In a world where lactose-intolerance is a crime, one woman stands against the dictator of Switzerland, Our Most Swiss Leader Meili (Casper van Dien) and his authoritarian cheese-based regime. Set in a dystopian, alternate reality Switzerland, Mad Heidi is destined not only to become a Swissploitation classic, but an exploitation classic.
Mad Heidi opens with a massacre, as the loyal soldiers of Meili’s Morgenstern regiment open fire on a crowd protesting outside Meili’s factory fortress. One woman throws a brick of Swiss cheese at the soldiers. She is personally executed by Kommandant Knorr (Max Rüdlinger). Twenty years later, the film travels to the Alps where Heidi (Alicy Lucy) and Goat Peter (Kel Metsena) are having a roll in the hay. It is all bucolic, and all folk Switzerland in the mountains. But Goat Peter has a secret, one that threatens the Meili Cheese order and leads to Heidi becoming not only the plucky child hero of a novel and film adaptations that have influenced cinema all over the world, but the adult hero chosen by Helvetia in her time of need. She goes through the hell of an exploitation women’s prison–headed by Fräulein Rottweiler (Katja Kolm) and trains to become the warrior that Switzerland needs to save her people from Meili’s diabolical and douchey plans.
Writer-directors Johannes Hartmann and Sandro Klopfstein (and their co-writer Gregory D. Widmer) are obviously fond of 1970s exploitation movies and 1980s / 1990s straight to video exploitation /action/ dystopian film. The influence of Quentin Tarantino and possibly Robert Rodriguez is also clear. Mad Heidi is not a spoof or parody, but it is an exploitation action comedy with gore and some breasts and butts. (If I recall correctly, there is only one male butt in the count, though). Overall, I enjoyed the hell out of Mad Heidi.
Mad Heidi is apparently Alice Lucy’s first feature and she gives Heidi a seriousness the role needs. I think if she had played the role with a winking sense of the ridiculousness of the whole premise of Mad Heidi’s world, it would undercut the film and be far less entertaining. She also does a good job with the action elements. Casper Van Dien brings all his experience in parodic roles played straight (say, Starship Troopers) and years of fun exploitation and straight to video science fiction, action and fantasy film. His Meili is over the top and, yet, as we have sadly seen all over the world, not that far off from an array of ridiculous and brutal real world authoritarian leaders. As for Max Rüdlinger’s Kommandant Knorr, Rüdlinger does an excellent job of making him cartoonishly awful in every way. I enjoyed Pascal Ulli’s Head Cheese Scientist Dr. Schwitzgebel. He brought strong Udo Kier mad scientist energy to the role, and that is a fantastic thing.
Unfortunately, Almar G. Sato had very little to do with her role as Klara Sesseman. I assume they plan more for her in a sequel if it happens. But in this film, it felt like she was there because it was funny to present a character from the novel as being sorta Tarantino’s Gogo Yubari-ish, but without much more. I also wish there had been more of Kel Metsena’s Goat Peter, but I understand that Heidi’s love for him motivates her transformation into a vengeful warrior. It’s a nice reversal genderwise, but I’m uncomfortable when the film comes too close to some of the more thoughtless tropes of classic exploitation–the Black guy dies and probably first. The weaknesses of Mad Heidi are largely the weaknesses of 1970s and 1980s exploitation cinema in general. I do think the film has Goat Peter’s arc for the similar reasons that earlier films like Sergio Leone’s Once Upon A Time In The West (1968) did. It’s an effort to make the film more diverse. At the time of Once Upon A Time In The West, for instance, it was revolutionary to cast Woody Strode as a bounty hunter and gunslinger. I do appreciate the attempt and that there is a second Black character and at least one more Black extra who do not die, so it’s not “the only Black guy dies.” It’s just not revolutionary now.
I know it’s a fantasy Switzerland, but it’s fantasy and more diversity and more visible Black characters and extras would make the Blaxploitation work better–and make Rüdlinger’s use of an extremely racist golliwog-style drawing to identify Goat Peter also work more the way I believe it was intended–to demonstrate the fascist regime’s racism. Though I am an American and not Swiss, so I am looking at these things from an American perspective and experience with American exploitation film and would be very happy if the golliwog were not there at all. Europe, please, stop it with the gollywogs and stuff like that. Klara and Goat Peter aside, the women coded as lesbian are played by bodybuilders. They are more exaggerated than the women coded as butch lesbians in most 20th Century women in prison films. I think having bodybuilders play the bullies is an attempt to blow up that convention, so it depends on how far a film’s self-awareness goes with you.
But once again, overall, I enjoyed the hell out of Mad Heidi. I appreciate the largely seamless stitching together of so many exploitation and genre elements. Some I expected after the opening credits. Some were delightful surprises. Hartmann, Klopfstein and Widmer took the time to make a coherent, well-paced, well-integrated, fun film that is more than one funny idea–”Swissploitation”–and a series of in-jokes. They capture the joy of the best exploitation cinema and I appreciate that. I suspect the more you know about genre film and Switzerland, the funnier Mad Heidi is. But it’s a fun time regardless. Mad Heidi looks good, too. It has a nice mix of practical and digital effects. Both are appropriately over-the-top and properly excessive for the kind of film Mad Heidi is. And Mad Heidi is all the more remarkable for largely being a result of crowdfunding, with some additional funding by the Swiss government.
There is a Fathom Events screening of Mad Heidi on June 21st at 7 pm. Check your local listings to see if it’s playing in a theater near you.If Mad Heidi is your kind of thing, you should take advantage of this opportunity to see it in a multiplex with a huge screen and those sweet, sweet recliners. Click through here for locations and tickets.
I received a review copy of Mad Heidi.
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Carol Borden is an editor at and evil overlord of The Cultural Gutter, a website dedicated to thoughtful writing about disreputable art. She was a writer for and editor of the Toronto International Film Festival’s official Midnight Madness and Vanguard program blogs. She has written for Biff Bam Pop, Soldier of Cinema, Mezzanotte, Teleport City, Die Danger Die Die Kill, and Popshifter. She’s appeared on CBC radio, The Projection Booth podcast, The Feminine Critique podcast, the Book Club for Masochists podcast, and the Infernal Brains podcast. She’s written a bunch of short stories including Godzilla detective fiction, femme fatale mermaids, an adventurous translator/poet, and an x-ray tech having a bad day. You can find them here.
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