Kids, if you're getting this flick thinking it's gonna be all cheery and shit with 7 midgets running around and a black haired bimbo being saved by her Prince Charming and everything works out "Happily Ever After", then I suggest you go back to the "Children and Family" section at Blockbuster and leave this stuff for the more "mature" of the fairy tale fans. SNOW WHITE: A TALE OF TERROR strays far away from the Disney schtick, going for the far more traditional Grimm's Fairy Tales version, the way it was meant to be! Our opening features a horse drawn carriage, as it has a minor accident and it, along with it's occupants, is spilled over a snowy hillside. The only survivor, nobleman Frederick (done well by Sam Neil), has to do some quick thinking, as he performs a very non-professional cesarian, hacking his unborn daughter from his dying wife's womb. Years later, the child, who managed to survive Dr. Fred's little operation, has grown to be an annoying little girl named Lili, who has this idea in her head that her mom will someday visit her... guess no one's told her about me yet... you know, Death. At this time, we're introduced to Lady Claudia (played to perfection by the sinister Sigourney Weaver), Fred's new fiance. Of course, as with all divorced/widowed parents, their kids hate it when mom/dad starts dating other people, because they feel neglected. So, they direct that hate straight for the new boyfriend/girlfriend, acting as if they killed their dog or something. This is no different, as Lili takes an instant dislike toward Claudia, who's done nothing but try to get laid and find a husband! That Lili, what a greedy little beeyotch in training. Anyway, in a weird little ceremony, Fred and Claude get married, which involves them lying in a bed and letting well wishers chant and pour shots of wine all over their nice satin sheets. And people say my funeral ceremonies are strange! Man, the middle ages were fucked up... Lili ruins the ceremony, little bitch that she is, and while everyone's getting all stressed, one of the housemaids has a coronary when she looks a little too closely into Claude's antique mirror. We fast forward 9 more years, where an older Lili has matured into an admirable piece of ass and Claude's now pregnant. Lili's constant hate toward her has also made Claude more of the cruel stepmother we all expect her to be. 9 years of Lili's shit and I woulda sold her as a concubine to some Asian spice traders! Oh well, that's just me. Too bad for Claude, because not only does her stepdaughter hate her, but she also loses her child in a miscarriage. To boot, she's even pronounced sterile, never to conceive a child of her own. But, Claude, being the slightly insane woman that Lili's driven her to be, has her mildly retarded brother Gustov snatch the dead baby's corpse from it's funeral pyre... some women are just really desperate to be mothers... must be a social thing. Also, Claude's growing madness becomes more apparent, as she starts having conversations with her reflection! What's worse, the reflection's planting the seeds of paranoia in Claude's head... so is she insane, or is the mirror really magically talking to her? As for Lili, she falls in love with the young family doctor: Peter. The two get engaged, then Pete leaves on business. Not 2 minutes after Pete leaves, Lili gets attacked by Gustov, who's under orders from, who else, Claude! The specific orders were to hunt the babe down and bring her severed heart back to Claude for proof! But, Lili escapes Gus, managing to get herself lost in the woods at the same time. As for Gus, he has no choice but to take a pig's heart back to Claude, in hopes that she won't notice. Lili, while stumbling through the forest, finds a seemingly abandoned cathedral, which now plays homestead for a group of seven outcast miners. If you're expecting chubby little dwarves with bushy beards, then, as I said before, you're in for a surprise. Only one of the miners is a midget, while the others are simply deformed cretins. Far from cute. Hell, one of em even tries to rape the lovely Lili! Won't find that in a Disney movie! Back at the castle, the mirror tells Claude of Gus's failure, and Gus soon becomes a victim of his own hand, committing suicide as penance for his failure. Since the only way to get something done right is to do it yourself, Claude, using her evil magic mirror (guess it's not all just madness), causes a cave in while the 7 freaks are mining one day. Though she misses Lili, at least she buries one of the outcasts alive! Hey, any death is a good death! But, next in her bag of evil tricks, Claude uses a raven to spy on Lili, keeping an eye on her. Then, using her "natural assets", Claude also seduces Lili's lover Pete! What this accomplishes I'm not sure, but I'll bet she got this middle aged ego trip out of the whole thing, proving she can still get the strapping young lads if she wants to. As for her next attack on Lili, she attempts to drop the forest on her head, but again, the only person Claude manages to take out is yet another misfit. Boy, Claude's got the shittiest aim for a witch that I've ever seen. But, the good guys do the "eye for an eye" thing, when one of them takes out Claude's spy raven with the throw of a rock... damn, with an arm like that, the guy must be Cuban! Someone get