Review
A Minecraft Movie: not for me, but maybe you’ll like it
by Luca Fontana
«Mad Heidi»: cheese atrocities, Swiss trash and other horrors
21.11.2022
Translation: Jessica Johnson-Ferguson
The film project «Mad Heidi» is hitting silver screens. Expect humour, horror and a new take on the original «Heidi» movie. Be prepared for anything – including lots of cheese.
«Mad Heidi» starts with a disclaimer. Before watching the movie, you’re asked to take a moment to understand how it was made. «Mad Heidi» isn’t a studio project, but was made possible by film fans around the world through crowdfunding. The movie took the Bernese directors Johannes Hartmann and Sandro Klopfenstein and Basel-based producer Valentin Greutert a total of five years to complete.
On their homepage, the filmmakers write: «538 people from 19 countries [...] will participate directly in the film’s revenue.» Two million francs were raised this way. The producers go on to mention they wanted to produce independently of Netflix or Amazon. Not only because they didn’t want to sell their intellectual property, but also because they want people without a streaming subscription to be able to watch the film.
The result is a kind of comedy in which Swissness is definitely not neglected. The same goes for fake blood and other depictions of horror.
«Mad Heidi» – the lowdown
This new rendition has little in common with Johanna Spyri’s Swiss children’s book classic nor with the movie from 1952. Instead, «Mad Heidi» is set in a dystopian Switzerland that has fallen under the fascist rule of the evil cheese baron turned Swiss president Meili (Casper van Dien) and his cheese tyrants – «Switzerland’s New Order». While lunatic President Meili’s involved in various dubious cheese-making schemes and busy terrorising the whole country, Commander Knorr (Max Rüdlinger) spares no atrocities to keep Switzerland under lacto-fascist rule.
It doesn’t take long for Heidi (Alice Lucy) to come down from the idyllic Alps and take on Commander Knorr – a man who personally executed Peter the goatherd (Kel Matsena) in cold blood on the village square because of his illegal production of dairy products. Knorr goes on to blow up the mountain cabin of kindhearted Alm-Uncle – recluse and grandfather to Heidi (David Schofield).
No wonder Heidi’s mad!
Swiss humour and clichés all around
If there’s one thing «Mad Heidi» doesn't lack, it’s absurd ideas you’d usually come up with on a boozy night out. For example, English is spoken throughout the movie. Not that movie English you’d expect, but a kind of «Swenglish» topped off with a thick Swiss accent. «Danke Schatz, it smells delicious,» someone says over dinner in the alpine cabin. A phrase that’s reminiscent of how Swiss tourists attempt to communicate abroad with the locals.
Not to mention the Swiss cheese cliché is really milked. Dairy is omnipresent and one of the movie’s main pillars. The film starts with a dramatic and bloody uprising against the cheese manufacturer «Meili», whose company also happens to belong to the Swiss president. The latter decreed that lactose intolerant people would no longer be tolerated under cheese fascism. To single out people with digestive disorders, they're force-fed a piece of cheese. Anyone who fails to keep it down is executed or dies of «natural» cheese poisoning. That’s how the cheese Nazis do it.
In addition to Heidi, Peter the goatherd and Alm-Uncle, all the other characters featured in the «Heidi» children’s books from the 1880s are also represented in the film. Klara, Fräulein Rottenmeier – they all make an appearance. Peter the goatherd is played by a person of colour. This casually adds diversity to the movie. Whether the filmmakers wanted to make a political statement with this cast of character is hard to tell. But it does fit the wonderful randomness of the rest of the flick.
To top it all off, the film is full of shots of the beautiful Swiss landscape in time-lapse. You’re whisked from the Matterhorn to Davos and back to the old town of Bern.
Heaps of horror
In spite of all those pretty shots, «Mad Heidi» is no family film. There are good reasons why it’s rated 16+. One of them is that «Mad Heidi» belongs to the trash or splatter genre. A trash film deliberately violates taste, morals and conservative middle-class prejudices and is often excessively brutal. The latter also applies to splatter movies. At least, «Mad Heidi» also has action and comedy.
But this doesn’t stop me from turning away a few times. There are only so many exploding organs and spurts of blood I can take. «Mad Heidi» features people being chopped in half with halberds, beaten to death with Toblerone batons as well as trigger-happy Swiss soldiers with armbands reminiscent of World War II spraying bullets from their assault rifles. Faces are torn to shreds, heads are blown off. And then there’s that time Heidi’s given hell in a Nazi-style correction camp.
But that’s not all. Fondue torture is rife. Instead of water, hot fondue is poured over the torture victims, a method referred to as fondue-boarding that simultaneously burns and suffocates the victims. Well, that’s the «trash» in «trash movie» for you.
Scenes that were obviously too much for the police: A high-ranking police officer was dismissed without notice because of his involvement in the movie. The reasoning was that producing a horror movie containing Nazi parodies is incompatible with being a police officer. However, the officer’s dismissal was judged inadmissible, as reported by Zurich-based newspaper Tagesanzeiger.
Verdict: funny, but not for everyone
Heidi as a halberd-swinging avenger and her Alm-Uncle as a guerilla fighting the regime of the cheese fascists are a sight worth seeing. While «Mad Heidi» is a laugh, it’s definitely not for the faint-hearted. It’s your quintessential trash movie complete with a sense of humour that deliberately oversteps the line of manners and taste. Think Nazi gags. Not to mention streams of blood – as is standard in splatter movies.
What’s really striking is the surprisingly high production quality. After all, trash movies often look as bad as their budget. Think «The Ring Thing». But the cinematography in «Mad Heidi» isn’t bad at all. On the contrary. The shots of the Alps are beautiful. In fact, I have very little to complain about. The acting’s impressive and the story’s more substantial than I’d expected. You can really tell that all the people involved put a lot of love into the movie.
«Mad Heidi» has been in cinemas since 24 November 2022. And if you don’t feel like going to the cinema, you can stream the film on madheidi.com starting 8 December – no subscription required.
All images: © Swissploitation Films / madheidi.com
Testing devices and gadgets is my thing. Some experiments lead to interesting insights, others to demolished phones. I’m hooked on series and can’t imagine life without Netflix. In summer, you’ll find me soaking up the sun by the lake or at a music festival.
125 comments
later