Snow White: A Tale Of Terror is the 1997 horror film which is probably only famous for two reasons; 1. It's a horror re-imagining of Snow White and 2. Sigourney Weaver is in it. The film is obviously about Snow White, a sweet young girl who is kicked out her castle by her evil stepmother who then after finding out she is prettier then herself, she then sets out to kill here, it's pretty much the same here except it has loads of crappy late 90's historical horror effects (Ghost Ship, Thirteen Ghosts, etc.). The film overall is "good", I would not call it a masterpiece in horror history or the best horror film of 1997 but it was a fair re-imagining and it probably could not have gone better then this anyway, this film is literally the only thing you can do with the Snow White story, unless you update it to the present day. The performances were very good in it though from Sam Raimi and Sigourney Weaver and Monica Kenne (sorry if that's not her name, just thinking of what it sounds like). Snow White: A Tale Of Terror is a decent good horror re-imagining but don't get your hopes up for the 90's best horror film or 1997's best horror film, oh no, sorry Snow White: A Tale Of Terror, you have to become fourth after I Know What You Did Last Summer, Cube and Scream 2. Stay tuned for my anticipated review of Unsane, either tomorrow night or Sunday!!

And that's about the BEST thing I can say about this mess. It's one thing for a film to go somewhere slowly. This film, OTOH, goes nowhere slowly. What were they thinking? It was a tale of terror, alright. For the viewer. Considering some of the stars in the cast, it makes me wonder what EVERYONE associated with this disaster was thinking. Avoid at all cost. Or you'll wish YOU'D taken a bite out of a poison apple.

Taking Snow White out of the Sanitized Disney Version and showing it more as the Brothers Grimm originally had it makes this a shock for most viewers.This is a very good ensemble cast with reliably fine actors like Sam Neill, Sigourney Weaver, Gil Bellows etc. I had already seen Monica Keena as a high school rape victim on Law and Order and knew she could act as well as another episode with Gil Bellows (along with a very young Phillip Seymour Hoffman) as a gang rapist. Everybody any good turns up on some incarnation of Law and Order eventually and often when they are just starting out.Although there are supernatural elements I like the way they showed the evil stepmother as basically mentally ill and perhaps manipulated by something evil living in her mirror. Her misguided maternal instincts gives her motivation to sink to any depth of depravity.While good still saves the day for most of the main characters it is a far creepier and yet realistic journey to get there. I own this on DVD and watch is occasionally. It holds up over time as a more than fractured fairy tale.

The truth is that Grimms' fairy tales were rather dark and bloody. Just read a copy of the unexpurgated versions - out in many different editions - and you will see. From pre-Roman times and onward, Europe had a dark and difficult history. What the Grimm brothers were trying to do was to recreate a pan-Germanic history, and the fairy tales - which they literally collected by traveling around Central Europe and interviewing people, especially the elderly - helped them research folkways, folk beliefs, and old ways of speaking and narrating. What they recorded was marvelous in m,any ways, and not always lovely.We've seen the movie and think that it goes just a bit beyond what the Grimm brothers recorded. However, this version is certainly much more consonant with their work than is the sugary-sweet Disney version. That happens a lot. For example, Johnny Depp's version of Charlie and the Chocolate Factory is much more in line with Roald Dahl than is the Gene Wilder version.