Mad Heidi

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.

It is hard to criticize a film which starts off boasting about how it was crowd-funded by the common folk, with no interference from the big corporations or studios. Hard. But not impossible. The first red flag is that the uber-high ratings from the early posted member reviews do not match the ratings left by members who saw the film later, gave much lower ratings, but did not bother to leave a review. The explanation? Mad Heidi is loaded to the brim with raw energy and great expectations. But very little of that actually translates into a movie that anyone would care to waste 90 minutes on. The script seems like to have been written by someone trying to piece together the best parts of Max Max, Monty Python, and every Kung Fu film you have ever seen. The result is supposed to be unique and fresh. Instead it basically re-invents 1960's "experimental cinema," and does not do a very good job even at that. ((Designated "IMDb Top Reviewer." Please check out my list "167+ Nearly-Perfect Movies (with the occasional Anime or TV miniseries) you can/should see again and again (1932 to the present))

It goes without saying that you need to like or at least be familiar with the "exploitation" genre to fully enjoy this movie; a soft spot for "trash" movies like Iron Sky (the first one, not the terrible sequel) and similar "trashy" B-movies also helps.

I however disagree with the authors/directors of Mad Heidi that they single-handedly invented the "Swissploitation" genre in 2022 with Mad Heidi.

Older Swiss movies should take the credit for pioneering this movie niche, for example (my list below is by no means exhaustive):

• Sommersprossen (1968, German title)
• L'inconnu de Shandigor (1967, French title)
• Several early movies by the Swiss director Erwin C. Dietrich, mostly released in the 70s and 80s (to be fair to Mad Heidi, many of Erwin's movies were shot abroad, not in Switzerland)

There are also newer examples, like these more extreme Swiss splatter niche movies:

• Projekt Fleisch (1999)
• Nutshot (2019)

Mad Heidi is another good, updated entry to the genre with many nods and references to famous directors like Tarantino or Rodriguez. The two Mad Heidi directors are quite open about this aspect and even list movies that influenced Mad Heidi's story telling and plot, namely:

Machete, From Dusk Till Dawn, Kill Bill (Vol. 2), Danger 5, Lady Snowblood, Heidi (the classic 1937 and 1952 versions, obviously, since Mad Heidi is a trash/horror parody on the original story), Coffy, Foxy Brown...

The movie doesn't take itself too seriously and makes fun of Switzerland and Swiss clichés like chocolate, cheese and xenophobia, much like earlier domestic classics such as the comedy "Schweizermacher" (aka "The Swiss Makers" internationally, 1978). The more you know about Swiss cliches, the more you will enjoy the funny details and easter eggs in Mad Heidi.

But rest assured: Even if you are only vaguely familiar with the original Heidi saga/plot and the fact that many Swiss take their cheese seriously you can laugh at most jokes.

The splatter/special effects, the level of detail in many movie props (e.g. The "final boss" Neutral-izer, a word pun on Switzerland's political neutrality axiom) and the performances are quite good; some are even very good - especially considering the tiny budget of just around USD/CHF 3 million (much of the total budget was raised by crowdfunding).

(For a quick comparison: Other genre movies like the trashy Iron Sky II sequel cost six times that amount and are much worse. Starting with a confusing script...but I digress.)

The overarching revenge plot in Mad Heidi is quite simple and/or predictable. Some critics may dismiss the entire Mad Heidi movie as pure "fan service" - this is however very understandable since much of the total budget was raised using crowdfunding methods, as discussed above.

We may even get a sequel one day since the open ending leaves many avenues to explore.

I rate this movie 6/10 cheese wheels. Maybe it's even worth 7+/10 if you really like this genre of movies.

PS: In order to reach a broader international audience (and since many foreign actors like genre specialist Casper Van Dien have leading roles) the movie was shot in English, with only a few sentences or words in Swiss German mixed into the dialogues. Surprising at first, but understandable given the movie's ambitious global distribution target.

This crowdfunded, swiss made exploitation movie, has almost everything one can hope for; splatter, clichés, memes, movie references and great visuals.

The amount of time and love invested in this movie really shines through. You can feel the filmmakers love for film. I was very impressed by the quality of the costumes, the sets, even the cgi. (Remembering it's a small production without any big companies involved and a budget that was crowdfunded) There are so many references to swiss culture beautifully incorporated.

This might be controversial and is probably more wishful thinking on my part but what I didn't like was that the film is in English. Of course it has to be to be view and enjoyed around the world, but as a swiss I believe swiss german could have made it much more hilarious. And probably also improved the acting. ( I got the feeling that because the non native english speakers had to speak english their acting suffered a little)

The acting in general varied. Over all it was not great but it also didn't have to be.

What I greatly disliked were the scene with the naked maid. (Portrayed by a swiss "performance artist"). It didn't add anything to the movie and every scene with her in it was like: Naked maid with big fake boobs enters the room - the men around the table start staring and salivating.

In conclusion: definitely worth a watch to not only support independent film makers but also have a fun evening with "the boys" (or girls) and a few beers.

Mad Heidi is trash! ... and that's a good thing. The film has a very high quality and thus leaves many other trash films behind. Actors, setting, cinematography - all great! Johannes Hartmann did a great job with the film and created a wonderful (Swiss) ploitation film that is at the forefront of the genre.

If you like Switzerland, you will love all the clichés. Cheese, chocolate or the Swiss army knife are just a few examples.

In terms of acting, Casper Van Dien and Max Rüdlinger stand out in particular. Van Dien plays the slimy "very Swiss leader" with great humor, while Rüdlinger, with his Swiss accent, plays Commander Knorr with exaggerated spite.

The cinematography shows the most beautiful sides of Switzerland, while the action comes along with lots of blood, splatter and killing jokes.