Woodenhead (2003)
Surrealist Fairytale
Strange surrealist New Zealand made film that emerges as a Brothers Grimm fairytale as directed by a David Lynch or a Guy Maddin
Fairytales
In its simplest usage, a fairytale is a story for children. Most modern fairytales originated from the interpretations by The Brothers Grimm, Hans Christian Andersen and others like Charles Perrault, although all of these draw from earlier folk tales that have origins in oral tradition. It should also be noted that many of these, especially the Grimm Brothers originals, often have darker elements that are usually sanitised by modern child-friendly tellings.
Few fairytales actually feature Fairies. Most fairytales concern adolescents or innocents – children, orphans, princesses, while antagonists are figures like evil stepmothers or wicked witches. The story frequently requires a journey – often through The Woods – and the innocent undergoing peril to find rescue (often from a prince) and arrive at a place where they receive the gift of true love whereupon comes the refrain “… and they lived happily ever after.” The fantastic enters in the form of magic, talking animals and witches.
There have been a great many fairytale adaptations since the early days of cinema. For a time, Disney produced a series of classic animated versions and there have been a great many other works produced both animated and live-action, all drawing from classic and familiar tales. A number of these are musical and/or ballet interpretations.
There is also body of deconstructed fairytales where the elements of familiar stories are put to very different usages. The most common of these is seeing the fairytale updated into modern surroundings often with comical or less-than-innocent results, or of stories where Little Red Riding Hood encounters werewolves or Hansel and Gretel’s witch is a cannibal. Other versions posit the idea that characters from classic fairytales inhabit shared worlds.
The Wonderful World of the Brothers Grimm (1962)
Brothers Grimm Anthology/Biopic
Anthology of Brothers Grimm stories from George Pal where the brothers are wound in as characters. The film’s effectiveness is killed by Pal pitching everything down at a mawkish and simple-minded level
Witchslayer Gretl (2012)
Faiirytale Adaptation
A low-budget film that prefigures the big-budget Hansel and Gretel: Witch Hunters in turning the fairytale brother and sister into witchslayers in a generic fantasy adventure plot
Whoever Slew Auntie Roo? (1972)
Grand Old Dame Thriller
From the great and overlooked Curtis Harrington, a Grand Old Dames film with Shelley Winters going mad in the Baby Jane vein. This also becomes a modernised retelling of Hansel and Gretel
Under the Rainbow (2013)
Romantic Comedy/Modernised Fairytales
No relation to the disastrous Chevy Chase film, a French romantic comedy that has modernised retellings of various fairytales wound into the plot, often being deflated or turned on their head
The Ugly Stepsister (2025)
Cinderella from the Ugly Stepsister’s Viewpoint
An adult and frequently horrific retelling of the Cinderella story from the Ugly Stepsister’s point-of-view
The Ugly Duckling (2010)
Claymation/Fairytale
Charming Claymation animated adaptation of the Hans Christian Andersen fairytale from Russia that manages to be a mordant satire on Communism into the bargain
The Ugly Duckling (1997)
Animation/Fairy-Tale
Amiable British animated film for young children based on the Hans Christian Andersen fairytale
tom thumb (1958)
Miniature Boy/Fairy Tale
George Pal adapts the Brothers Grimm fairytale with Russ Tamblyn as a miniature youth amid colourful effects and extended slapstick scenes
Thumbelina (1994)
Animated Fairy-Tale
Animated film from Don Bluth, an insipid adaptation of the fairytale that eventually bogs down as a comic picaresque (*)
The 10th Kingdom (2000)
Fairytale Parody Mini-Series
Hallmark mini-series set in a world 200 years after the classic fairytales have occurred, this wittily deflates or contrasts classic story elements with the present-day
Tangled (2010)
Disney Animation/Rapunzel Adaptation
Disney fairytale Lite. The story of Rapunzel gets hiply modernised and is now no more than a cute adventure/romance about a handsome rogue and a girl who has magical hair. Eminently forgettable Disney animation.
