Mad Heidi

Crowdfunded faux-exploitation flick Mad Heidi is intended as a bit of dumb OTT fun. With its endless gags on everything Swiss (especially cheese), it is definitely dumb, but it's not nearly as much fun as I had hoped, the joke quickly wearing thinner than a slice of Emmental. Like Iron Sky (2012), with which it shares a similar vibe, the film suffers from a weak script and bad acting, and it only delivers sporadic gore when it would benefit from pushing the limits further and further with each subsequent scene.

Alice Lucy plays Heidi, who has been living in the Swiss mountains with her grandfather ever since her parents were killed in a rebellion against President Meili (Casper Van Dien) and his Nazi-like regime. When Heidi's boyfriend Goat Peter (Kel Matsena) is killed for trading in illegal cheese, Heidi takes revenge and is jailed as a result. After a daring escape, Heidi throws herself over a waterfall and is presumed dead; however, she survives the plunge, and is trained how to fight back against her oppressors by Swiss goddess Helvetia.

Mad Heidi wears it's exploitation influences on its sleeve - there's Nazis, nuns, dwarfs, a training montage and WIP action (we even get an Asian prisoner who is #701) - but the result lacks the grit and grime of the genuine article, the film's effectiveness further weakened by the puerile comedic elements: there's only so much cheese-based humour I can take.

Starting with that first yodel, Mad Heidi is as crazy as it is, well, cheesy. The self-proclaimed Swissploitation action-splatterfest is all about illegal cheese, fascist rule, warrior nuns, and a madcap Casper Van Dien whose mustache-twirling villainy is as high as the Alps. Yet for all its silliness and over-the-top parodying, Mad Heidi should have been a lot crazier.

Mad Heidi is a crowdfunded project helmed by Johannes Hartmann and Sandro Klopfstein. The indie movie parodies not only general exploitation films but specifically the good-natured Heidi stories of old (such as the sappy Shirley Temple classic). Here, Switzerland is under the fascist control of cheese-loving President Meili (Van Dien). When both Heidi's (Alice Lucy) freedom-loving grandfather and goat cheese-smuggling boyfriend are killed, Heidi transforms herself into a kick-ass fighter and goes after fierce retribution against Meili and his brutal regime. In short, cheese happens.

Mad Heidi is fun and silly. Mad Heidi was not made to promote the artform of cinematic splendor. This is a riotous goof that caters to a specific audience, a level on which Mad Heidi completely succeeds.

The story behind "Mad Heidi" is almost as interesting - if not MORE interesting - than the film itself. The project started more than 3 years ago as the crazy dream of a bunch of Swiss horror/cult film-buffs. The mission: make the first-ever Swiss exploitation movie, preferably as insane and over-the-top as humanly possible. The challenge: they didn't have any money, only a lot of devoted enthusiasm and energy.

What followed is probably one of the most impressive and respectable crowd-funding campaigns in history. Via Internet and various social media channels, the "Mad Heidi" hype slowly but surely increased. Funds were raised via merchandising (you could even buy a cuckoo-clock) and the pre-order DVD sales of a movie that didn't exist yet! The campaign was incredibly successful, and the film was made with more than enough budget for excellent special effects, and even the involvement of a relatively well-known B-actor; - Casper Van Dien.

But then came Covid-19 ... Just like everything else in the world, the release of "Mad Heidi" was put on hold, and the patience of the cast, crew and thousands of co-funders got tested immensely. Now, and finally, the movie had its world-premiere at the Brussels' International Fantastic Film Festival. It was a real party.

Inevitably, the festive ambiance before, during and after the screening of "Mad Heidi" heavily influenced my experience and rating. I'm sorry for that, but it's simply impossible to get euphoric when you are surrounded by hundreds of people yodeling in a theater, wearing fake Swiss Nazi-uniforms, and drinking beer.

Most importantly, though, "Mad Heidi" is exactly what it promised to be ever since the beginning of production; - namely a massively entertaining and absurdly eccentric exploitation movie with copious amounts of splatter, twisted humor, demented characters, self-parody, deliberately dumb quotes and catch-phrases, and non-stop vitality. The tone, style and content of the film isn't new or innovative. The plot is comparable to crowd-pleasing flicks like "Inglourious Bastards" or "Iron Sky", and the script pays tribute to approximately three dozen of cinematic treasures varying from "The Sound of Music" to "Lady Snowblood".

The story is of lesser importance, but it neatly follows the structure of a textbook revenge-thriller. If I tell you Casper Van Dien stars as the tyrannical and megalomaniacal President of Switzerland, and simultaneously CEO of the only authorized company to produce and export cheese, you already know enough. He wants to obtain world-domination via genetically altered cheese, but a heroic girl from the Alps is determined to get revenge for the murder of her boyfriend and the downfall of her beloved Motherland.

Of all the great fun and splendid gimmicks, what I most appreciated is how the makers wonderfully inserted every possible Swiss cliche and national symbol into their film. There's the Matterhorn and cheese bowls in the film-logo already, but everything else you could possibly associate with Switzerland features as well: idyllic mountain paths, Alp horns, cuckoo clocks, cheese fondue, watches, pocket knives, Toblerone chocolate, ... There's so much lunacy and mayhem happening that Heidi's character and her quest for revenge is even pushed to the background sometimes, which is a minor default.

The trouble with Mad Heidi is that it actually does achieve basically everything it sets out to do. You know, it's this ridiculous quasi-exploitation movie that's just the dumbest thing they could come up with. It's difficult to be overly critical of a movie like this when it's clearly supposed to be like this.

My biggest complaint is that it needed a lot more violence. It has some, especially in the second half, but I think to really be effective in what it was doing, it needed to go all the way and basically be all violence all the time. As it is, Mad Heidi got a little too bogged down in showing Hedi going mad and not enough time showing her be mad.

I think what the production team for this either forgot or failed to realise is that it's not like in the early '70s anymore where people are going to be shocked by a little bit of gore anymore; especially in a movie like this which is mostly a fairly standard action movie otherwise. It really needs to either be all gore all the time with basically no plot or it needs to sorta be trying to be this decade's answer to A Serbian Film before it really gets that shocked reaction from most people.

I don't think this was awful or anything because it's doing most of what it set out to do and I think it was worth doing. It's just that I think they probably needed to lean into the violence a bit more.

Mad Heidi is a simple revenge story set in a world obsessed with dairy products where the lactose intolerant are shunned, publicly humiliated and even taken away to re-education camps and tortured with cheese. This daft film romps away in its own bewildering world of 'Swissploitation' for an undemanding 90mins and is well produced (particularly considering the means of funding) and features good cinematography and fight choreography with strong performances from Alice Lucy and Rebecca Dyson Smith, as the cruel Lutz. Bizarre, absurd and the most original thing that's been along in a while. 'Rest in cheese, b*tch!'