Steinbrenner on the phone... Having failed to take out Lili twice now, Claude moves onto the next item on her "to do" list: resurrecting her still born son. To do so, she must first jack-off Fred (yeah, you remember, Claude's husband, who's been pushed to the back burner until now) so she may obtain his "seed". Then, the other ingredient is Fred's blood. Meanwhile, Lili learns a little about the birds and bees herself, as she finds herself smitten with the unwashed and uneducated leader of the mining misfits, Will. To add to his charms, he's also been scorned by the Christian church for some reason. Back to Claude, with her sexual satisfaction work done, she can focus her attention back to killing Lili. Maybe this time she'll try to drop some woodland creatures on her head, or perhaps she'll make her watch reruns of "She's the Sheriff"? Of course not! This, as we all know, is the time for the famed "poisoned apple" trick (though I prefer to use the "exploding jock strap" gag myself). Claude uses her evil magic mirror to make herself just as ugly on the outside as she is on the inside, then, poisoning an innocent apple, she heads out into the forest, locating the naive Lili, all alone, and passes on the goods. Lili, obviously not taught by her father not to accept odd fruits or beverages from strangers, eats the apple, which throws her into a coma, leaving her mentally aware, but physically dead to the world... If Lili lived in the current day and age, she would've been the victim of countless date rapes and had her mouth and throat slashed to bloody strips from Halloween razorblade delights... Come on! Who the Hell would accept a piece of fruit from a demented and demonic looking old woman?! No matter what the incarnation, Snow White will always be a completely clueless broad. Anyway, after Lili becomes comatose, her fiance Dr. Pete finally finds her and her new miscreant friends. Not being one to waste time, Pete instantly has Lili buried in the forest... I don't think he even checked for a pulse! And he's supposed to be a doctor?! Lucky for Lili, Will decides otherwise, digging Lili up, then, taking a book from the NCAA Coach's Manual, he shakes her and yells at her, waking her up from her coma and an early grave. So, remember kids, if you ever find someone in a coma, it takes nothing more than a heavy pep talk to bring the person out of it. Anyway, Lili's fully functioning again, and even though Will was the one who never gave up on her, she instead stays with Pete, who quickly wrote her off as a corpse. Sounds like art imitating life... MY life. Despite losing the battle of the boyfriends, Will joins Lili and Pete, as they set out to stop Claude and end her reign of madness. While searching her out, the group splits up, and before you know it, Pete's on his way out of a 5th story window the hard way! Ouch! As for Lili, she stabs Claude's zombified servant in the eye with a lit candle (Double Ouch!) before going off to confront Claude and her undead offspring. The two have a short cat fight, ending when Lili stabs Claude's reflection in the magic mirror, causing the real Claude to age rapidly before it fills her face with multiple shards of glass and sets her on fire! As for Will, he finds Fred, saving him from a probable sacrifice. The three all get together as the movie comes to a close, and it's all wrapped up with a quaint little snow storm... and no one wonders what's happened to Pete. Excellent movie, made with a respectable budget, courtesy of premium cable station Cinemax. Though Disney has all but ruined the image of the Snow White legend, making it a stereotyped "girl story", the creators of this film managed to remind us of just how dark the fairy tales were back in the days BEFORE Walt Disney stuck his nose into things. It's only sad that this movie wasn't made with big screen intentions in mind, because I think it would've been a success! Well, actually, thanx to that Disney bullshit, parents would probably take their kids to see it, then throw a fit when they find out how non-child friendly it is. But, as we all know, these same parents are the kind who are too stupid to look into what a movie's about before showing it to their kids. However, since they're "good little Christians who can do no wrong because Jesus guides them", they blame the makers of the movie, saying they're controlled by Satan or something. Anyway, Sigourney Weaver was stellar as Lady Claudia, doing a perfect job at the decent into insanity! Also, the gore, though minimal, was very well done. Besides, I know this sounds odd coming from me, but sometimes it's not good to have an overkill on the blood 'n' guts factor. Also, I loved the design of Claudia's evil closet that she kept her magic mirror in! I need to get one of those for the Tomb's master bedroom. Maybe it'll scare the dream police enough to keep them under my bed and out of my head at night! Oops, probably should've kept that little conspiracy to myself... Bottom line, go get SNOW WHITE: A TALE OF TERROR, watch it, enjoy it, and ignore anything you ever heard about the so-called "Dream Police"!

Also Known As: THE GRIMM BROTHERS' SNOW WHITE; THE GRIMM BROTHERS' SNOW WHITE: A TALE OF TERROR; SNOW WHITE IN THE BLACK FOREST

Sequels: None

If You Liked This Flick, Check Out: THE COMPANY OF WOLVES or RUMPELSTILTSKIN