Capsule Movie Reviews Vol.2026.03

Read the explanation of method, madness, and spoilers.[1]

1. The Addams Family (1991) — 7/10
2. Addams Family Values (1993) — 6/10
3. Die göttliche Ordnung (2017) — 9/10
4. Silverado (1985) — 7/10
5. Achtung Fertig Charlie (2003) — 7/10
6. Robin Hood: Men in Tights (1993) — 5/10
7. Moon (2009) — 8/10
8. Gotthard (2016) — 8/10
9. Platzspitzbaby (2020) — 8/10
10. Die Schwarze Spinne (2022) — 5/10

The Addams Family (1991) — 7/10

Gomez (Raúl Julia) and Morticia (Anjelica Huston) Addams live with their children Pugsley (Jimmy Workman) and Wednesday (Christina Ricci), as well as Granny (Judith Malina) and their butler Lurch (Carel Struycken). Their lawyer and estate manager is Tully Alford (Dan Hedaya). He is deeply interested in finding the Addams Family treasure. It is hidden in the deep recesses of their home.

Fester (Christopher Lloyd) is Gomez’s long-lost older brother. He returns in the form of “Gordon”, the son of the scheming Abigail Craven (Elizabeth Wilson), who is also after the Addams Family treasure. Gordon is the spitting image of Fester, which is no small feat because Fester is one ugly sonofabitch. He seems to mostly enjoy the madcap and deadly goings-on in the Addams household, which suggests that he may be Fester. But he is also very much Gordon.

All is revealed when he, his mother, and Tully manage to take over the estate from the family, who end up living in a motel for a little while (kind of like in Schitt’s Creek, R.I.P. Moira). Morticia returns to try to talk some sense into them but only gets herself captured and tortured, which she adores. Gomez and family come roaring back and manage to right the wrongs, electrocuting Fester and restoring his memories. Happy endings all around for everyone but the baddies.

“Morticia: And our credo: “Sic gorgiamus allos subjectatos nunc.” “We gladly feast on those who would subdue us.” Not just pretty words.”

That is goddamned revolutionary and I am here for it.

I gave it an extra star because Raúl Julia and Anjelica Huston make such a great couple.

Addams Family Values (1993) — 6/10

Gomez (Raúl Julia) and Morticia (Anjelica Huston) Addams live with their children Pugsley (Jimmy Workman) and Wednesday (Christina Ricci), as well as Granny (Carol Kane) and their butler Lurch (Carel Struycken). Fester (Christopher Lloyd) lives with them too. He’s lonely.

Debbie Jellinsky (Joan Cusack) shows up just in time to fill the hole in his heart. She will fill it with poison the minute they’re married, though: she’s known as The Black Widow. The interplay between Fester and Debbie is far less interesting than the fact that Pugsley and Wednesday are sent to summer camp, where they are mentally tortured by camp counselors Gary Granger (Peter MacNicol) and Becky Martin-Granger (Christine Baranski).

Wednesday and Pugsley turn the tables during the Thanksgiving pageant, which ends in tears for everyone but Wednesday, Pugsley, and their little camp friend Joel (David Krumholtz).

There’s also the new arrival: baby Pubert, who is preternaturally protected from harm and who comes to the family’s rescue when Debbie tries to electrocute them all. She’d already failed to kill the indestructible Fester several times. The family survives, of course. Debbie dies. She is buried in the family graveyard.

This one was a half-hearted sequel that just hit the same notes as the first one but not nearly as well. Even Gomez and Morticia were pale shadows of themselves.

Die göttliche Ordnung (2017) — 9/10

This is a movie about a small village in Switzerland that fought for and won the right for women to vote in 1971. The film is named after an expression common at the time, that women were subordinate to men because the Bible says so, that it’s the göttliche Ordunung. This phrase is spat out by the utterly hateful shrew in charge of the anti-voting group (most of the village).

Nora (Marie Leuenberger) lives a small life in that small village with her small-minded husband Hans (Maximilian Simonischek) who isn’t too mad that his wife isn’t legally allowed to do anything without his say-so. She asks him if it would be ok to get a part-time job because she’s bored. No.

Hans is off to WK (Wiederholungskurs, which is a once-yearly training for the military service) so Nora temporarily has a bit more freedom. She buys magazines, gets a new haircut, and starts hanging out with new friends, like the Italian innkeeper Graziella (Marta Zoffoli) and the older Vroni (Sibylle Brunner).

Nora’s niece Hanna (Ella Rumpf) has an older boyfriend, of whom her mother Rebecca (Rachel Braunschweig) doesn’t approve. Their disapproval extends to committing her to a girl’s home to keep her out of trouble, and then putting her in a women’s prison when she runs away from the home. This was just 50 years ago in Switzerland. What the actual fuck is wrong with people?

Nora starts a suffrage movement in her village, earning the opprobrium of all of the men and most of the women. They are downright cruel, if not outright criminal. The women persevere. There are a few men who publicly show their support, but not many. Switzerland does not come off well in this movie.

