Funny story, I kept calling Snow White: A Tale of Terror a Tale of Horror. This movie came out in 1997 and was originally slated for having a theatrical release but as such it premiered on Showtime. Sort of like another Snow White movie, this movie tries to carter the fairy tale to an adult audience however where Snow White and Thor tries to make Snow White an ass-kicking female William Wallace-type, this movie doesn’t try to overtly empower Snow White and instead keeps the tone more to the original Grimm’s fairy tale and focuses more on the wicked step mother.
The movie starts with the birth of Snow White, who is named Liliana a.k.a Lily. As she is born her parents are attack by wolves and as her mother lays dying her father has to cut Liliana out her mother whose name in also Liliana.
Fast Forward a few years and Lily’s father, Lord Fredric Hoffman is marrying a pretty lady named Claudia. To make nice with Lily, Claudia gives her a puppy and yet despite this Lily doesn’t like her very much. Claudia also has a creepy magic mirror that was her mother’s mirror. On their wedding night, Lily’s motherly servant is killed by the mirror when she is looking for Lily in Claudia’s room.
Fast Forward a few years again and Lily is now a pretty young woman who is in love with a doctor guy. Claudia is now pregnant and she tries to keep Lily from not being as attractive as she could be by giving her not so pretty childish clothes. But for a ball Lily out-shown Claudia by wearing her mother’s dress. This causes Claudia to go to labour. Claudia’s baby turns out to be still born and as a result means that Claudia can’t have any more babies.
Lily tries to make up this Claudia but Claudia’s reflection in the creepy mirror tells her get revenge on Lily. Claudia orders her brother, Gustav to kill Lily and get her heart. Lily escapes into the forest and Gustav gives Claudia a pig heart which she happily eats. Claudia however learns the truth from her reflection and Gustav is driven to suicide.
Lily then finds her herself with seven rough and combative miners outcasts who aren’t very nice to her but they come to like her eventually especially one by the name of Will. Claudia then attacks the a few times and kills one of them with a tree. Claudia then tries to bring her child back to life but using Fredric’s seed and bathing the fetus in his blood.
Then Claudia disguises herself as old woman and lures Lily away from the seven miners and she given the poisoned apple and she putted into locked-in syndrome. She is then buried as her doctor boyfriend and the miners think she is dead but Will is like “No” and wakes her up with true love BS.
The Lily has her final confrontation. During the fight Claudia becomes distracted because fire threatens her not fully formed baby. Lily then stabs the mirror and kills Claudia.
First of all, I don’t hate this movie. For the most part this is Sigourney Weaver’s movie as Claudia. The other characters are likable but ever so bland. I have see more compelling characters in local car commercials than this movie. And really Claudia and her reflection are just sort vain and bat-shit crazy that they are likable but a weird default. Like you can’t help not like her insane antics. So the characters on the whole just there.
I do like the way the movie changed the dwarfs to outcast miner types. It makes more sense in the context of the story and mood.
So this movie main objective is to make the story scary, which it was originally and then Disney happen. To make it scary they just made the step mother crazy, which works, Cluadia is scary and she does bad thing to all the other characters. What good about Claudia is we see he decent into madness, she was jealous of Lily and she just lost her baby, so her crazed insanity couple with magic makes sense.
The technicals are okay. There is nothing bad or amazing, they are just okay. The best things is the coffin. It has a Art Nouveau, stained glass mosaic quality, it’s very pretty. The costumes are just average to blah.
Snow White: A Tale of Terror isn’t the great nor is like the terrifying but it’s dumb but kinda in a delightful way. In a way I feel with the title it should have been worse than it was, way worse.