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Category: Alanna Forte

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Plot: young woman navigates a forest full of horrors and terrors.

Little Red Riding Hood was (so far) the last of three European fairytale adaptations from California filmmaker Rene Perez. In the years before he had lensed versions of Sleeping Beauty (2014), and The Snow Queen (2013). Little Red Riding Hood came five long years after Catherine Hardwicke’s big budget Red Riding Hood (2011) with Amanda Seyfried, and thus could impossibly be accused of trying to ride its coattails. It was shot back-to-back with his other moodpiece The Obsidian Curse (2016) and it’s entirely within the realm of possibility that Perez wanted to briefly focus on something lighter before delving further into the Playing with Dolls (2015-2017) franchise and starting pre-production on his now infamous Death Kiss (2018). Little Red Riding Hood is a cosplaying extravaganza gone very much awry, and it’s understandable why Perez never returned to adapting fairytales after.

While the history of Little Red Riding Hood can be traced back to several 10th century European folk tales it was 17th-century French poet Charles Perrault who provided the basis for its popular and most enduring iteration with his Le Petit Chaperon Rouge. That version of the story can be found in the Histories or Tales from Past Times, with Morals or Mother Goose Tales (Histoires ou contes du temps passé, avec des moralités or Contes de ma mère l'Oye) collection from 1697. In the 19th century German poets Jacob and Wilhelm Grimm retold the Perrault fairytale loyal to the source material, but toned down the darker themes considerably to make it more audience-friendly. Rene Perez’ adaptation of the tale keeps the basic contours of the Perrault and Grimm iterations of the story, but takes some strange twists and turns along the way. Normally there isn’t a whole of ways to bungle something as simple as Little Red Riding Hood. Alas, Perez and screenwriter Barry Massoni have managed to do just that.

Little Red Riding Hood (Irina Levadneva, as Iren Levy) is traveling through the woods to bring medicine to her “gravely ill” grandmother (Marilyn Robrahm). On the way she’s warned by an apparently dead knight (John Scuderi) that the forest is haunted by terrible horrors, and that her “pureness” will attract the agents of evil. In the castle in the deep forest the Master (Robert S. Dixon) has sensed Little Red Riding Hood’s presence, and from the dungeons below he releases the Lycanthrope (Louie Ambriz), the Blind Creature (Jason Jay Prado, as Jason Prado), and the Evil Siren (Raula Reed) into the woods. Little Red Riding Hood is chased across the forest and into the castle by the Lycanthrope. Meanwhile in the earthly dimension social media influencer Carol Marcus (Nicole Stark) is on a hikingtrip across California shooting nature pictures. Eventually she comes across a mansion in the deep woods where she’s haunted by a spectral manifestation of the Master. As Little Red Riding Hood wanders around the castle she comes across an imprisoned monk (Colin Hussey) who tells her that the Master is one of the Ancients, the last survivors of Atlantis, and that he feeds on fear. On the other side of the forest a knight (Robert Amstler) is lured into the castle by the Evil Siren in form of a beautiful gypsy (Alanna Forte). Now that they’re both imprisoned in the castle walls there’s no other way to escape but to confront the Master in any way they can, and release the spell that binds them to the castle…

To say that Little Red Riding Hood is both virtually plotless and hopelessly convoluted at the same time would be charitable. As a simple three-act story Red Riding Hood lends itself ideally for adaptations. Except that Barry Massoni and Rene Perez forgot to set up the main characters in the first act, pad the second act with meandering and endless shots of the castle interiors and the Nicole Stark subplot, only to hastily wrap everything up in what looks like an improvised ending. Then there’s also the fact that this Little Red Riding Hood has very little to do with either the Perrault or Grimm fairytale, while it does feature a girl in a red hood, a wolf, and a grandmother. The Nicole Stark subplot feels more than a little out of place, and would have fitted better in Playing with Dolls (2015), or Playing with Dolls: Bloodlust (2016). Why the Nicole Stark subplot was even included is anybody’s guess. It goes nowhere, adds nothing of value, and is never brought up again once the valiant knight is introduced. More than anything it feels like a b-roll from Playing with Dolls: Bloodlust (2016). Instead of introducing grandmother and setting up why it’s imperative that Little Red Riding Hood reaches her destination, a throwaway line is all motivation we get. The warrior is the closest equivalent to the woodcutter (or hunter) from the fairytale, but he will not be rescueing Little Red Riding Hood from the Big Bad Wolf, or carving him up. Not that this is the first time that Rene Perez took to adapting a European fairytale very, very liberally, Sleeping Beauty (2014), and The Snow Queen (2013) suffer from the same defects, and the latter even had the gall to introduce a para-military subplot.

