Grimm, Indeed - Snow White: A Tale of Terror (1997)

I'll start by stating that we horror fans owe Germany a great debt for their contribution to the genre. Not only, as I previously discussed in an entry on S.S. Prawer's Caligari's Children, did the Germans bring a rich folkloric and oral tradition of horrific tales into popular culture - namely Grimm's Kinder- und Hausmärchen - but also the lovely chiaroscuro of German expressionism. Not to mention the collective mental scarring the western world suffered under than hands of one particular German, though it would hardly be appropriate or moral to go around thanking anyone for that. But I digress.

It's the Grimm's fairy tales that always seem to capture my imagination the most. It seems I've been rather obsessed with the effect horror has on the child's psyche this summer - maybe I've been reading too much Stephen King. However, I would argue, as others before me, that children's fiction is often a blueprint for adult life: a social road map of negotiating adulthood. Often intertwined with horror tales, or featuring moments of unspeakable terror, myths/fairy tales/folk stories are antiquated horror shows, where issues of mortality and society are played out within the stage of the imagination.

Shuli Barzilai quotes Sandra M. Gilbert and Susan Gubar in her article, "The Ideology of Mothering: Disruption and Reproduction of Patriarchy" in Signs, Volume 15, Number 3: 515-534 by saying

"'...myths are fairy tales often both state and enforce culture's sentences with greater accuracy than more sophisticated literary texts'" (519).

If this is so, then what does 1997's Snow White: A Tale of Terror say about the Snow White mythos? In particular, the portrayal of the Wicked Stepmother? Though my thoughts are hardly yet cohesive - I was hoping a couple of veterans might chime in with some more seasoned opinions - I have a few thoughts.

• I was exceptionally pleased that the film didn't reduce the tensions between Claudia and Lily to the annoyingly superficial "Who's the fairest of them all?" crap.
• I was irked to see Snow White waiting around for her Daddy to come save her - save your own ass, you spoiled brat!
• I liked that Claudia's character was a strange mixture of witch and mentally unstable. Her power didn't make her evil - her break from reality upon the death of her son pushed her over the edge.
  
• On a personal note, I really, really liked that the dwarves were broken men disillusioned and alienated for their refusal to join the Crusades - much more interesting than Disney's bearded miners! And that Lily fell in love with one of them - the incredibly hot one. Sorry, got carried away for a bit. Their romance was a little romance novel-esqu (I don't count that as a bad thing). Gave me a case of the vapors, though. Again, not a bad thing.
  

Can anybody think of anything I might have missed? What are your thoughts? Good movie? Bad?

Bottom line: Entertaining movie for its folkloric and horrific moments, but not anything to write home to Mom about. Shall we say a solid B, in academic terms?

Here's the trailer if you haven't seen it (apparently, you can also see the entire film on YouTube, in segments):