Mad heidi: the first swissploitation movie

by: Guido Baechler

This movie is total trash, in an honorable and wonderful way. It exploits all the known Swiss cliches: Swiss Chocolates, Swiss Watches, the Swiss Alps, and of course, Swiss Cheese. While not really mainstream, Mad Heidi is part of a special genre that is loved. 

​MAD HEIDI is the first fully crowdfunded Swiss trash movie that earns a lot of praise. 

From the executive producers of Iron Sky - The Coming Race comes the first fully crowdfunded Swiss trash movie with a stellar cast, all the Swiss cliches, funny jokes, out-of-this-world story plot, and enough cheese and blood splatter to fill a milk churn.

ATTENTION: Spoiler Alert

Mad Heidi had its official premiere on September 30th at the Zürich Film Festival in the Kongresssaal Zürich sitting 1200 fans. Sitting in the crowd and watching the fans get excited during the film was an amazing experience. 

A Swiss Trash Film? Being called a trash movie is not a negative term. Well-done trash films like Sharknado are box-office hits. 

SPOILER ALERT: DO NOT CONTINUE....

MAD HEIDI is an action-adventure exploitation spoof film based on Heidi, the popular children‘s book character, but this is the maddest Heidi ever, in a dystopian Switzerland where Hitler had won the second world war and the nation was under the fascist rule of an evil Swiss tyrant.  The film begins with a lovely, steamy sex scene in a Swiss barn. Heidi (British actress and second-degree Taekwondo black belt, Alice Lucy) and Goat-Peter (Welsh-Zimbabwean actor, Kel Matsena, who satirically plays up to the “Woke” agenda). Heidi asks for a second round, just to be turned down by Goat-Peter who must “tend” to his goats. At that moment I was already thinking "tending to his goats????" and realized that this film doesn't fit a standard Hollywood "woke" plot and I would be in for a ride. Heidi's grandfather Alpöhi is played by David Shofield, known for Pirates of the Caribbean and Gladiator. He likes Goat-Peter, but he has a Han Solo-like: “I have a bad feeling about this" attitude, suspecting he is involved in some shady business.

The new, deliciously evil Swiss President Meili (Casper van Dien, known from Starship Troopers, which is alluded to in a joke in the film) leads with a Swiss-Nazi-strong hand. Swiss Cheese, Swiss Chocolates, Schwingen (in this world, Gladiator-level Swiss wrestling), and even the Alphorn are prominent. But the CHEESE from Meili is at the center of this story. The evil President Meili is breeding the perfect, obedient Swiss-monster soldier, using women like the Swiss use livestock for milk production. People are getting water-boarded with Swiss Fondue and then killed with Swiss Toblerone Chocolates. All humans in this nation who are lactose-intolerant are treated with disdain and sent to concentration camps. The Nazi symbolism is all over this film, but instead of a Swastika, it is the Swiss Cross. If you cannot handle below-the-belt, dark satire and trash film humor, this film is not for you.

Kommandant Knorr (Max Rüdlinger, a well-known Swiss actor) is the epiphany of "Nazi"-Evil. The last name "Knorr" refers, of course, to the food empire company "Knorr". He loves to torture prisoners for information and then kill them afterward. Besides loving to kill, he has some weird sexual relationship with the warden of the women’s prison and brings more sexually perverse meaning to the Swiss Cervelat, Switzerland's popular "national" cured sausage. 

Heidi lives the pure and simple life in the Swiss Alps. Grandfather Alpöhi does his best to protect Heidi, but her yearning for freedom soon gets her into trouble with the dictator’s henchmen. I don't want to spoil it too much but for some freaky and funny reason, Kommandant Knorr kills Goat-Peter as shown in the teaser trailer above. Heidi..she gets mad. To make it worse, her grandfather gets blown up in a barn explosion. She gets very mad. Then she is taken prisoner to a women concentration camp. At this point I will not reveal what is happening there, but it is "fucked up" and all hell breaks loose with her anger. She escapes and finds the Swiss Helvetica - the lady of justice on the 2 Swiss Franc coin. Her anger is honed to become a Swiss Samurai warrior.​

The audience loved it and clapped, laughed, and cheered throughout the film. Of course, they were all hardcore fans and crowd funders. But this is the first Swiss movie that is totally "out there". A trash movie that took 5 years to produce and the result is great. Granted, some jokes are meant for the Swiss. But overall, I believe that everybody who loves that genre will like this film.  

Great job to the Swiss filmmakers and producers for putting Switzerland on the spot, even if it is "absolutely mad". Check it out in select theaters in late November.

Disclaimer: Jeridoo Universe Group is not a producer of this film.