The real Switzerland sounds like a pleasant place. You’ve got the Alps, friendly people, and yes, a namesake cheese. Apply Swissploitation to it and that cheesy image goes bad fast. Especially when a fascist dictator takes over and declares cheese superiority and death to all who are lactose intolerant. Layer that on top of a globally-beloved children’s book. If that somehow seems right to you (it did to me), then you’ll want to see Mad Heidi when it makes its U.S. premiere on June 21 through Fathom Events.
It begins in flashback to some great cheese battle which cemented President Meili (Casper Van Dien) in his reign. Despite a slightly bucolic and more nude respite, things only get crazier from there. When the real action begins 20 years later, a huge black market has grown for alternate cheeses. The man who makes the best is young Heidi’s (Alice Lucy) lover, Goat Peter (Kel Matsena). In a ludicrous but appreciated touch, everyone calls him by that full name at all times. Both Heidi and Peter are a far cry from the Shirley Temple movie, which also didn’t feature cheese nazis.
When Peter meets the fate that all who resist with feta must, Heidi finds her inner strength to overthrow a dictator. The real cheese is the friends she makes along the way. In true exploitation fashion, this melange includes women’s prison with the obligatory rough shower scene and prison yard antics. There’s a strange festival Meili prepares for that involves blood sport from the women in prison. There’s a mystical temple among the alpines. If could add it all up for you, I wouldn’t. Because you have to see it to let it wash over you in the right whey.
Co-directors Johannes Hartmann and Sandro Klopfstein clearly know their influences and leave none untouched. Shot digitally with a vaguely unreal look, it’s the right tone. Of course this is camp. Of course some of it is tasteless. (Not the cheese.) And of course somehow we’re going to end up with lacto-zombies. That’s all part of the fun. There’s an art to looking this calculatedly artless, and Mad Heidi has it.
The fine balance of skill and cheese relies on the right actors. In the title role, Lucy has the apple cheeks you’d expect, and turns well from sweet to steely vengeance against Meili and his villainous Kommandant Knorr (veteran Swiss actor Max Rüdlinger). How she started so sweet when her grandfather is so bitter is just one of those tricks of children’s literature. But “Alpohl” (David Schofield) has every reason to be bitter, and mostly playing embittered war veteran. The eyepatch helps.
And let us praise Van Dien, who seems to be having the best time possible in this movie. Playing unrepentantly evil and insane with a Schwarzenegger-esque accent, he creates a character who is little more than a spoiled child. Accurate to many real-life fascists, but funny enough to trump uneasy feelings that may cause. He chews his scenery with aplomb while his eyes dance with mania. Thankfully, we’re in on the fun.
In short, Mad Heidi strikes the right balance of silly while taking the work seriously. Hartmann and Klopfstein worked off a script co-developed with Gregory D. Widmer and Trent Haaga that gets the little details of the children’s classic right while blowing them all to hell. And that makes me happy, not mad.
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