The Tale of the Princess Kaguya (2013)
Anime/Japanese Fairytale
Studio Ghibli adaptation of a classic Japanese folktale from Hayao Hiyazaki’s mentor Isao Takahata. This is a slower, very different film than Hayao Miyazaki’s, the animation designed like a traditional Japanese woodprint. Never quite soars like Miyazaki’s films do but not without its charms
Tale of Tales (2015)
Anthology of Fairytales
A trio of tales from the world’s oldest fairytale collection – but quite different to anything you expect … While there is all the magic, ogres and princesses, this is a beautifully lush film made for adults and less about simple homilies that about fate and its cruel twists
The Swan Princess (1994)
Animated Fairy-Tale
Nicely animated film from Richard Rich that tells the story of Tchaikovsky’s Swan Lake in which a princess is turned into a swan by an evil sorcerer
Snow White (2009)
Fairy-Tale Ballet Adaptation
An amazing reinterpretation of the classical fairytale as modern ballet for adults. This does amazing things to reinvent the original and is visually extraordinary
Snow White and the Three Stooges (1961)
Idiots Enact a Fairytale
The Three Stooges are transplanted into a retelling of the fairytale, although their slapstick inanity feels drowned out amid the maudlin banality and Cinemascope spectacle
Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs (1937)
Disney Animation/Fairy-Tale
The first full-length animated film ever made and the beginning of the Disney tradition. A superlative effort, full of an adorable anthropomorphism where Disney instinctively grasps all the elements of the formula
Snow White and the Huntsman (2012)
Adult Fairytale Adaptation/Epic Fantasy
The second of 2012’s Snow White films after Mirror Mirror, this turns the fairytale into an epic fantasy. Well produced but ultimately a film that lacks anything unique nor pushes far enough into the dark fantasy it promises to be
Snow White: A Tale of Terror (1997)
Adult Fairy-Tale
Beautifully made and very adult version of the fairytale, which seems determined to play up the terror aspect of the title, resulting in a work that seems a long way away from Disney
Snow White (2025)
Disney Live-Action Remake
The live-action remake of Disney’s Snow White comes surrounded by controversy on every side and served to make it a critical and box-office flop that left doubt over the future of the Disney remake industry
Snow White (2001)
Fairy-Tale
Caroline Thompson, a regular Tim Burton scriptwriter, directs a uniquely revisionist version of the fairytale in which she digs in to explain the origins of many of the familiar aspects of the story
Snow White (1987)
Fairy-Tale
One of the better of Cannon Films cheap fairytale adaptations featuring a grandly over the top Diana Rigg as the Wicked Stepmother
Snow Queen (2002)
Fairy-Tale/Epic Quest
The Hallmark tv mini-series version of the Hans Christian Andersen fairytale is lushly produced but tends to plod when it should come to life as fantasy
The Snow Queen (1995)
Animation/Fairy-Tale
Lightweight British animated adaptation of the Hans Christian Andersen fairytale made for children
The Slipper and the Rose (1976)
Cinderella Adaptation
A musical adaptation of Cinderella from the Sherman Brothers, behind the hit of Mary Poppins
Sleeping Beauty (2014)
Fairytale Adventure/The Asylum Mockbuster
In the early 2010s, we had a series of fairytales rewritten as dark adult fantasies; The Asylum served up their own cheap copies – this was their version of Maleficent. Directed by actor Casper Van Dien, this not uninterestingly plays out as a fantasy adventure that follows the prince’s attempts to enter the castle
The Sleeping Beauty (2010)
Fairytale
Catherine Breillat, a director usually known for tackling issues of female sexuality, adapts the classic fairytale in a muddled effort that singularly fails to fly either as fairytale or deconstruction
Sleeping Beauty (1987)
Fairytale
One of the cheap fairytale adaptations made by Cannon Films in the 1980s. A dreary impoverished run through by the numbers with Morgan Fairchild as the Wicked Stepmother and Tahnee Welch in the title role
Sleeping Beauty (1959)
Disney Animation/Fairy-Tale
One of the finest of all Disney animated films, an adaptation of the fairytale made with the full artistic resources that studio could bring to bear
