Another really interesting post,Shark.
I'd love to see the Dore illustrated
version of Cinderella. His artwork from
"Paradise Lost" has haunted me since the
first time I saw it some 20 years ago in
school.

PS:There was also a terrible all female
Heavy Metal band called "Sinderella".

good stuff, Shark. i'm working on a post at the minute which is masquerading as a review of Shrek 2, but is actually a chance for me to yack fairy-tale. It's pleasantly suprising to see that your good self has ended up thinking along the same lines of late (except without the shreking) (is that a fetish waiting to happen? "young man seeks woman for growling, belching, general "shrekking")
As for the adap of cinderella you mentioned, with Drew Barrymore (was that Ever After? i think thats the one), there's a similar flick you may or may not have seen by the name of Snow White - A Tale Of Terror, which goes back to the source material and has Sigourney Weaver as a truly hideous evil stepmom. Also, not a damn dwarve to be seen, happy or dopey or otherwise.

My favorite fairy tale is an old-school one from the Middle Ages. Back then, fairies were scary motherfuckers (not that sissy Shakespeare stuff). I don't remember the name of the tale, but I will retell it for you.

An ugly young woman has been warned many times by her mother to stay out of the woods (back in the day, evil lurked in the woods--the devil's realm). Of course, as in most fairy tales, the daughter disregards the warnings and does what she is not supposed to do. She heads out into the woods to gather some berries (the best berries grow in the scariest of places).

After picking and wandering for hours, amassing a large basketful of the best-ever berries, she realizes that she is lost. All her efforts to retrace her steps are in vain as she seemingly wanders farther and farther into the darkness of the woods.

While she sits on a fallen tree, crying and having given up, the most handsome man she has ever seen calls out to her and approaches her. Instantly she falls in love with him, as if she were under a spell. He convinces her to accompany him to his house where he will marry her.

Her new home is deep in the woods, worlds away from her parents' house and village. It doesn't matter because her infatuation with this man has made her forget all the people and things from her life before she met him. Her husband disappears, leaving her alone for big chunks of the day. It doesn't faze her--time doesn't seem to pass for her, and all she feels is happiness and joy.

Soon, she gives birth to a beautiful, healthy baby boy. After the birth, when things have settled around the house, the man, scary and serious as he had never been with her before, a complete opposite of the man she knew and loved, gave her instructions and a deadly warning. He handed her an ointment that she was to put in her baby's eyes every morning. Under no circumstances was she ever to put the ointment in her eyes--else the worst would happen to her. And she was never to ask about the ointment--just to do what she was told.

After her husband's unsettling warning, her life around the house resumed its happy pace--except that always she did as she was told with the ointment and her baby's eyes. She did it day after day, growing more and more curious, until one day, when her husband disappeared as he did every day (sometimes with her son, and sometimes without), she decided that no harm would come from trying the ointment in her eyes.

She put some in her eyes and instantly a new world opened up to her. She saw a magical world with naked people frolicking, dancing and partying. On a grassy hill, she saw her husband--fooling around with three naked ladies.

She yelled out at him, cursing him for his evil deeds and asking what kind of man he was. He got up from his shady doings, walked up to her, and asked her if she her if she had used the ointment. She admitted to a having done so. Immediately, he poked her eyes out.

He thanked her for giving him a son, who, he explained, was half human and half fairy. The ointment was to allow the boy to see the fairy world so that he could be a part of it. No human, however, was ever to see the world of the fairies. All that is known after that is that she wandered away into the woods, blind, rejected and horrified.