Review of Snow White: A Tale of Terror (1997) by Elyna F — 05 Aug 2013

Directed by Michael Cohn (When the Bough Breaks (1994)), this is a dark, bloody, lurid re-imagining of the Grimm Brothers fairy story. Unlike the two Snow White adaptations in 2012, Snow White and the Huntsman and Mirror Mirror, this one has a dark horror angle.

It's a good combination, although it falls into somewhere between Euro-pudding and B-Movie horror cheese, but it manages to be fun nontheless. Lilli Hoffman (Monica Keena) was born after her mother Lilliana (Joanna Roth) suffered an accident in a coach, her father Lord Frederick (Sam Neill) has always put Lilli first, but he chooses to marry Lady Claudia (Sigourney Weaver), who takes an instant disliking to Lilli, and after a stillborn birth.

Claudia decides to kill Lilli, and sends her mute brother Gustav (Miroslav Taborsky) to kill her, but he cannot. Lilli escapes and ends up with a group of seven miners, led by Lars (Brian Glover), who are rough and rugged, but they agree to help Lilli get home and stop Claudia, who has started to poison Lord Frederick, but when she discovers Lilli is still alive, decides to finish the job.

It's a little seen horror film, it was never released theatrically in America due to bad test screenings, so it premiered there on Showtime. But, it manages to be better than it looks, and it makes the most of a lot of European locations in and around Prague too.