| Snow White: A Tale of Terror | |
|---|---|
 Promotional poster with the film's earlier title | |
| Also known as | Snow White in the Black Forest The Grimm Brothers' Snow White |
| Based on | "Snow White" by theBrothers Grimm |
| Screenplay by | Tom Szollosi Deborah Serra |
| Directed by | Michael Cohn |
| Starring | |
| Music by | John Ottman |
| Country of origin | United States |
| Original language | English |
| Production | |
| Producer | Tom Engelman |
| Cinematography | Mike Southon |
| Editor | Ian Crafford |
| Running time | 100 minutes |
| Production companies | PolyGram Filmed Entertainment Interscope Communications |
| Budget | $26–30 million[1][2] |
| Original release | |
| Network | Showtime |
| Release | August 24, 1997 (1997-08-24) |
Snow White: A Tale of Terror[a] is a 1997 AmericanGothichorror film directed by Michael Cohn from a screenplay by Tom Szollosi and Deborah Serra. Co-produced byPolyGram Filmed Entertainment andInterscope Communications, it is based on the1812 fairy tale by theBrothers Grimm, and starsSigourney Weaver,Sam Neill,Gil Bellows, andMonica Keena. Set in the 15th centuryGermany, the film followsLilli Hoffman (Keena), a young noblewoman forced to flee her home into theforest and join agroup of outcasts in order to escape from her stepmotherClaudia (Weaver), who blames Lilli for hermiscarriage and seeks to kill her.
Originally titledThe Grimm Brothers' Snow White in the Black Forest, the film began development in 1993, after producer Tom Engelman successfully proposed the project toPolygram. Several screenwriters spent three years working on the story, which was conceived as a darker and more realistic retelling of the tale. Michael Cohn was appointed director of the film, which became his first big-budget production.Principal photography took place atBarrandov Studios inPrague, as well as at several other locations throughout theCzech Republic, beginning in October 1995 and continuing into 1996.
The film was originally intended for a theatrical release, but made its premiere onShowtime on August 24, 1997, as atelevision movie retitledSnow White: A Tale of Terror. It was nominated forOutstanding Lead Actress (Weaver),Outstanding Costume Design, andOutstanding Makeup at the50th Primetime Emmy Awards.
In 1493Germany,[5]Baron Frederick Hoffman and his pregnant wifeLilliana are driving home through thewoods when their carriage is attacked bywolves, and Lilliana is mortally wounded. Frederick is forced to perform acaesarean section on her to save their unborn daughter, whom he namesLilli in honor of her mother. Seven years later, Frederick remarries theFrench noblewomanClaudia Alvise, who arrives at his residence along with her mute brotherGustav and an ornatevanity that belonged to their mother. Despite Claudia's attempts to win over Lilli, the latter refuses to accept her, still mourning her mother and envying her father's attention to Claudia. On the Hoffmans' wedding night, Lilli witnesses her nanny being killed by a mysterious force from Claudia's vanitymirror, which increases her distrust of her stepmother.
Nine years later, a teenaged Lilli starts a relationship with a youngdoctor,Peter Gutenberg, and dreams of leaving home, while Claudia is pregnant with her first child. The Hoffmans throw aball, and Lilli arrives dressed in her mother's gown, taking Frederick's attention away from Claudia. Hurt and jealous, Claudia goes into premature labor and the baby is astillborn, while she is rendered unable to have other children. The spirit from Claudia's mirror in the form of her reflection consoles her and promises revenge on Lilli. Lilli remorsefully apologizes to Claudia, unaware that the latter has decided to dispose of her.
Several weeks later, Claudia sends Gustav to kill Lilli when she is walking outside, forcing the latter to flee into the woods. Gustav brings his sister aboar's heart, as if it were Lilli's, but the mirror reveals his trick, and Claudia bewitches her brother withhallucinations that drive him tosuicide. Frederick and Peter go in search of Lilli, but the former gets injured and they are forced to return home. In the forest, Lilli stumbles upon an abandonedabbey, where she is confronted by agroup of seven societal outcasts; one of them, Rolf, offers to get aransom for Lilli and tries torape her, but their leader, Will, drives him away.
With nowhere else to go, Lilli follows the group into themine. Claudia useswitchcraft to cause a cave-in at the mine and kill Lilli, but Will saves her, while one of the outcasts, Gilbert, is buried alive. Despite the initial mutual antagonism, Lilli warms up to Will after learning that he lost his family due to his refusal to fight for theCrusaders. The next day, Claudia tries to kill Lilli again by magically knocking down trees, but the latter manages to escape, although another outcast, Lars, is killed in the process. That night, Lilli and Will share their first kiss.
