One day I'm going to make good on my threat
to fire up the straight to DVD /VOD awards, even though I
think awards are silly, and there's no way I could watch every
straight to DVD / VOD movie released in a given year to make
these stupid awards fair. I only mention this because
early in 2013, the rest of the actresses this year are going
to be hard pressed to top the scenery chewing villainous turn
the likes of which Madame Dee Wallace offered in this Asylum
joint 'Hansel & Gretel'. Ms. Wallace so crazy
in this movie that I had to re-watch 'E.T.' to get Ms. Wallace
back right in my brain again. Okay, that's not true
because I would never re-watch E.T., because I kind of hated
it… I know, right? But let's say we re-watched 'The
Howling' instead.
Our film starts with a tender, plump young thing running for
her life in the woods. She didn't make it. Next
thing we see is this woman lying on giant plate, with an apple
in her mouth, peppers by her side and the flames fire
up. Now we have an issue. This is absolutely no
way to prepare meat. First off, she should've been
drained, preferably quartered. Then there are the
peppers by her side. Peppers just lying next to meet add
nothing to the meat, thus they should've been diced,
preferably sautéed, then placed on the meat. Lastly, and
most egregiously, they just fired up the flames full
blast. What's the serving plan? Char the skin
while leaving the meat completely raw and bloody on the
inside? That's disgusting. I wouldn't eat that.
The culinary crimes committed during this scene were beyond
criminal.
Moving along we meet Gretel (Stephanie
Greco) who works in the gingerbread shop of the kindly old
Lilith (Wallace). Her name is Lilith so we know she's no
good. People come from miles around to eat Ms. Lilith's
meat pies, which we are told is made of the best meat
ever, and Lilith is quite fond of the lovely
Gretel. Gretel has a twin brother in Hansel (Steve
Lydic) and Hansel, for lack of a better word, is a bit of a
douche. You should've seen Hansel carrying on after his
old man told him he was remarrying, Hansel mainly worrying
about where he's going to put his XBOX. Hansel looks to
be about thirty. So upset is this thirty year old man he
runs into the woods crying like a little girl and steps into a
bear trap. Fortunately his sister is there to help, and
also fortunately they are close to a cabin in the woods,
occupied by Miss Lilith who gets Hansel right by plying him
with meat pies and confectionery sweets.
But you know the story. She was just fattening him
up. The next morning when Hansel wakes up he's chained
in the basement with some other potential meat candidates,
while Gretel is upstairs, waking up after being drugged,
wondering where her brother is. Lilith doesn't want to
turn Gretel into meat however, possibly because there's not an
awful lot of meat to get off of this woman, but mainly because
Lilith sees something in her. She would like Gretel to
join the family with her two inbred sons and take over the
family cannibalism business. Gretel thinks that's crazy,
but Gretel doesn't know crazy yet. She's about to meet
crazy because Lilith… has lost it.
It's not looking good for Hansel and Gretel and those other
pieces of meat in the basement. And the local
cops. And their parents. And nobody in this
town. Lilith is crazy, and while she might look like a
frail old lady… kind of not really. She has
superpowers. And she's lethal with a pitchfork.
Good luck with that escape plan Hansel and Gretel.
I guess this version of 'Hansel & Gretel' is mockbusting
'Hansel & Gretel: Witchunters' even though this is more
'Hansel & Gretel: Hunted by Witch'. You would've
though at some point in this movie that Hansel or Gretel
would've come to the conclusion that this is just an old lady,
rise up, and just have a faceoff with this old lady and kick
her ass, but not these kids who were always in Flee
Mode. Even when their old man was getting pitchforked,
stabbed, and gutted to provide his adult children with an
escape, they never circled back to help the old man.
Thus we would've titled this movie 'Hansel & Gretel:
Bitches'.
That being said, director Anthony C. Ferrante's 'Hansel &
Gretel' is like the best movie we've seen out of The House of
Asylum since 'Air Collision'. Admittedly, there aren't a
lot of cinematic gems that this movie had to step over to
achieve this lofty status, but nonetheless we enjoyed 'Hansel
& Gretel'. The main reason of course was the
maniacal performance put forth by Dee Wallace who took the
witch Lilith to unprecedented levels of villainous
insanity. Be it pitchfork, rolling pin or just a
simple starlight peppermint, Lilith would kill you with just
about anything, and do it while looking like a total
nutjob. And while Ms. Wallace made this movie, the other
performances weren't completely terrible and Stephanie Greco
is cute, plus Ferrante keeps this thing in relative constant
motion. Except for maybe a strange scene when our kids
were having some strange hallucinations which kind of felt
like padding just to make the movie longer, which is something
we never recommend.
Of course 'Hansel & Gretel' does have the typical issues
in logic, comprehension and cohesion, but we do kind of factor
that into these little essays we write about these types of
movies. Thus if you want to watch Dee Wallace completely
finish the job in distancing herself from being E.T's mom, I'm
thinking 'Hansel & Gretel' finally closes that deal.
