Joyously Bloody Neo-Exploitation Flick Mad Heidi Makes Cheese its Muse
Photos via Madheidi.com
Edit: Mad Heidi is now receiving a one-night-only theatrical release from Fathom Events, on June 21, 2023.
There’s a level of effective genre parody in film, especially as it pertains to exploitation cinema of the 1970s and 1980s, that is rarely achieved by reverential directors hoping to strike a particular chord of appreciation. This isn’t for lack of trying—countless filmmakers attempt on a yearly basis to ape the same material that the likes of Quentin Tarantino and Robert Rodriguez tapped into for Grindhouse, and almost all of them fail. These failures largely come down to a combination of “lack of resources” and “lack of vision,” creating a sub-strata of well-intentioned parodies or tributes that are rarely worth the effort put into them. But every now and then, a film does peek above the refuse heap of its low-budget imitators to capture some spark of the divine, wielding the kind of reckless, exuberant abandon capable of making the audience guffaw, or at least smile. And Mad Heidi thankfully falls into that more exclusive club.
Granted, this is still a sliding scale, and Mad Heidi doesn’t quite achieve the brilliance of a razor sharp parody like Black Dynamite, or even the DIY spunk of a Kung Fury. The writing isn’t as sharp and consistently funny as those films, but what Mad Heidi has is some genuinely impressive production design, beautiful landscapes, solid performances and a setting that is fresh and novel for this kind of neo-exploitation angle. In a parody genre already inundated with cheese, basing an entire film around fascist dairy mongers is an inspired choice.
Mad Heidi bills itself as the first-ever “Swissploitation” film, a tongue-in-cheek adaptation of the iconic children’s novel first published in 1881 by Swiss author Johanna Spyri. The book documents a young girl’s adolescence in the pastoral beauty of the Swiss countryside, as she grows and learns about the world around her. The film, on the other hand, recasts Heidi as a sexy young freedom fighter, battling “cheese fascists” after the death of her lover and grandfather. Oh, and did we mention that the evil President of Switzerland is played by faded Starship Troopers star Casper Van Dien, continuously referred to by his underlings as “our very Swiss leader”? This is made all the more amusing by Van Dien’s totally inconsistent performance, which apes a cartoon German accent that arrives and departs at will, every other line. It’s hard to tell what is intentional, and what is Van Dien just not giving a fuck, but it all works.
Rest assured, Mad Heidi is completely and utterly indebted to Tarantino in particular, stealing little conventions like the “pause and splash a character’s name on screen when introducing them” cliche. It also touches on a lot of classic exploitation subgenres, especially the women-in-prison film, with slices of Female Prisoner Scorpion and Riki-Oh, but like many modern parodies it doesn’t fully commit to the same level of exploitation of its performers, afraid to objectify them to quite the same standard as the films it’s aping. This is understandable, as modern taste doesn’t accept quite the same degradation for a protagonist as the likes of Jack Hill could get away with in the early 1970s, and would rather reframe these films through the lens of empowerment, even if the sentiment is a little hollow. Regardless, in a film like this, it means you’ll still get some occasional nudity, but now it will be more tasteful and glancing nudity, at least when it comes to Heidi herself. Thus, star Alice Lucy (radiant, fierce) emerges with dignity intact.