Meanwhile, Claudia rapes Frederick to take his seed for the ritualresurrection of their stillborn child and turns Gustav's eviscerated heart into anapple. Disguised as an old crone, Claudia tracks down Lilli's whereabouts and tricks her into eating the apple, which plunges the latter into adeath-like trance. Peter arrives shortly after and pronounces Lilli dead, but as the outcasts prepare to bury her, Will notices that her eyes have opened. He shakes Lilli, dislodging a piece of apple from her throat and breaking the spell.
Together with Will and Peter, Lilli returns to her castle and discovers that the entire household is under a spell that has driven them into a mindless and hostile state. Claudia forcibly takes Frederick to thechapel, where she begins toexsanguinate him to complete the ritual. Lilli and Will find a weakened Frederick and take him to safety, while Claudia kills Peter by pushing him out of the window. Lilli finds Claudia cradling her revived child and fights her, setting fire to the room in the ensuing battle. Lilli stabs the mirror with adagger, wounding Claudia, who is further injured by the shards and the spreading fire, before she and her child are crushed bydebris. With Claudia gone, her spells are broken, and Lilli reunites with her father and Will.
Appearing as aband of outcasts areBrian Glover as Lars,Anthony Brophy as Rolf,Christopher Bauer as Konrad, John Edward Allen as Bart,Andrew Tiernan as Scar, andBryan Pringle as Father Gilbert.[6][14]Frances Cuka plays Nannau, Lilli's devoted nanny.[6][14]Miroslav Táborský playsGustav, Claudia's enigmatic mute brother.[13][15] Dale Wyatt plays Ilsa, Lilli's maidservant and best friend.[2][14]Joanna Roth playsLady Lilliana Hoffman, Frederick's first wife and Lilli's birth mother.[6]
I was reading the Grimm tale to my young niece, and as I was reading, I felt this sudden rush of discovery. Here was an untouched—at least by filmmakers—malevolent rollercoaster ride dealing with a young girl surviving a tough ordeal and emerging from it as a strong and determined woman. Not only that. In the course of her brutal experiences she's forced to descend into her own private Hell (the spell cast by the Queen) and must face her psychological confusion and some terrifying personal demons.
In 1993, producer Tom Engelman approachedPolyGram with the idea of making a film based on theBrothers Grimm's 1812 fairy tale "Snow White".[16] He came up with the project after reading the tale to his niece, considering it a good basis for a complexcoming-of-age story and wanting to create a closer retelling of the tale than in the widely knownWalt Disney's animated featureSnow White and the Seven Dwarfs (1937).[16] Tom Szollosi, Deborah Serra, andStephen Metcalfe penned the initial screenplay, which underwent many changes over the next three years, with a number of screenwriters involved in its development.[5][8][17] One of the earlier versions of the story reportedly suggested aNew York City setting and had thedwarfs reimagined asgang members.[6] During the writing process, Engelman insisted on a thorough analysis of the original tale in order to make "specific what the Brothers Grimm left general"; his premise for the script was to tell a more realistic and expanded version of the tale, making the characters more complex and physiologically driven, as well as adding a historical context to the story.[16] The screenwriters chose the late 15th centuryGermany for the setting of the story, which they wrote from the point of view of theevil queen, who had been named Claudia.[5][18] The Hoffman family was written aslandowners, rather thanroyalty as in the original tale, to better match the setting, and the character of Snow White was renamed Lilli, leaving her original name only in the title of the screenplay.[5] Although the screenwriters retained her obsession with beauty, it was decided that Claudia would not start as a villain and resent Lilli out of jealousy for her appearance, as in the Grimms' tale; instead, it was written that Claudia genuinely fell in love with Lilli's father (who had been named Frederick) and tried to bond with her, despite Lilli constantly rejecting Claudia and fighting with her for Frederick's attention.[2][5][19] After years of trying to conceive a child, Claudia would suffer a miscarriage, resulting in her being driven to madness and blaming Lilli for her misfortunes, with the spirit from her mother's mirror further fueling Claudia's hatred for her stepdaughter.[2][5][19] In order to "keep the psychological readings complex", the screenwriters decided to make it ambiguous whether the mirror spirit was a hallucination of Claudia caused by her increasing insanity or an actual supernatural entity manipulating her.[2][5]
More than 30 famous and little-known directors were interviewed for the project before Michael Cohn landed the job; by that time, it was settled that the film would be aGothicthriller, originally titledThe Grimm Brothers' Snow White in the Black Forest.[8] Cohn joined the project after unsuccessfully trying to pitch a potential script forHBO to PolyGram's subsidiary,Interscope Communications, whose representatives instead offered him to work onSnow White in the Black Forest, and he signed up after spending the next eight weeks discussing the direction and tone of the film with them.[8] The project marked the first high-budget production for Cohn, who had earlier worked on twodirect-to-video films,Interceptor (1992) andWhen the Bough Breaks (1994).[2][8] Engelman stated that Cohn "fully embraced the dark philosophy of the piece. I didn't want a technology-driven movie at the expense of character and Michael's past two films proved he knew how to build suspense, how to handle special effects and let the actors work in a natural vein… We took a leap of faith."[8]
Who else would have been the perfect Claudia? Sigourney has foughtAliens andGhostbusters, for heaven's sake! Rarely have I ever had an actress so firmly in mind from the very beginning. It was a case of, if I can't make this with Sigourney, then it isn't worth making at all. Only she could bring a level of evil intensity to Claudia without sacrificing her humanity or intelligence. Claudia was the hero of her own story and she had to be real and be played straight.
