Musical television special from November 1965, apparently broadcast live by ABC (and with very little rehearsal), is a coy, nutty take on the "Little Red Riding Hood" tale, with music by "Funny Girl" composers Bob Merrill and Jule Styne (who also served as executive producers!). Young Liza Minnelli is Lillian (a.k.a. Red Riding Hood) who fends off the friendship of a lonely, debonair, Shakespeare-quoting forest wolf; when he realizes he's lost her to a singing woodchopper, he decides to have her for dinner (literally). Despite some interesting camera-work (for its time) and good, clear sound, this black-and-white relic isn't very memorable. I'm sure Styne and Merrill left some of these songs off their resume, particularly the Lillian-Wolf duet "Ding-A-Ling". Cyril Ritchard is very confident as the suave wolf (he glides through this unsure production as if he didn't have a nerve in his body), but Minnelli is a different matter. This certainly wasn't Liza's first time in the spotlight (TV or otherwise), but she attacks her moments on camera with the overt eagerness of a brassy, bustling newcomer. Even her quiet solo, "I'm Naive", is jazzed up by Liza's over-emphatic delivery and kinetic body language. Minnelli-buffs will undoubtedly want to take a look, but the story and the songs don't really go together, and the Christmas theme is practically irrelevant.
