The classic Swiss tale gets a wild and crazy newfound love in the wild and insane adaptation!

Twenty years ago, Meili, the owner of the local cheese factory, was voted President of Switzerland. Since then, his regime has ruled with an iron fist where the people are forced to eat his company’s cheese and anyone deemed lactose intolerant will fall hard. However, Goat Peter, who breeds his own brand of milk, proves to be a major threat. When he is caught by Meili’s number one Kommandant Knorr, he is executed in the town square and witnessing the death is Peter’s girlfriend Heidi, who lives in the Alps with her grandfather.

Heidi also witnesses the death of her grandfather in an explosion, and she is taken to prison. There, she is under constant threat from warden Fraulein Rottweiler. After making a narrow escape, she is determined to wreak vengeance on President Meili and his Swiss Reich. To accomplish this mission, she is going to need all the skills she has and could possibly need some unexpected help. Will Heidi wreak havoc and both get her revenge and make Switzerland free again?

This Swissploitation film was first announced in 2019 with a crowdfunding plan and it looked to have worked! Not since Kung Fury and many others have a fun made its intentions clear with such a wild and insane adaptation of the classic Johanna Spyri tale. With a ruler heavily into cheese and having his own “Swiss Reich” if you will, this is a madcap action and exploitation film that has it all and if you are a lover of grindhouse and Troma films, then get ready because this is right up there!

Alice Lucy is fantastic as the titular “Mad Heidi”. For the first half of the film, we see the good natured side of her. A woman in love with goat cheese maker Goat Peter, played by Kel Matsena (who does business in an outfit that half-Lederhosen, half 70’s pimp), when she sees him murdered and then her grandfather, we see the tortured side of her. Suffering loss, she becomes weak and forced to fall prey to the prison guards and two of her roommates, played by bodybuilding champions Julia Föry and Jacqueline Fuchs (not the former Runaways bass player known as Jackie Fox) with her only ally being Japanese-German Klara Sessmann, played by Almar Sato.

Casper Van Dien is the type who when a role calls for him to just go for the ride and go as over the top as possible, will give it 150 percent. Lo and behold, he does it as President Meili, who is ruling the country with his cheese factory. Forcing everyone to eat his cheese, he is against those who are lactose intolerant and will unload some major punishments. One such punishment includes a “fondue bordering” from Kommandant Knorr, played with such charm and insanity by Max Rüdlinger.

The film’s third act is where Heidi begins her quest for revenge and decked out in a Swiss-style outfit and armed with a sick-looking axe that could make a hell of a complement for Nicolas Cage’s “Beast” Axe from Mandy, the action really amps up. And this is where it gets very bloody and gory, where Heidi performs a top-to-bottom slicing of one “Swiss Reich” member to an amazing “death by accordion” followed by a scene that had to have been inspired by Gladiator with a finale that just has an amazing one-liner and a hope for a sequel in the form of, and praying to the gods, “Heidi and Klara”.

Mad Heidi is fun grindhouse exploitation at its finest. The cast are clearly having fun with the roles they’ve been given and the violence is just amazing! If you love old school grindhouse and Troma films, this is the perfect meshing of the two with some Swiss cheese mixed in…lots of Swiss cheese. Literally and figuratively!

WFG RATING: A+

Raven Banner Entertainment presents a Swissploitation Films production in association with A Film Production and SRF Swiss Radio and Television. Director: Johannes Hartmann. Producer: Valentin Grautert. Writers: Sandro Klopfstein, Johannes Hartmann, Gregory D. Widner, and Trent Haaga. Cinematography: Eric Lehner. Editing: Claudio Cea, Isai Oswald, and Jann Andregg.

Cast: Alice Lucy, Max Rüdlinger, Casper Van Dien, David Schofield, Almar Sato, Kel Matsena, Pascal Ulli, Kaspar Weiss, Katja Kolm, Rebecca Dyson-Smith, Andrea Fischer-Schulthess, Julia Föry, Jacqueline Fuchs.

The film will premiere on June 21 for a one-night event from Raven Banner, Swissploitation Films, and Fathom Events. Tickets can be sold HERE