Sleeping Beauties (2017)
Erotic Fairytale Adaptation
A softcore erotic version of the popular fairytale. Largely the film gets the fairytale over and done with in the first eight minutes and thereafter focuses on the erotic tumblings of Beauty awakened in the present-day
Sinister Squad (2016)
Team-Up Between Fairytale Villains
The Asylum made Avengers Grimm as a copycat of The Avengers films, featuring a team-up of fairytale heroines, and so for the release of Suicide Squad they made this sequel featuring a team-up of fairytale villains. Both films are utterly incomprehensible and require you to essentially ignore the originals
Shrek the Third (2007)
Animation/Fairytale Spoof
The third of the Shrek films settles in with a formulaic blandness where the characters turn up more because everyone expects them to than the film finds much for them to do
Shrek Forever After (2010)
Animation/Fairytale Spoof
The fourth of the Shrek films. By this point, the freshness and originality of the first film has been buried under animated film formula, while the plot is a tired rehash of It’s a Wonderful Life
Shrek 2 (2004)
Animation/Fairytale Spoof
Shrek was a fresh and original hit. The first of four insipid sequels, this seems to merely coast by on our liking of the characters while upping the fairytale parody
Shrek (2001)
Animation/Fairytale Spoof
Before this was spun out into a series of ho-hum sequels, the original was an animated film that burst with a freshness and a series of winning voice characterisations
The 7th Dwarf (2014)
Animation/Adventures of the Seven Dwarves
German animated film about the adventures of Snow White’s Seven Dwarves. Lightweight and trivial, this feels like it has come along ten years too late to the fad for fairytale parodies and mash-ups we had in the mid-2000s with films like Shrek and Hoodwinked!
Rumpelstiltskin (1987)
Fairy-Tale
Another of Cannon Films cheaply made fairytales with Amy Irving starring in an adaptation of Rumpelstiltskin
Red: Werewolf Hunter (2010)
Werewolf Film
Syfy Channel film that seems to offer the intriguing premise of a Modernised Little Red Riding Hood but only deals with this in the vaguest ways. Otherwise this is a standard werewolf film and contains maybe the crappiest CGI wolf transformation scenes ever
The Red Shoes (1948)
Ballet Drama/Fairytale Magic Shoes
Sumptuous, beautifully made ballet fantasy from Michael Powell based on the Hans Christian Andersen fairytale. A Technicolor spectacle at a time when most films were still made in black-and-white
Red Riding Hood (2011)
Adult Fairytale
Catherine Hardwcke’s adapts the fairytale as a dark adult fantasy where there has been the clear intention to pitch it to Twilight audiences but the results are surprisingly good
Red Riding Hood (1987)
Fairy-Tale
One of the cheap fairytale adaptations that Cannon Films made during the 1980s
Puss in Boots (2011)
Animation/Talking Cat Adventurer
Spinoff of the popular Antonio Banderas voiced character from the Shrek sequels, this is lightweight and amiable but can be quickly forgotten
Puss in Boots (1999)
Animation/Fairytale
An obscure animated version of the classic fairytale that comes with excruciating puns, much slapstick and has clearly been animated on a low budget
Puss in Boots (1987)
Fairy-Tale
Another of the cheaply made fairytale adaptations from Cannon Films with the bizarre casting of Christopher Walken as Puss in Boots
The Princess Bride (1987)
Fairytale Romance/Swashbuckler
Swashbuckling fairytale that treads a fine line between deconstruction and parody, while reveling in a script where the dialogue positively dances. Perfectly cast – a film that few do not come out enjoying its ebullient fantasy
The Princess and the Goblin (1992)
Animation/Fairytale
Likeable animated fantasy made for young children
The Princess and the Frog (2009)
Disney Animation/Animal Transformation
One of the more enjoyable Disney animated films from the latter half of the 00s. Featuring Disney’s first Black heroine, this embraces its New Orleans setting and turns Hans Christian Andersen’s fairytale on its head with enjoyable results
Princes and Princesses (1999)
Animated Fairytale Anthology
From Kirikou director Michel Ocelot, an anthology of animated fairytales that prove quite delightful
