I watched this so you wouldn't have to: Mad Heidi


Or: The Sound of Music meets 'Allo 'Allo and Dies Hard


BEWARE - here be spoilers
Don't read this if you want to watch the film later!


The Backstory


Heidi gets mad after seeing her boyfriend ("Goat Peter" - don't ask) executed in the street by ex 'Allo 'Allo Germans playing a despotic Swiss police force. He's allegedly "lactose intolerant" (means he likes the wrong kind of cheese, but I'll explain more later).

Boyfriend gets shot execution style and (a trend for this movie) his head is literally blown off, fountaining blood from his shoulders.

Heidi -understandably- reacts a little badly. The police try to arrest her, and chase her back to her idyllic Swiss farmhouse in the mountains where she runs into the arms of her oddly American grandfather. Gran'pappy takes on an assault vehicle full of cops with a shotgun and loses - spectacularly. The farmhouse explodes in sheets of flame. (As they often do...)

Heidi is then thrown into jail where a variety of creepy guards and inmates make her life a misery. Cheese is involved. She winds up in solitary confinement after fighting back.

The Villain

Casper Van Dien "stars" in this (the only name I recognised) as a despotic president inflicting his cruel cheese rule on the country. He actually says the line "...today, Switzerland; tomorrow - ze vorld!" with suitably manic laughter. -And yes, he has a comedy German accent all the way through the film.

For some reason Casper wants Heidi to be part of a national cheese celebration. While the warden is pressuring her to take part, Heidi grabs part of a nearby mouldering skeleton (another don't ask) and stabs her.

She's then able to escape the prison and run into the forest where she finds a mysterious Swiss chapel dedicated to the Spirit of Switzerland (Helvetia - who's apparently a matronly lady bathed in swirly green light) and - the 'other' kind of spirit popular in Switzerland; Absinthe - which is a green drink that helps you see mythical beings.

The Training

There's a lengthy training sequence as Helvetia gets a couple of convenient ninja nuns to teach Heidi the finer points of using edged weapons and hitting people with enormous axes. When she's ready, Heidi dons her Superhero Swiss National Dirndl & boots costume and heads into town to face off with Casper.

Along the way she takes out a few random targets with extreme prejudice including a rather unfortunate policeman who winds up eating his own accordion. (That's not a metaphor - the production obviously bought a lot of fake blood and had some left over.)

Then Casper rolls out his secret weapon, the Nebulizer (or something like that) - it's a seemingly mild-mannered clerk who owns a set of armour that makes him a powerful warrior. There's a massive horned helmet that probably has good satellite reception and its own local weather system.

Heidi gets nebulised and winds up in chains, apparently in an arena where they're celebrating National Cheese Day by having gladiatorial combat between two body builder prisoners who each could bench press the arena without straining, and random other prisoners who don't last long.

Heidi goes on another rampage. She defeats the body builders but gets shot with a mini crossbow by the duplicitous Kommandant Knorr (who reminds me of an older Herr Flick from 'Allo 'Allo, though with a much flashier uniform...)

The Rescue

He's about to shoot her again, when just in the nick of time, ol' gran'pappy shows up with a motley mob in tow and shoots Kloppy. He's (still) not dead however (Klopp, not gran'pappy) , so Heidi goes over and skewers him (Klopp) again with a national flag. (I think she was making a point...)

Casper meantime has retreated to his Cheese factory HQ (explanation incoming) where he's also the head of Miele Cheese whose R&D team are headed by another drop-out from a famous movie.

Remember the sweaty German with the thick glasses in Raiders of the Lost Ark? This isn't exactly him. Casper's version has a white lab coat.

The plan seems to be to distribute an experimental new brand of cheese that creates an obediant super-soldier (with some fairly serious skin problems). Think invulnerable cheesy zombies.

The Denoument

Fortunately gran'pappy and his mob are able to storm the place and subdue the zombies without getting infected. Grampy dies heroically when he volunteers to blow up the factory. Mug.

The End.

I wasted a couple hours of my life on this so you won't have to. It's a crowd-funded independent production, written and acted by a bunch of folks who thought they'd make an over-the-top schlock-horror movie about... well I'm still not sure. The triumph of good cheese over bad cheese?

It's one of those films that should have been so bad it's actually good - but sadly it's a little too bad in all the wrong places. The production team are oddly fascinated with people getting their heads (and other parts) removed, while a pretend artery firehoses artificial blood around.

And Finally...

There's a LOT of bad taste stuff going on, plus some remarkably bad acting - the script is full of alleged cheese jokes that aren't funny, and winking 'Allo 'Allo character names like "Fräulein Rottweiler" (she's the warden).

I'd think that 99% of humanity would find it offensive to be mocked in the film for their age / race / sex / height or food preferences, and some proportion of those will also be offended by the cartoon nazi-style setting - including (I would have thought) most of Switzerland and Germany.

I was just miffed that anyone would promote this kind of nonsense as humour, but I guess they have to get their money back somehow...