SNOW WHITE: A TALE OF TERROR
Dopey dies!
The much-hyped TV movie (what network is this?) version of the ol' fairy tale mightn't live up to all the hype, but it's still well worth a look. And no, Dopey doesn't die, because (thank God!) there's no dwarves. Well, maybe one, but he ain't Happy.
It's been a long, long time since I've read the Brothers Grimm story upon which this is based...or seen the Disney movie...or seen any of the other Disney movies that I always confused with Snow White. So I'll avoid comparisons. I always got them confused anyway.
This movie is probably the best-looking TV movie I've ever seen. It's gorgeous. Filmed in the Czech Republic, its fog- and snow-laden woods are just breathtaking, and the art direction is great too, with opulent sets and terrific costumes (despite a number of goofy hats).
Performance-wise, it's a little more hit-and-miss. Sam Neill, playing the father, sleepwalks through his role, apparently unaccustomed to playing what is, basically, just a sweet old man. This is strange, because usually guys who tend to play villains excel at playing sweet old men. The girl playing the lead, Monica Keena, does an adequate job but isn't anything too special. Needless to say, it's Sigourney Weaver who owns this movie. Instead of a specifically wicked stepmother, here, she's playing a crazy one. I mean, she's just fuckin' nuts! But nuts in a very purposeful, pointed way. One example of her clearly insane nature (you can't be just evil and do this) is when she commissions her mute brother to knock off Lilliana (that's Snow White to you, although I still don't get the title at all)...the brother fails, but unwilling to face his fearsome sister, butchers a pig and brings its entrails in hers' stead. And what Claudia (the stepmother) does with the entrails...are you familiar with a little play by the title of Titus Andronicus?
It's not a specifically scary movie, but it's creepy and doomy throughout, capturing a number of horror-filled moments, like the tiny bird trapped inside an hourglass, slowly buried alive as the minute expires. The icy score adds a nice note of doom to the proceedings.
Problems it has, though...like the role of Peter, whoserves no real purpose in the film at all. All we know about him is that he wants to marry Lilliana and he's a doctor. So? Neill's role is similarly rather useless, and Lilliana's relationship with the group of vagabond miners who, uh, "rescue" her (why that's in quotes really has to be seen to be understood) isn't really believable either. And at one point in the film, Peter passes a severed head on the stairs - which appears to be about the size of a clenched fist! I mean, what the hell? Whose head is this? And why's it so small?
But overall, it's definitely worth a viewing. One note about the conclusion. Recent films have established a trend in which the villain can't just die - he's gotta die several times, in several ways, at the same time! For example, in Con-Air, the chief villain was not only pitched through a Plus-15, and then fried on electrical wires,but then his head was crushed in a piledriver! (otherwise, 'twas the worst movie of 1997) And in The Mask Of Zorro, one of the villains was not only impaled, but then crushed underneath an avalanche of falling gold, and then he STILL fell some forty feet! Here, it's no spoiler to say that the wicked, crazy stepmother meets her end. It is Snow White, after all. But man, does she ever die.
And I want a cabinet just like that one.