Prince Charming (2000)
Fairytale Prince in the Modern Day
Fairly silly fairytale parody with a prince transformed into a frog trying to find a modern girl to give him the kiss of true love
The Piper (2023)
Cursed Music
One of the last films made by Julian Sands before his death, this concerns a cursed musical score that ties back to the Pied Piper of Hamelin. Sands plays an autocratic orchestra conductor
The Piper (2015)
Horror Version of The Pied Piper
A Korean retelling of the fairytale The Pied Piper of Hamelin that in mid-film suddenly morphs from a standard telling into an incredibly grim horror film. The results are really quite striking, not to mention pulled off with considerable assurance
The Pied Piper (1972)
Fairytale Adaptation
The first dark adult fairytale. Before this, fairytales on film had been in the realm of Disney. This roots the familiar tale in an historical reality surrounded by the Black Death, The Inquisition and Anti-Semitism
Otesanek (2000)
Wooden Log-Baby Monster/Gonzo Surrealism
Hilarious Jan Svankmajer film about a mother who decides to treat a log as a child. Full of blackly funny humour before transforming into a macabre monster movie
Once Upon a Mattress (2005)
Musical Fairytale
Disastrous tv movie version of the classic musical based on The Princess and the Pea
Once Upon a Crime (2023)
Fairytale Detective Story
A very strange Japanese-made blend of fairytale and detective story that takes place in the realm of fairytale where Little Red Riding Hood turns detective to solve a murder at Cinderella’s ball
The Nutcracker and the Four Realms (2018)
Fairytale Adaptation
Big, no-expense-spared Disney production of the fairytale. The film is stunning to look at it in terms of design and costuming but has a simplicity that leaves little for adults to engage with
Mirror Mirror (2012)
Snow White Adaptation
Tarsem Singh makes a Snow White film. Tarsem’s sets, costumes and visuals are expectedly exquisite and extravagant but all is unwound by a campy, unserious approach
Meridian (1990)
Erotic Fairytale
A much better than usual film from Charles Band, an erotic fairytale in which Sherilyn Fenn becomes involved with a circusmaster and his twin brother who turns into a werewolf
Melies Cinemagician (2011)
Compilation of Georges Melies Shorts
Melies Cinemagician is a special screening of a selection of films from Georges Melies presented by Vancouver’s Vancity Theater to celebrate the 150th anniversary of his birth. The show was a live performance involving a score composed especially for the event, displays of conjuring tricks and a magic lantern show. The same year also saw […]
Maleficent, Mistress of Evil (2019)
Sleeping Beauty Continuation
Nobody much liked Maleficent but did make a reasonable amount of money, hence a sequel. The surprise is that in the hands of Norwegian director Joachim Rønning, it is far better than one expected
Maleficent (2014)
Live-Action Prequel to Disney's Sleeping Beauty
Another in the early 2010s fad for fairytales rewritten as dark adult fantasy films – in this case, a version of Disney’s Sleeping Beauty told from the viewpoint of the witch
Little Mermaid (2016)
Modernised Fairy-Tale
A modernisation of Hans Christian Andersen’s fairytale cast as a hipster romance where the mermaid becomes a stripper, all shot with the gauzy soft focus of a feminine hygiene products commercial
The Little Mermaid (1989)
Disney Animation/Fairy-Tale
The beginning of the big Disney renaissance of the 1990s. An adaptation of the Hans Christian Andersen fairytale that is conducted with an enormous degree of energy, colour and good cheer
Little Dead Rotting Hood (2016)
Little Red Riding Hood Resurrected as a Werewolf Hunter
This had me watched on the basis of the title alone. An Asylum production, this is less a twisted take on the fairytale than one that turns Little Red Riding Hood into a werewolf hunter
The Legend of Jack and Jill (2021)
Backwoods Brutality
From the people who made Winnie-the-Pooh: Blood and Honey, a film where the nursery rhyme of Jack and Jill somehow morphs into a variant on The Hills Have Eyes
Legend (1985)
Adult Fairytale
Hugely underrated Ridley Scott film that was a box-office flop. Scott attempts to reconstruct the fairytale as something dark and primal and creates moments that are superlative cinema