Sigourney Weaver, who had collaborated with Tom Engelman onWorking Girl (1988), was the only choice for the role of Claudia; Engelman further stated that the film would not have been made if she had refused.[11] The film's executive producerRobert W. Cort first approached Weaver in 1993.[11]Polygram paid Weaver $4 million (equivalent to $7,834,992 in 2024) for her performance.[11][17]
Hundreds ofEuropean andAmerican actresses auditioned for the role of Lilli, andAlicia Silverstone was the top contender for a while, beforeMonica Keena landed the part by September 1995.[8][20] Commenting on the choice of Keena, Engelman said that she "had the face of aBotticelli angel but also a level of toughness that would be requisite for a girl from this time period… You know she'd cope and survive to become strong enough to take on [Claudia]."[8]David Conrad was offered to play Peter Gutenberg during his last year in the graduate theater program at theJuilliard School, which he had to drop out to accept the role.[21] Other principal cast members includedSam Neill as Frederick,Gil Bellows as Will, Taryn Davis as the younger Lilli, andBrian Glover as Lars.
Principal photography onSnow White in the Black Forest began on October 2, 1995, taking place atBarrandov Studios inPrague, as well as on locations and castles throughout theCzech Republic, includingKost,Dobřichovice,Pernštejn, andValdek.[22][23][24]Stromovka Park was used as the Black Forest.[25] Shooting was reportedly continuing in May 1996; by then, the film had been renamedThe Grimm Brothers' Snow White.[2] The film was completed later that same year.[26]
| Snow White (A Tale Of Terror) (Original Motion Picture Soundtrack) | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Film score by | ||||
| Released | June 23, 1998 (1998-06-23) | |||
| Genre |
| |||
| Length | 60:43 | |||
| Label | Citadel Records | |||
| John Ottman chronology | ||||
| ||||
Thefilm score forSnow White: A Tale of Terror was written and composed byJohn Ottman.[27]
All music is composed byJohn Ottman.
| No. | Title | Length |
|---|---|---|
| 1. | "Main Theme" | 3:08 |
| 2. | "Claudia Arrives" | 2:58 |
| 3. | "Lilly's Birth" | 3:07 |
| 4. | "The Apple" | 5:16 |
| 5. | "The Dress" | 0:44 |
| 6. | "Freaks Of Nature" | 4:32 |
| 7. | "Mirror, Mirror" | 3:32 |
| 8. | "The Awakening" | 2:36 |
| 9. | "Traitor" | 2:29 |
| 10. | "Company For Christ" | 2:20 |
| 11. | "The Celebration" | 2:47 |
| 12. | "Fatal Glance" | 2:01 |
| 13. | "The Locket" | 0:25 |
| 14. | "Seduction / About Will" | 4:46 |
| 15. | "The Spell" | 1:15 |
| 16. | "She Lurks" | 2:50 |
| 17. | "Reflections" | 2:00 |
| 18. | "The Outcasts" | 1:59 |
| 19. | "Claudia's Lair" | 4:09 |
| 20. | "Taking The Seed" | 1:51 |
| 21. | "What Have You Done To Me!" | 2:52 |
| 22. | "Resolution" | 1:50 |
| Total length: | 60:43 | |
The film was originally planned for a theatrical release, but it was unable to secure a satisfactory deal with a distributor in the United States.[17]Snow White: A Tale of Terror premiered onShowtime on August 24, 1997.[28] The film was released theatrically in theUnited Kingdom and grossed $3 million (equivalent to $5,876,244 in 2024).[29]
Snow White: A Tale of Terror was first released onVHS viaPolygram on November 25, 1997.[30][31] It was re-issued on DVD fromUniversal Home Entertainment on August 13, 2002, containing identical artwork to the previous edition[32] and most recently on May 1, 2012 from Universal, containing newly commissioned artwork.[33] A multipack DVD including the film (withDarkman II: The Return of Durant andFirestarter 2: Rekindled) was made available from Universal.[34]
In the United Kingdom, Universal Home Entertainment released the film on VHS format on June 1, 1998,[35] while a re-issued VHS became available via Universal from September 17, 2001.[36] The film has been issued twice on DVD from Universal Home Entertainment in the UK, with the first on February 6, 2006,[37] and a subsequent version containing new artwork on May 14, 2012.[38] All editions from Universal are now out-of-print as distribution company Fabulous Films currently acquire ownership rights for distribution in the United Kingdom. Fabulous released the film on April 4, 2016 on DVD,[39] and for the first time in any country, onBlu-ray format on July 4, 2016.[40]
