Sometimes a film comes along that despite not being a horror, still seems like it would be a perfect fit for this blog, due to the subject matter. The Johannes Hartmann and Sandro Klopfstein co-directed, crowd funded fantasy film Mad Heidi is a prime example. Described as a 'Swissploitation', this takes all the stereotypes of the Swiss and ramps them up to ridiculous heights, telling a somewhat unoriginal story, but made very entertaining due to how exaggerated everything is.
Twenty years previously, cheese magnate and Swedish President, Meili (Casper Van Dien) proclaimed himself president for life, with Sweden becoming a fascist dictatorship. In the years that followed all cheese was banned, with the exception of Meili's brand, which unknown to the general populace had qualities that opened up regular consumers to being more easily controlled. The lactose intolerant found themselves in a kind of genocide, with President Meili's violent troops determined to wipe them out. After Heidi (Alice Lucy), a girl from a quiet mountain village, witnesses her boyfriend being executed for selling black market cheese, and then her grandfather dying while trying to protect her from soldiers chasing her, she becomes determined to hunt down President Meili and kill him. First however, she must find a way to escape from the prison she has found herself locked up in.
The film is ridiculous, but in a really good way. My initial impression was how this felt similar to a Quentin Tarantino flick, but he himself was heavily influenced by exploitation grindhouse films and so the similarities are understandable. While this apes those types of films from the seventies, this is made as a modern day film, without any attempts to try and make the footage look old. In addition to a fantastic Spaghetti Western sounding soundtrack, you have villains who get their own title cards when they first appear, training montages, gratuitous violence and lots of blood. With Heidi you have a strong protagonist, someone who is determined and driven from the start. Slowly more side characters are introduced, with much of the story split between Heidi's journey and the antagonists there was never any down time. Meili himself was a decent antagonist, with some funny over the top qualities to his arrogant character. One early scene in which he orders an underling to be executed for being one and a half minutes late to a meeting perfectly summed him up.
The visual effects were great throughout, leading up to some great death scenes. Later, when decked out in her very stereotypical Swiss milkmaid outfit, Heidi uses her halberd to gruesome effect, at one point slicing a soldier into two pieces vertically. Character deaths are often over the top gory, with blood spraying out in satisfying amounts. Some of these may be CG effects, but they look good, and add to some comedic moments. Make-up effects are also good, with some cheese altered super soldiers having a suitably gross look to them. Swiss elements are in full effect throughout, the Nazi like dictatorship uses the traditional Swiss red cross in place of swastikas, everyone is obsessed with cheese, there are mountains, Sound of Music style spinning around in open fields, cuckoo clocks and all manner of other stuff. This gives Mad Heidi a unified look to it that never got stale.
Look past the joyous absurdity of the setting and you have a fantasy film that could be accused of not doing enough to really tell a unique story. There are little surprises in a story sense, but what this does does have in buckets is style. I can't imagine there is too much out there which quite looks like this. Mad Heidi is due for a nationwide theatrical release across North America on June 21st from Fathom Events, Raven Banner Releasing and Swissploitation Films.
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