The King and the Mockingbird (1980)
Animation/Fairytale
A classic French animated film that remained unseen for over thirty years. A fairytale about a cruel king and two lovers aided by a mockingbird, it emerges with an impressively epic sweep
The Juniper Tree (1990)
Brothers Grimm Fairytale Adaptation
The singer Björk appears in the adaptation of a fairytale by the Brothers Grimm about witchcraft in mediaeval Iceland
Jin-Roh: The Wolf Brigade (1998)
Anime/Werewolf Anti-Terrorist Squad
A conceptually ambitious anime that builds a complex metaphor out of Little Red Riding Hood and the wolf in a story centred around the self-doubting member of an anti-terrorist squad
Jack the Giant Slayer (2013)
Fairytale Adaptation/Epic Fantasy
Bryan Singer was once the hope of fanboy cinema but this attempt to turn Jack and the Beanstalk into an epic fantasy feels exactly like formula studio product that could have been made by any hired director
Jack the Giant Killer (2013)
Fantasy Adventure
Another of The Asylum’s mockbusters intended to capitalise on the release of Jack the Giant Slayer. Despite setting out to adapt Jack and the Beanstalk, there are no giants in the film
Jack and the Beanstalk: The Real Story (2001)
Revisionist Fairytale
TV mini-series co-produced by Hallmark Entertainment and The Jim Henson Company that offers an intriguing deconstruction of the fairytale that reverses the traditional sympathies
Jack and the Beanstalk (1997)
Animation/Fairytale
An adaptation of the fairytale from Martin Gates, a largely unknown British animator. This embellishes the traditional telling of the story considerably
Jack and the Beanstalk (1952)
Two Idiots Enact Fairytale
Abbott and Costello take on the fairytale as a vehicle for their usual inanities. This is the only film the two made in colour and financed it themselves, but is not one of their more inspired offerings.
Into the Woods (2014)
Fairytale Parody Musical
A lumbering, stagebound adaptation of Stephen Sondheim musical that lamely dips into the fairytale parody that Shrek and other films tapped far more engagingly over a decade ago
If the Shoe Fits (1990)
Modernised Cinderella
A modernised retelling of the Cinderella story that is set in the Paris fashion world starring with Jennifer Grey as a lowly seamstress falling for self-important fashion designer Rob Lowe
The Huntsman: Winter’s War (2016)
Snow White and the Huntsman Sequel
Sequel to Snow White and the Huntsman. Despite low expectations, this emerged better than one thought it would. It has a better director and seems much more at home being an epic fantasy than the first film
The Hunters (2013)
Quest for Fairytale Artefacts
The premise of a group of adventurers seeking artifacts from fairytales has mild possibilities but is given zero conviction by anybody involved. A sub-Indiana Jones adventure that was made as a tv pilot
Howl (2021)
Modernised Little Red Riding Hood
A low-budget film directed by lead actress Michele Martin that sets out to conduct a modernised retelling of Little Red Riding Hood in which she becomes a wolf
Hoodwinked Too! Hood vs. Evil (2011)
Animation/Fairytale Parody
A wholly unnecessary sequel to Hoodwinked!, this again runs the fairytale characters over with modern quips and pop culture references
Hoodwinked! (2005)
Animation/Little Red Riding Hood Deconstructed
Animated film that offers a revisionist take on Little Red Riding Hood. Everything is played in a manic barrage of pop culture gags and level of inanity that is seriously mind damaging
Happily N’Ever After (2006)
Animation/Fairytale Deconstruction
Another in the spate of animated fairytale parodies that came out in the wake of Shrek, this subjects Cinderella to an excruciating barrage of pop-culture jokes and one-liners
Hansel vs Gretel (2015)
Modernised Fairytale
Sequel to The Asylum’s spendidly grotesque Hansel & Gretel, this pits the two characters against one another for contrived reasons to justify its title but is just cheaply made
Hansel & Gretel: Witch Hunters (2013)
Dark Adult Fairytale Adaptation
Amid the early 2010s fad for adult fairytale reinterpretations, this has an anachronistic absurdity that invites you not to take it seriously. A series of action movie poses, CGI and splatter effects are transplanted into the fairytale.
