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Category: Haref Topete

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Plot: princess Aurora falls into a deep slumber. Can a warrior save the kingdom?

No doubt filmed in response to Casper van Dien’s Sleeping Beauty (2014) and shot on a budget that couldn’t possibly have extended beyond a few Twinkies, some Skittles, and whatever pocketchange was on hand among cast and crew; Rene Perez’ Sleeping Beauty elevates cosplaying, not of the advanced variety but rather the one on the wrong side of cheap, to an artform. The historical basis for Sleeping Beauty was the Brothers Grimm fairytale Little Briar Rose from 1812, which itself was a retelling of La Belle au bois dormant from Charles Perrault. That version of the story can be found in the Histories or Tales from Past Times, with Morals or Mother Goose Tales (Histoires ou contes du temps passé, avec des moralités or Contes de ma mère l'Oye) collection from 1697. Perrault in turn based his writings upon the earlier Italian fairytale Sun, Moon, and Talia by Giambattista Basile as written in his 1634 work, the Pentamerone. As with The Snow Queen (2013) before it his Sleeping Beauty also deviates quite a bit from the beloved fairytale from whence it came. Sleeping Beauty tries to overcompensate by having early Perez babes Jenny Allford, Gemma Donato, and Raven Lexy disrobe early and often. While it’s certainly superior to The Snow Queen (2013) that isn’t saying much at all.

In an arboreal kingdom princess Aurora (Jenny Allford) is en route to negiotiate a truce with evil witch Carbosse (Raven Lexy). A member of the Royal Guard (Haref Topete) tries to convince Aurora that she’s walking into a trap, but she presses on anyway. Having reached the witch’s castle she wanders the interiors for a while until she comes across an enchanted spindle. She’s drawn in, stings herself, and falls into a deep slumber. Once word gets back to the kingdom William (Robert Amstler), the brave Commander of the Guard, embarks on a perilous quest to vanquish Carbosse and awaken the princess. On his travel he saves displaced and desperate Elf seer Alondra (Gemma Donato, as Gemma Danoto) from an assault by a brute barbarian (Joseph Aviel). Alondra realizes that her magic is not strong enough and that they require the counsel and help of wise wizard Samrin (John J. Welsh, as John Welsh). Meanwhile Carbosse instructs her henchman Enkrail (David Reinprecht) to find a maiden (Heather Montanez) that looks like Aurora so she can lay a trap. As the fellowship travels across the kingdom they are beset by many dangers, and William faces off against the demonic Octulus (Robert S. Dixon). When they finally reach the witch’s castle, one final confrontation awaits. Will the magic of Alondra and Samrin, as well as William’s blade be enough to withstand the malefic Carbosse?

Sleeping Beauty dares answer the question that nobody asked: “what would Lord Of the Rings have been had it had bare tits?” Or what would Game Of Thrones (2011-2019) have looked like on a budget that couldn’t even cover Emilia Clarke’s wardrobe. It’s a painful example of what happens when you let ditzy California girls play Elfs, regal princesses, and evil sorceresses. There’s a point to be made that every girl wants to be a princess and Sleeping Beauty offers enough of a counterpoint that not every buxom blonde beach babe should given the keys to the kingdom. The cast consists of the usual stuntmen and models, and nobody can really act. There are different phases in Perez’ career, roughly divided into everything that came before Playing with Dolls (2015), and everything that came after. Little Red Riding Hood (2016) is an exception of sorts. While it features Alanna Forte in a non-speaking part, it looks as if it was shot before Playing with Dolls (2015), but only released after. It’s purely conjecture on our part, but Irina Levadneva is curiously absent. Levadneva was one of the early Perez muses, but she was never seen again once Rene started helming Playing with Dolls (2015), and its series of sequels, as were Gemma Donato, and Raven Lexy for that matter.

