Snow White

As we noted in the cover story of our Nov/Dec 1996 issue, "trashing the classics" has become the latest hack sport in Tinseltown. (Why script an original when you can butcher someone else's work and have built-in name recognition to boot?) Here's the full title: The Grimm Brothers' Snow White: A Tale of Terror which, apparently, is a bid to capture the literary and the horror flick crowd. Set in Germany's Black Forest during the 15th century, this "$26 million theatrical production," which originally aired on Showtime, stars Sigourney Weaver (Alien Resurrection) as Claudia, the evil stepmom whose jealousy over her stepdaughter Lilli (Taryn Davis) grows apace until the dysfunctional family inevitably moves beyond internal squabbling to attempted murder. Beyond the bare bones of the classic fairy tale, very little makes sense here: an apple is plucked from what appears to be an oak tree; Lilli runs away from a near death experience and falls in with seven dwar...no, sorry, only one is a dwarf; Sigourney wields supernatural powers more appropriate to Ghostbusters than anything the Brothers Grimm intended. Stick with the Disney classic or the recent Willa: An American Snow White (VL-9/97). Not recommended. (R. Pitman)