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In this revisitation of the original Grimms fairy tale, young Lilliana Hoffman (Monica Keena) despises her stepmother Lady Claudia (Sigourney Weaver) from the start. Claudia, who has a decidedly shadowy past, is proud of her looks but a bit insecure about them, and when Lily’s father Friedrich (Sam Neil) marries her, she can tell right away she’s vying for his affections with Lily. After seven years pass, Claudia finally bears Friedrich a son, but she miscarries, driving her to evil and selfishness. She sends her mute brother Gustav (Miroslav Táborský) to kill Lily out of jealous rage and spite, but Gustav fails and Lily escapes to the woods. Here she meets a group of miners, all of whom seem to want to either ransom her, rape her or throw her to the wolves, but they turn out to be the least of her problems—Lady Claudia, through her sorcerous mirror and spies, knows that Lily is still alive. It takes Claudia two or three assassination attempts to finally resort to disguising herself as a witch and giving her the poisoned apple, but in the meanwhile she has plans for the resurrection of her dead son which involve Friedrich’s sacrifice and the systematic poisoning of the entire castle.
While Disney’s famous Snow White is not as far off from the original fairy tale as most people think, it’s decidedly more smarmy than the typical fairy tale. Here, Claudia tries to feed her husband what she thinks is his daughter’s heart and liver for dinner, and there are also oblique references to Satan and Black Mass (an upside-down cross, for example). Weaver is the real scene-stealer in this film—she has just the right smile, the right cackle and the right demeanor to convince us she’s evil personified. However, her fall from goodness in this adaptation is not just out of spite, but also out of Lily’s rejection, Friedrich’s devotion to Lily and her own neurosis. As Claudia points out, it’s too simple to simply label her a witch, and just as Richard III eulogizes, evil with a touch of humanity is what frightens us the most…because it could be us as well one day.
I wouldn’t go so far as to call A Tale of Terror a brilliant piece of work, but it’s an effective gothicized reimagining with an effective climax and conclusion. I never was much for a bunch of merry dwarves, singing birds and incessantly-rhyming mirror. Cannibalism, murder, and dark sorcery, on the other hand, is well worth my time.
--Long
Copyright 2002 Tso Long Productions ©