On the plus side, this is a Rene Perez production which at least ensures that there will be plenty to look at. In case of Little Red Riding Hood that means we are treated to a multitude of beautifully composed shots and scenic Redwood National Park landscapes. What little production value Little Red Riding Hood has is almost entirely thanks to extensive location filming at Castello di Amorosa in Napa Valley. As early as The Snow Queen (2013) Perez has proven that he just as easy could make a living shooting music videos when he isn’t making movies. Just like that movie Little Red Riding Hood occassionally reverts back to an extended LARPing exercise captured on camera, but just like Rene has a good eye for locations he loves beautiful women just as much. On display here are Irina Levadneva, Nicole Stark, and Alanna Forte. Stark, and Forte are Perez regulars and would turn up in future Perez features, contrary to Levadneva who would resume modeling. Little Red Riding Hood is low on action, story, and lacking in about every department – but it works wonders as a moodpiece. If Perez should decide to revisit this fantasy direction he should probably lens a Jean Rollin erotic horror feature, or dig up the wolf-suit and helm his own Paul Naschy inspired El Hombre Lobo epic. He has the monster suits, the locations, and the actresses to do just such a thing.

Just like Sleeping Beauty (2014) had a demon that resembled the Jem'Hadar shock troops of the Dominion from Star Trek: Deep Space Nine (1993–1999) Perez has Stark playing a character named Carol Marcus and has her do the Vulcan salute, for… some reason? The least you can say is that Rene has a sense of humor about it all. It’s the sort of thing you’d expect to see in a Neil Johnson science-fiction feature, thankfully Rene would find better stuff to do for, and with, Nicole Stark in his later productions. The dialogue, when it appears and however little of it there is in the first place, is about as clunky as you’d expect. Matters are made worse by Robert Amstler’s and Irina Levadneva’s impossibly thick native accents (Austrian and Russian, respectively), hence that they were dubbed by Kristina Kennedy and Robert Koroluck. Overall, and a few beautiful composed shots notwithstanding, Little Red Riding Hood is a fairly static affair. This was before Perez really got a grip on creative camera set-ups and moving shots. Little Red Riding Hood, just like The Obsidian Curse (2016) the same year, often feels more like a technical exercise than a feature intended for general release. And that’s okay, Perez’ later productions obviously benefitted from it in the long run.

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Plot: homeless girl runs afoul of escaped masked serial murderer.

At the crossroads of Albert Pyun, Andy Sidaris, and Jim Wynorski lies the ever-expanding cinematic oeuvre of Rene Perez. Perez has been writing, producing and editing his own low budget features since 2010 and shows no signs of slowing down or stopping anytime soon. Around these parts Rene has garnered a degree of infamy with his very loose adaptations of classic European fairytales. Next to his various western crossovers Alien Showdown: The Day the Old West Stood Still (2013), Prey for Death (2015), and From Hell to the Wild West (2017) his zombie franchise The Dead and the Damned (2011-2015) has proven resilient. Perez shoots features by the old 42nd Street adage of blood, boobs, bullets, and babes. Death Kiss (2018) - his vigilante justice crime exploitationer modeled after Death Wish (1974) with professional Charles Bronson impersonator Robert Kovacs - is perhaps his most legendary. Before Death Kiss (2018) there was Playing with Dolls, Rene’s loving tribute to backwood horror, and the classic American slasher. Cabal (2020) was a good throwback to late seventies/early eighties exploitation, but conceptually didn't gel entirely. Playing with Dolls is the scion of Three on a Meathook (1972), The Texas Chainsaw Massacre (1974), The Hills Have Eyes (1977) and to a lesser degree Friday the 13th (1980). Rene knows his classics.

