creepy design of Red Riding Hood. And as long as we’re talking about voices, don’t forget the great Jim Cummings!

    Really cool short, thanks for posting this.

    • http://richbailey.blogspot.com Richard

      A couple of my friends animated on this. It’s great to finally see it in its entirity after seeing snippets and pencil tests.
      The New Zealand animators were most trained by ex-Disney animator John Ewing who was an assistant to John Lounsbery

      • http://www.steveleggat.com Steve

        That’s right. I was working at Toonz at the time and quit before I saw Redux completed. It’s good to finally see it surface.

  • http://www.kayshapero.net/FredPatten/fred.html Fred Patten

    It’s great that this is finally online, but I saw a bootleg print around 1997 of the unreleased Three Little Pigs companion piece to Red Riding Hood Redux, and in my opinion it is even funnier! When is that coming online? Or getting a general release like Destino or Glago’s Guest?

  • Norco

    Typical Disney – allow one of a kind projects to be made, to disprove the rumors that they won’t let anything live, then bury it forever to prove the rumors true.

    • Chris Sobieniak

      Why am I not surprised?

  • http://909pop.com Mike Scott

    love this. especially the nerd short wolf’s robotic voice. kind of terrified me.

    • James Fox

      Um, That was Adam West – and he was playing a short rich fox

      • http://www.dailygrail.com Red Pill Junkie

        And you don’t find that terrifying?

      • Chris Sobieniak

        I saw no problem with the voice myself. Perhaps it’s a generational thing but I liked that it made this dweebish half-pint figure sound very unlike what we may have thought this guy would speak like (like a lisp or something). This sort of deep, manly voice just works. While someone mentioned Jim Cummings being in this too, his role was rather pretty small anyway.

      • http://bestanimatedshort.blogspot.com ajnrules

        Adam West was at Dallas Comic Con. He sounds exactly the same as he did 15 years ago.

      • Aaron

        Heck, he sounds exactly the same as he did 45 years ago!

  • http://flipanimation.blogspot.com Steve Moore

    Thank you, Jerry, for plugging my old short. And thank you readers for your supportive comments. Hopefully it will get a proper release. And yes – there is a second short, where the three pigs do a “Real World” episode where live in a loft and take in a wolf for a roommate in an attempt to be contemporary, open-minded pigs. Harvey Fierstein is the wolf, who swears he’s a vegan. He comes out as a carnivore later. Darrell Rooney wrote and directed it and it is hilarious.

    I don’t have a copy, sorry.

    • http://www.cartoonbrew.com/author/jerry Jerry Beck

      My partner in crime Frank Conniff wrote that THREE LITTLE PIGS short. It’s 20 minutes long! I’ll see if I can find it.

      • Inkan1969

        Neat. I remember reading about both cartoons. They were supposed to be the start of a series of shorts reportedly aimed for older audience. I have to admit that I misinterpreted that report and thought the shorts were supposed to be PG-13 or R rated. I’m glad to see the actual “Redux” and clear that error up.

      • http://youtube.com/user/Mesterius1 Mesterius

        Jerry: Yes yes yes! I so wanna see that THREE LITTLE PIGS short… it would fit right into Cartoon Brew’s YouTube account:)

      • Chris Sobieniak

        I’ve heard of taht Three Little Pigs film too, and would love to see that too if possible. The “Redux” series or whatever it was going to be sounded like a very off-beat, innovative yet very creative way of adapting these stories we’ve heard time and time again. The idea of a “Real World” take on the Three Little Pigs sounds very original to me (of course we’ve gone past that these days).

      • http://ramapithblog.blogspot.com David Gerstein

        I’ve heard there was a JACK AND THE BEANSTALK as well. Did it get completed?

      • DuckTwacy

        Frank Conniff wrote it? Then I’d love to see it!

  • Mike

    That was great! Would love to see a spin-off starring Leonard Fox (Adam West)!