Hansel & Gretel (2013)
Fairytale Horror Adaptation
Amid the 2010s spate of fairytales rewritten as dark adult fantasies, this was a quite good mockbuster copy from The Asylum. From the director of Sharknado, this is Hansel and Gretel by way of The Texas Chain Saw Massacre
Hansel and Gretel (1987)
Fairy-Tale
One of a series of cheaply produced fairytale adaptations made by Cannon Films. This adapts the Brothers Grimm fairytale with tatty banality
H & G (2013)
Modernised Hansel and Gretel
This Canadian film is a modernised telling of Hansel and Gretel where the witch becomes a man with possibly paedophile intent. A film seems to want to go into dark places but gives them an utterly tepid treatment
Grimm’s Snow White (2012)
Fairytale Adaptation
Another entry among 2012’s spate of Snow White films following Mirror Mirror and Snow White and the Huntsman. this was a low-budget mockbuster copycat from The Asylum
Grimm’s Fairy Tales for Adults (1970)
Erotic Fairytale Adaptations
A X-rated, West German-made film that blends together several fairytales in a very adult adaptation. The result should be seen for its sheer bizarreness
Gretel & Hansel (2020)
Dark Adult Fairytale
Osgood Perkins emerges as a top director in this dark and extremely adult interpretation of the fairytale. There is nothing about this that can be viewed as a children’s tale any longer
Goldilocks and the Three Bears: Death & Porridge (2024)
Horror Version of a Fairytale
Another in the spate of horror versions of children’s stories, this is essentially The Strangers played out with people terrorised by a group dressed as Goldilocks and the Three Bears
Goldilocks and the Three Bears (1995)
Modernised Fairy-Tale
A modernised version of the Goldilocks fairytale, which now comes with the addition of an environmentalist subplot and where the bears are made into an endangered species
The Glass Slipper (1955)
Cinderella Adaptation
A live-action version of Cinderella starring Leslie Caron. This is a rather staid version with ballet sequences where the magic and romance never much ignites
Fun & Fancy Free (1947)
Disney Animation Anthology
One of the Disney animated portmanteaus of the 1940s featuring stories about a circus bear and a retelling of Jack and the Beanstalk starring Donald, Mickey and Goofy
Frozen II (2019)
Disney Animation
Frozen was the most successful animated film of all time. It also felt the most formulaic and least inspired Disney film of the 2000s. As part of Disney’s new business policy of recycling everything, this is a sequel.
Frozen (2013)
Disney Animation/Fairytale Adaptation
Disney animated film that supposedly adapts Hans Christian Andersen’s The Snow Queen, although Andersen wouldn’t recognise it. This often feels like a ramshackle assemblage of formula elements rather than the classic it was hailed as
The Frog Prince (1987)
Fairy-Tale
This is another in the series of the cheap fairytales made by Cannon Films with Aileen Quinn from Annie as an obnoxious princess who befriends a taking frog
Freeway II: Confessions of a Trickbaby (1999)
Modernised Hansel and Gretel/Juvenile Delinquent Drama
Matthew Bright’s even better sequel to Freeway where he conducts an outrageous and quite brilliant modernisation of Hansel and Gretel now recast with two juvenile delinquents on the run
Freeway (1996)
Modernised Little Red Riding Hood/Juvenile Delinquent Drama
Matthew Bright’s extraordinary modernisation/trashing of Little Red Riding Hood who becomes Reese Witherspoon’s juvenile delinquent who goes hitchhiking and is targeted by serial killer Kiefer Sutherland