Things haven’t exactly been looking up for Ukrainian immigrant Cindy (Natasha Blasick). In short order her roommate left taking with her all belongings, furniture and appliances from their apartment, Cindy is fired from her job and evicted by her landlord (John Welsh) who tries to extort sexual favors from her to make up for the rent she’s still due. Out of the blue Cindy receives a phonecall from a lawyer (Allisun Sturges) inquiring whether she would be interested in a month-long housesitting job for a hefty sum of money. Thinking her luck has finally turned Cindy heads out unprepared to the agreed-upon rendez-vous point to meet her employer. There she runs into a creepy farmer (John Scuderi) before a delegation takes her deep into the densely forested woodlands to a luxurious log cabin far away from civilization. It never dawns on Cindy that the sudden appearance of a high-paying job and a working-space cut off from civilization with no transportation, or communication is not in the least a bit sketchy. Alas, such blissfully aware epiphanies will not be forthcoming until it is late. Too late, at any rate. Isolated and bored out of her skull Cindy drowns herself in hard liquor and modeling high-end fashion to kill time…

What she doesn’t realize is she has become the latest victim in a social experiment engineered by, and for the vicarious pleasures of, mysterious benefactor Scopophilio (Richard Tyson). Not only has he facilitated the release of psychotic masked serial killer Prisoner AYO-886 (Charlie Glackin) but he has chosen her to be the next “doll” for the deranged madman to “play with”. On the side Scopophilio (obviously derived from scopophilia, or the Latin term for voyeurism) has his assistant Trudy (Marilyn Robrahm) kidnap attractive young women for his personal gratification the most recent victim (Elonda Seawood) has been kept in a perpetually drugged state. Scopophilio somehow is able to steer Prisoner AYO-886’s actions by voice commands. The woodland area and cabin are monitored by an extensive surveillance system and the perimeter is guarded by a well-equipped private para-military force headed up by an unstable commando (Sean Story). Lounging out in the hot tub one day Cindy meets battered and blooded police officer Burnett (David A. Lockhart) who has been tracking the murderer since a string of unexplained disappearances in Lithuania. It’s only a question of who will get to them first; Prisoner AYO-886 or the para-military forces?

A better writer had explored all the interesting themes that Perez briefly glances upon and then ignores for the rest of the feature. Playing with Dolls, either by design or by sheer dumb luck, touches upon the ever-widening divide between the rich and the poor, the desperation that poverty drives people into, the addiction to alcohol and related substances to which it inevitably leads and the social isolation that it enables. This could have been about the journey of a young woman overcoming great personal shortcomings and less than fortunate circumstances to learn something important about herself through a traumatic experience in the deep woods. Instead Playing with Dolls seems mostly concerned with out of nowhere action scenes, plodding and obvious padding that has Natasha Blasick in a three-minute montage showing off various clothes and moments later has her dancing around the cabin in a drunken stupor.

Blasick, for all intents and purposes, seems to play a part probably intended for Irena Levadneva but she never acted again after Little Red Riding Hood (2016). It opens with sometime Perez muse (and bootylicious swimsuit model) Alanna Forte being chased through a snowclad woodland before ending up bound and gagged and losing a nipple. An opening from which we can deduce that Perez has either seen Alfred Hitchcock’s Psycho (1960) or Sean S. Cunningham’s Friday the 13th (1980). Somehow it doesn’t turn into a throwback to the deranged excesses of the golden age of grindhouse slashers of the mid-to-late 1970s and early 80s. Forte gets naked in more Rene Perez features but in her screen debut Alanna’s character (if it can be called that) doesn’t even get so much as a name, let alone a backstory of some kind. Charlie Glackin is at his best when he can non-verbally act as a hulking and blunt instrument of wanton dismemberment and death. For reasons that will never be explained, Prisoner AYO-886 is prone to flashes of confusion and reluctance to kill as if he's suddenly burdened by a consciousness or a humanity.