What little production value Sleeping Beauty has comes from location shooting at Castle Noz in San Joaquin Valley, and Castello di Amorosa in Napa Valley. If anything, even this early Perez knew how to frame a scene, and there are some truly idyllic landscapes from Redwood National Park, San Joaquin Valley, and Shasta County to be seen. The blue demon that imprisons Aurora in the castle sort of looks like the Jem'Hadar shock troops of the Dominion from Star Trek: Deep Space Nine (1993–1999). As with The Snow Queen (2013) the year before Sleeping Beauty takes many liberties with the source material, and it never quite becomes the American fantastique it ought to have been. What it lacks in production value or good writing it makes up in ample amounts of exposed flesh with Allford, Donato, and Lexy each having extended nude scenes. The visual effects are somehow better than in the later Little Red Riding Hood (2016) and Sleeping Beauty is not nearly as prone to meandering atmospheric padding scenes that add nothing. Perez did better features before and after with both The Snow Queen (2013) and Sleeping Beauty being vastly superior to Little Red Riding Hood (2016). While we would have loved more Donato and Lexy in later features they, along with Irina Levadneva, were never seen again in the post-Playing with Dolls (2015) years.

Seeing Sleeping Beauty almost makes you wish Perez would do an American take on The Nude Vampire (1970), Girl Slaves of Morgana Le Fay (1971), Vampyros Lesbos (1971), Black Magic Rites (1973), Horror Rises From the Tomb (1973), Seven Women For Satan (1976), or The Living Dead Girl (1982). In fact knowing Perez and his predilections he would be ideally suited to continue the cinematic legacy of Jean Rollin, Luigi Batzella, and Renato Polselli. If his later work is anything to go by he himself seems not interested in such a thing in the slightest. No, first and foremost Rene Perez is an action-oriented director who loves classic exploitation, something which Death Kiss (2018) and Cabal (2020) would amply evince years down the line, and atmospheric Eurocult inspired ditties aren’t his forté. He could probably lens a giallo if he ever found a decent writing partner and some high-end urban locations. Arrowstorm Entertainment does the entire indie fantasy thing way better than Perez ever could. As it stands Sleeping Beauty is one of the better early Perez features but it doesn’t and can’t hold a candle to the vastly superior and better realized Playing with Dolls (2015) and most that came after. Rene Perez has grown a lot in the year since and Sleeping Beauty is an example of his earlier rougher, more unrefined style.

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Plot: can a maiden fair save the realm from the evil Snow Queen?

The early years and filmography of California indie director Rene Perez offers a wide array of features across a number of genres. Most notably among them the zombie horror franchise The Dead and the Damned (2011-2015) and the western / Predator (1987) crossover Alien Showdown: The Day the Old West Stood Still (2013). Unique to these early years are Perez’ European fairytale adaptations which typically play fast and loose with their source material. On the plus side many of these adaptations star early Perez muses Irina Levadneva, Nadia Lanfranconi, and Jenny Allford. In that sense it’s emblemic of the other two that would follow. The Snow Queen has little to nothing to do with the timeless Hans Christian Andersen fairytale upon which it is allegedly based, and largely exists as preamble to get Irina Levadneva, Aurelia Scheppers, and Jenny Allford out of their clothes. It even has the gall to insert a completely unnecessary and alien para-military subplot that comes across as a technical exercise for some of his later productions. Sleeping Beauty (2014) and Little Red Riding Hood (2016) both introduced foreign elements into their main plots, but at least they bore some vague semblance to the classic European fairytales which ostensibly served as their conceptual basis.

That The Snow Queen would bear almost no resemblance to the Hans Christian Andersen fairytale is a given. Only the Gerda, and Kai characters, and both the Troll and The Snow Queen are accounted for, both none of the plot remotely resembles the Hans Christian Andersen fairytale. At heart The Snow Queen apparently wants to be a fantastique, a genre practiced primarily in France and Spain in the nineteen-seventies. As with many an early Perez feature The Snow Queen too is a victim of padding and is filled to the gill with atmospheric scenic shots that do nothing to forward the story. Sleeping Beauty (2014) suffered from much of the same defects, thankfully Rene would have remedied this tendency by the time he lensed the original Playing with Dolls (2015) and its many sequels. Just when you think that Perez is going to get to the meat of the story a completely unnecessary and alien para-military subplot, that feels not only wildly out of place, but should have been its own feature altogether, is introduced. The Snow Queen comes across as a barely concealed test-run for Playing with Dolls (2015) and like The Obsidian Curse (2016) a few years down the line feels more like a technical exercise than a movie. The fantasy mainplot hardly aspires to anything more than advanced cosplaying and never attains Arrowstorm Entertainment level of professionalism.

