Heidi's Revenge Adventure

Bruce Von Stiers

The children's novel, Heidi, was published about a hundred-forty years ago. It is a much-revered story that has had several film adaptations. Actors such as Shirley Temple and Jennifer Edwards have played the role of Heidi.

This year sees a new twist in the story of Heidi. There is a new film in which Heidi is all grown up and has a goat farmer lover. The title of the film is Mad Heidi. It is a comedy action and adventure film.

Sexploitation films slid onto movie house screens beginning somewhere in the early 1960's. And Blaxploitation films graced some of those same screens starting in the early 1970's. But now there is a whole new sub-genre that is making its debut. It is called Swissploitation. It takes stereotypes of Swiss people and mixes them with blood, gore, sex, and twisted humor to provide an unusual, grindhouse style of film. Of course, no grindhouse film would be considered normal. Mad Heidi is the first film to bring forth Swissploitation to the world.

In this film, Switzerland is ruled by a megalomaniacal dictator, President Meili. He has a cheese company and wants people to bow down and eat his cheese. Oh, and he also wants to rule the world. Meli is played by Casper Van Dien. From the original Beverly Hills 90210 to Starship Troopers to All American, Casper has well over one hundred fifty screen credits.

As I mentioned earlier, in this film Heidi is now an adult. She has a lover, the goat farmer, Goat Peter. But he is selling bootleg goat cheese. He is caught and murdered in front of Heidi. Now Heidi is out for revenge. Goat Peter is played by Kel Matsena, who was previously seen in an episode of The Doctors. As for Heidi, Alice Lucy provides an excellent performance as the grieving, thoroughly pissed-off, weapon wielding merchant of revenge killing. Alice co-starred in the thriller short film Thanatos and the comedy thriller Junction 9.

As this is a film that is going for that grindhouse effect, there is a lot of violence and gore. Goat Peter's head explodes when he's shot. There is also a torture scene where melted cheese is poured over a man's face. And then a then a Toblerone type of chocolate bar is thrust into his eye.

And this torture scene is also where some of the film's twisted humor comes in. The torturer does a riff on the famous Apocalypse Now line, replacing napalm with melted cheese.

There are a lot of different plot elements, such as when Heidi is imprisoned. There are several cliches in the prison scenes. In fact, there are quite a few intended comedic riffs on action scenes. From her escape from prison to reeking vengeance upon her captors and ending the reign of Meili's terror, Heidi is quite the formidable action hero. Often those actions have comedic and violent elements that blend well together.

Some of the other actors in the film included Max Rudlinger as the torturous Kommandant Knorr, David Schofield as Heidi's grandfather, Alpohi, Katja Kolm as Fraulein Rottweiler, and Pascal Ulli as Dr. Schwitzgebel.

Additional actors in the film were Almar G. Sato, Kaspar Weiss, Rebecca Dyson-Smith, Andrea Fischer-Schulthess, Fabienne Hadorn, Jacqueline Fuchs, Julia Fory, Leon Herbert ,Werner Biermeier and Dominque Jann.

The sets for the film were quite elaborate. From Meili's castle's rooms to the prison cells to other locations in the film, there was a lot of effort made to make them look authentic and realistic. The cinematography was also well done. Level camera movements and both close up and distance shots showed a lot of professionalism. Really good editing on the film showed smooth transitions between scenes.

The film was directed by Johannes Hartmann and Sandro Klopfstein. Both have had previous credits behind the camera according to their IMDB listings.

The screenplay was written by Hartmann, Klopfstein, Trent Haaga and Gregory D. Widmer. Zuri Zoo is a film that Widmer wrote the screenplay for. Haaga's writing credits include Girl On The Third Floor and 68 Kill.

Eric Lehner was the cinematographer. Besides music videos by Yello and Judas Priest, he has been the cinematographer on films such as Bao Bao.

What may set Madi Heidi apart from other films in the grindhouse genre is how it was financed. The film was paid for through crowdfunding. The people involved spent a few years collecting money from dedicated film fans from around the world. These fans, with their love of film, especially grindhouse films, helped bring Mad Heidi from just an idea to the finished product. According to a statement at the beginning of the film, no corporations or film studios were involved in the production.

As this was a truly independent project, they came up with a unique name for their production company, Swissploitation Films.

Raven Banner Releasing is the distributor for Mad Heidi. Some of the films that they have distributed include Kill Her Goats, Deathgasm, Spare Parts and The Fight Machine.

Mad Heidi is a fun, over-the-top comedy action-adventure film. It has all the necessary elements of violence, gore and sex to definitely classify it as a grindhouse film. Casper Van Dien was fun to watch as the evil dictator Meili. And Alice Lucy was kick-ass as the revenge seeking, warrior princess who lived up to the name Mad Heidi.

Mad Heidi is set to be released on VOD and streaming on July 21 st . It will also have a physical release on Blu-Ray and DVD.

To find out more about Mad Heidi, visit the film's official website at https://madheidi.com/

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© 2023 Bruce E Von Stiers