Perez has expressed that he was aiming to avoid the usual slasher conventions, and that he does. For the most part Playing with Dolls is filmed as a ghost horror. It’s the sort of production that the Camp Blood (1999-2020) nonology would be if it ever got its collective wits together (which it never did). As such Playing with Dolls oozes with atmosphere like no other. To call this a fantastique would be a misnomer but it operates on the same dream-logic. Natasha Blasick and Forte both take their clothes off. The sexual undercurrent to some of Prisoner AYO-886’s actions with sharp-edged utensils and the way Perez lovingly glides his camera across and over the minimally clad or disrobed bodies of Forte and Blasick is something straight out of a Jim Wynorski flick. There are so many instances where Perez lets his camera glide over Natasha Blasick’s rear that you’d swear Tinto Brass was involved with the production. Not that we’d blame Perez for getting as much mileage out of Blasick’s gloriously well-formed posterior as he does, it’s probably her most beloved asset. What’s painfully clear even this early on is that not the cast, not the plot or the special effects drive Perez’ productions but the truly scenic locations he chooses. To his credit the way Rene Perez photographs the California woodlands is absolutely lyrical and it’s a crying shame that Rene later transformed Playing with Dolls in exactly what he avoided here. Once Playing with Dolls was extended into a franchise it did become a standard slasher. Perez has an eye for locations, striking visuals, and makes the most of what is by all accounts very little. He would probably make an absolute killing at directing moderate budget music videos if given the opportunity.

Playing with Dolls is the kind of slasher that doesn’t slash, where characters are so underwritten and static that they very well might not exist at all, and where the spooky locations and exteriors tell more of a story than the production they’re appearing in. The fight choreography and action direction aren’t much to write home about and the amount of CGI bloodsplatters are as fake as they are obvious. How Playing with Dolls would have benefited from old-fashioned practical – and prosthetic effects work. The synth score is hokey for the most part, completely unfitting at worst and makes one long for the likes of Anthony Riparetti, Gary Stockdale, Dave Andrews, Thomas Cappeau, or Joel Goldsmith. About the only thing that Playing with Dolls gets right is the design of Prisoner AYO-886. He is a hulking monstrosity of a man with the same fashion sense as Jason Voorhees and a Leatherface-styled dead skin mask complete with Frankensteinian steel enforcements and barb wire decorations. The biggest star next to the wonderful Californian landscapes and the assorted naked breasts of the female cast is Richard Tyson from Zalman King’s Two Moon Junction (1988), Kindergarten Cop (1990), the Farelly brothers’ comedy hit There’s Something About Mary (1998), Battlefield Earth (2000), and Black Hawk Down (2001). As much as he has an eye for scenic beauty Perez’ taste in women is equally impeccable as between Alanna Forte, Natasha Blasick and Elonda Seawood there’s something for everybody.

We have a sneaking suspicion that Rene Perez would probably fare well doing an Andy Sidaris styled spy-action romp with girls in candy-colored bikinis and oversized explosions. In fact we’re surprised that, so far, he has decided to stay within the horror, action, science fiction and fantastic realms thus far. For one we’d love to see a fun-loving action romp with the likes of Irena Levadneva, Jenny Allford, Alanna Forte, Elonda Seawood, Stormi Maya, and Natasha Blasick. Or at the very least a Jean Rollin or José Ramon Larraz inspired female vampire romp where Perez’ minimalism to narrative and production is actually a benefit. Perez would be the ideal candidate to carry on the cinematic legacy of Andy and Christopher Drew Sidaris and their LETHAL Ladies. In fact his recent Death Kiss (2018) was such a true to form imitation of Death Wish (1974) that it came replete with Charles Bronson lookalike Robert Kovacs. History has proven that Perez would get better with time and subsequent Playing with Dolls installments would be much more violent, gruesome, and full of practical effects work. Alex Chandon is generally better at this sort of thing, but Playing with Dolls does not tend to grate on the nerves as much as his batshit insane reworkings of European fairytales. If you are prepared to meet the Perez oeuvre halfway it can be surprisingly entertaining, actually.