A distant kingdom has been plunged into eternal winter by a curse from the Snow Queen (Nadia Lanfranconi). The only thing that can stop the Snow Queen is a magic mirror. Wandering the snowbound forest fair maiden Gerda (Irina Levadneva, as Iren Levy) is happy when her man Kai (Robert Amstler) returns from the Crusades. The Snow Queen has dispatched a troll to capture whoever possesses the magic mirror. That just so happens to be Kai, and he’s imprisoned by one of the Snow Queen’s spells. In the village a cleric brother Liolinus (John J. Welsh) posits only innocent and pure Gerda can withstand the Snow Queen, and sends her on a perilous quest. Meanwhile, on the other side of time, the US Army has ordered Colonel Richard Wagner (David Reinprecht) to locate and retrieve an expensive prototype of body armor, and the culprit responsible for the theft. To that end he has tracked down deserter Valtranz (Robert S. Dixon) to a remote snowbound forest. In that same forest a trio of scientists – Walter (Ian Dalziel), Annika Hansen (Aurelia Scheppers), and Nichelle (Jenny Allford) – are conducting investigations into inexplicable energy surges in the area. What all three parties will come to realize is that they’re all drawn to the nefarious Snow Queen.

Aurelia Scheppers actually had a career prior to working Perez. She appeared in music videos from P!nk (‘Fuckin’ Perfect’) and Lifehouse (‘Halfway Gone’), and had guest roles in series as Lie to Me (2009), Bones (2009), The Young and the Restless (2012), and Switched at Birth (2014). Her highest-profile guest roles have been in It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia (2015), GLOW (2017), and Crazy Ex-Girlfriend (2017). The same goes for Robert Amstler, and Raven Lexy. Amstler once played bit parts in A-list movies as Flightplan (2005) and The Lincoln Lawyer (2011), but now seems lost in low budget hell. Lexy from her side had bit parts in Entourage (2000), and Numb3rs (2008) and even starred alongside Jason Statham in Crank: High Voltage (2009). Like her colleague Irina Levadneva, Lexy appeared in only three Rene Perez features. The year before she was in Demon Hunter (2012), and the year after in The Dead the Damned and the Darkness (2014), which also featured Levadneva. Irina would make her final Perez appearance in his Little Red Riding Hood (2016).

Jenny Allford’s sole claim to fame is an uncredited part as one of the party chicks in Seth MacFarlane’s Ted (2012). From there she descended straight into the low budget hell known as TomCat Films. In that capacity she appeared in Captain Battle: Legacy War (2013), and Lizzie Borden's Revenge (2013). On both occassions she shared the screen with Marlene Mc'Cohen. In case of the latter that also meant that former porn star Veronica Ricci was on hand. You know that there’s trouble ahead when the porn star acts better than the alleged actresses, and the poster art is better than the movie. Not that that always is the case, mind, Ricci was pretty fucken abysmal in Mc'Cohen’s mockbuster Interstellar Wars (2016). Whether Allford’s lot has improved is entirely up for debate, but TomCat Films is a fate so awful that you wish it upon nobody. Well, it’s a step above Neil Breen, but we’re not sure how much that’s saying exactly.

As would sadly become obvious in the following years simple economics forced director Rene Perez to take quite a few liberties with the material he was adapting. All of which would be perfectly alright if actually served the story at hand. It doesn’t here. The Snow Queen desperately wants to be a fantastique, or the closest proxy to that. It isn’t. At best this could have been a loose remake of, say, Blood Of the Virgins (1967), Girl Slaves Of Morgana Le Fay (1971), Nude For Satan (1973), Seven Women For Satan (1973), Vampyres (1975), or even Huntress: Spirit Of the Night (1995) more than anything else. Most of the times it looks like an early Nightwish or Immortal music video, to be entirely frank.

Not that we begrudge Perez for attempting to do these adaptations when he has access to those scenic California woodlands, as well as Castello di Amorosa in Napa Valley, and Castle Noz in San Joaquin Valley. It only speaks of ambition to attempt such a thing on the limited budgets he works on. Why attempt adapting a fairytale when a gothic horror throwback (with a gratuitous dose of blood and boobs) would have sufficed, or worked even better? Rene obviously has access to the locations, the babes, and the props/special effects to undertake such a venture. There’s no question that Rene can do much with what is obviously very little, but The Snow Queen is not that movie. Perez can, and would, do better in the years to come.