The film is additionally available to rent or buy onAmazon Video.[41]
The film finally debuted on Blu-ray in the United States for the first time on October 6, 2020 by Mill Creek Entertainment. The disc contains no special features.[42]
Thereview aggregator websiteRotten Tomatoes reported thatSnow White: A Tale of Terror had a 58% approval rating based on 12 reviews, with an average rating of 5.9/10.[45]
The New York Daily News describedSnow White: A Tale of Terror as "intense and gruesome, although brilliant", and praised its use of locations in theCzech Republic, as well as the performances of the cast, particularly Weaver's.[46] Anita Gates fromThe New York Times gave a positive review, highlighting Weaver's acting, costume design, and cinematography.[47]TVGuide complimented the script, Michael Cohn's direction, and the performances, adding that the "quick pacing, excellent medieval costume design, top-flight makeup effects, and the beautiful locations in Prague and the Czech Republic also help to sharpen this slick effort."[48] In his review for theLos Angeles Times,Howard Rosenberg called the film "delicious, at once fun and foreboding despite some plot gaps"; he also praised Weaver's acting, Cohn's direction, and the cinematography.[49] William Thomas ofEmpire awardedSnow White: A Tale of Terror with three out of five stars, complimenting the performances of Weaver and Keena and stating that the film "succeeds by drawing deep, fearful uncertainty from its ambiguity."[50]
Writing forVariety, Sheri Linden praised the cinematography and production design, but criticized the pacing and performances of the cast (with the exception of Weaver's), concluding that while it is "good to look at, thisSnow White isn't the chilling experience it should be."[15]Ty Burr fromEntertainment Weekly gave the film a "D+", calling it a "lugubrious, overcooked mess that forgets fairy tales are meant to entertain as well as instruct."[51] ATime Out reviewer wrote thatSnow White: A Tale of Terror provides "insufficient atmosphere or developed characterisation to satisfy grown-ups. The film plays like lightHammer horror with inappropriate period finery and design."[52] In his 2002 DVD review forThe A.V. Club,Nathan Rabin criticized the film, but highlighted Weaver's acting, describing it as "easily the best thing about this muddled, confused and disappointing film."[53] J. R. Southall fromStarburst gave a strongly negative review, writing: "Thanks to an over-reliance on unconvincingADR making most of the cast seem even more wooden than they would already be, badly chosen video effects and mid-1990s camerawork dating the project hideously, and what feels like television comedy pacing, this version of the Grimm Brothers' fairy tale – which attempts to retain the dark fairytale aspect while ditching much of the plot and spinning a new one instead – is ultimately unsuccessful, fatally undermined by its poor production choices in spite of an interesting cast and some bold ideas."[54]
| Award | Category | Recipient(s) | Result | Ref. |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| American Society of Cinematographers Award | Outstanding Achievement in Cinematography in a Movie of the Week or Pilot | Mike Southon | Nominated | [55] |
| CableACE Awards | Cinematography in a Movie or Miniseries | Mike Southon | Nominated | [56] |
| Primetime Emmy Awards | Outstanding Lead Actress in a Miniseries or Movie | Sigourney Weaver | Nominated | [57] |
| Outstanding Costume Design for a Miniseries or a Special | Marit Allen,Charles Knode | Nominated | [58] | |
| Outstanding Makeup for a Miniseries, Movie or a Special | Ann Brodie,Linda DeVetta | Nominated | [59] | |
| Saturn Awards | Best Television Presentation | Snow White: A Tale of Terror | Nominated | |
| Screen Actors Guild Awards | Outstanding Performance by a Female Actor in a Miniseries or Television Movie | Sigourney Weaver | Nominated | [60] |