  • Eric

    Such a shame to hide this. I see why they did it’s very un-Disney. It’s almost as if the director was channeling Ralph Bakshi and made it work. More please!!

    • Erik

      What exactly is “Un-Disney”?

  • http://ryanrosendal.blogspot.com Ryan

    I imagine part of the reason why Disney hasn’t made this more publicly available is because of its “one-off” nature. It’s not produced by Disney Feature Animation, so it doesn’t fit in there. It’s produced by Disney TV Animation but its not part of a TV series. The series it was produced for (Fractured Fairy Tales) doesn’t exist.

    “Redux Riding Hood” is an oddity, and oddities tend to fall through the cracks.

    Which is too bad because it is fantastic.

  • Scarabim

    Sure, you guys like it. But the reaction from the general public would have been “Wut??” And “Dude, the wolf’s in bed with a sheep!” And that’s why it got shelved. Probably.

    • Chris Sobieniak

      No, some regular viewers I recall critiquing this one often chewed the design/look of the animation and the unusual voice casting choices. It was never about the inter-species thing though I wouldn’t be surprised if that was true.

  • Norco

    There was a contingent at DTVA in the 1990s that wanted to do a cheap and snappy Jay Ward style satirical cartoon show. It never really happened. One reason is that the bare bones Jay Ward house style couldn’t be aped (even by Ward himself) when drawing too many inbetweens or drawing too well. Another is that satire and Disney TV Animation in the 1990s were bedmates less often than a sheep and a wolf. There’s nothing wrong with the cartoon that Steve Moore made. Disney just got cold feet and claimed they had no series vehicle to put it in. You can’t be the man and satirize the man.

    • Chris Sobieniak

      Well at least we have this at all. I would say congratulations to them for even bothering to go somewhere else even if it went into a dead end. Both this and the Three Little Pigs short could’ve easily been released as a standalone VHS tape for all I care at a time when the studio was cranking out endless “cheap’quels”.

    • Inkan1969

      Did that Jay Ward idea eventually become “Dave the Barbarian”?

  • http://youtube.com/user/Mesterius1 Mesterius

    By the way, can someone here PLEASE post Disney’s “Lorenzo” online as well? I’ve been wanting to see that for ages, but it seems to be completely unseeable. Someone please change that!

    • http://bestanimatedshort.blogspot.com ajnrules

      Agreed 100,000%! The trailer’s been up for ages but they never released it on DVD. Looks like they want to punish us for not going to see Raising Helen. :(

  • Glowworm

    Wow–that was absolutely brilliant–and hilarious. I got a kick out of “Oh,Grandma, what a big uvula you have!”

    Also, I found it clever that the wolf’s wife was a sheep.

  • http://bestanimatedshort.blogspot.com ajnrules

    Steve Moore just posted an entry on his blog with eleven interesting facts about Redux Riding Hood. He also included a shout-out to Cartoon Brew. It’s well worth a read as it adds to the enjoyment.

  • Andreas Wessel-Therhorn

    Disney has a history in recent years to produce traditional shorts and then not release them or put them on dvds as extras.Lorenzo should have won the Oscar that year, it was by far the best short in that competition. The little matchgirl should have had a wide release…alas, its all about Pixar now

  • debra solomon

    the end was brilliant!

  • Sam

    Loved this, I couldn’t stop laughing and was surprised how funny it is! I love the Hunter’s design and also the entire hair gag. Thanks for sharing this.

  • Doug

    Brilliant!! I agree — Disney should either put this on TV or open one of its animated theatrical films with it.

  • http://woweh.com Kelly

    I first heard about this film from my old animation teacher – it was his Holy Grail.
    Finally, I get to see it.
    And it was worth it. :D What a fun and entertaining film! I loved it!

  • Mad Hatter

    Great short, I kinda feel bad for the wolf though, I mean sure he was a bad guy but still all he wanted was a little respect