It is kind of an incredible idea to imagine that anyone would found a democracy and exlude an entire gender that comprises one half of the population. I know they don’t stand alone in rounding up an elitist fairy tale to “democracy,” but it is incredible what a good reputation Switzerland’s democracy enjoys, considering its recent history. It is possiblly even more incredible to imagine how hard it would be to convince the half of the population—the one culturally inculcated to think of the other half as feeble-minded—of the wisdom of letting them vote, feeble minds and all.

Nora’s face ends up plastered all over town in flyers. Hans is not impressed when he returns. Hans’s giant asshole of a father even less so. Again, I’ve known so many guys like Hans and his father to be able to attest that this is not at all exaggerated. And the ones I know came 30 years or more later. This is not an overly negative representation of the Swiss patriarchy, if I’m honest. There are a good number who are not like this but they’ve only recently starting to outnumber the knee-jerk misogynist assholes.

On the home stretch, the women all go on strike, moving in to Graziella’s restaurant/inn, where they refuse to do any work for men—or anything else, ä la Lysistrata (Wikipedia)—until voting day on Sunday. The men are left to fend for themselves, including taking care of the kids, making their own meals, and, heaven forfend, housecleaning. Hans starts to learn a thing or two.

His “friends” show up to demand that he rein in his wife. He refuses. I mean, obviously he refuses: one of the guys was the one with whom he’d just gotten into a fight at work, who’d called his wife a whore. The balls on that guy for barging into Hans’s house to make demands.

Spurned by Hans, the rest of the men wait until nightfall and then break into Graziella’s restaurant and physically drag their wives out and back home because physical abuse is A-OK. During the home invasion and abduction—none of which will be pursued legally—Vroni has a heart attack and dies. None of the men care one bit, not really. It serves her right for being truculent. At her funeral, the priest talks a bunch of bullshit about how docile Vrony was, prompting Nora to stand up and offer a proper eulogy, with Hans’s approval, that sonofabitch having finally seen the light, ferchrissake it took long enough.

Woman are granted the right to vote in most of Switzerland, including Nora’s village, though it would be 1991 before all communities in Switzerland were allowed to vote. I’m looking at you Appenzell.

Silverado (1985) — 7/10

Emmett (Scott Glenn) is ambushed by four killers while sleeping in a barn. He takes care of them and keeps one of their horses, moving on. He crosses a desert, where he finds Paden (Kevin Kline) lying in the hot sun in only his long johns. He gives him water, reviving him, for which Paden is naturally grateful. This is a decidedly odd way for them to have met. Paden is obliged to ride the other horse, at least until he can get his horse back from the men who’d stolen it.

They come to a town where Paden sees one of his assailants—and the man is riding his horse. Paden gets a gun from a shop and shoots him right off that horse. An old riding buddy of his Cobb (Brian Dennehy) vouches for him so that Paden can rejoin Emmett.

Later that evening, they’re eating dinner at the saloon when Mal (Danny Glover) walks in, wanting a whiskey and a doss. He is denied both by a racist bartender/innkeeper. A fight ensues that Mal wins in that he doesn’t have to pay the damages, as deemed by Sheriff Langston (John Cleese) who turns out to be less racist than expected, and on the word of Emmett and Paden, but loses because he’s got to leave town, also as deemed by Sheriff Langston, who turns out to be more racist than we’d hoped.

Emmett and Paden discover an Emmett’s brother Jake (Kevin Costner) in a jail cell. He’s the one for whom the gallows in the town square had been built. He’ll meet his maker in the morning. Emmett agrees to break him out. In the meantime, Paden finds another one of the criminals who’d waylaid him. He’s wearing Paden’s hat, pretty as a you please, in the busiest bar in town. The other guy draws first but Paden is quicker. He is arrested by Langston for murder. and thrown into the cell with Jake.

They escape from that jail with Emmett’s help. As they’re just on the border of Sheriff Langston’s jurisdiction, Mal starts laying down covering fire, which Langston quickly recognizes as shots fired by someone who’s trying not to hit them. He wisely retreats with his men. The four of them continue until they meet up with a wagon train headed for Silverado. The wagon train had just been robbed by a gang and the four of them interrupt a rash posse from forming, offering to go instead. Hannah’s (Rosanna Arquette) husband volunteers to go with them, which we all know is his death warrant, because the lovely Hannah was already being ogled by Paden and shyly eyed by Emmett.

They execute a clever ruse against the robber gang to get all of their horses as well as the money, but … guess who’s shot right through the chest? Why Hannah’s husband, of course! Now, that’s some lazy writing from the Kasdan brothers.

Everyone’s in Silverado now, where we once again meet Cobb, who runs the town, as well as a whole gang of miscreants that he’s deputized. Emmett and Jake quickly end up at odds with them as they defend their family’s homestead from a marauding gang sent by Cobb, killing several of them. Mal finds his father’s farm destroyed, with his father living in a cave, also thanks to McKendrick (Ray Baker), son of the man who Emmett had killed five years before, and also thanks to Cobb.

We also meet Slick (Jeff Goldblum), who’s frequenting the services of Mal’s sister Rae (Lynn Whitfield) at Stella’s (Linda Hunt) saloon, where Cobb also places Paden, who’s uncomfortable with the degree of violence he has to put up with in order to continue living his unprincipled life. When Emmett is beaten within an inch of his life, only to be saved by Mal, who is jailed and then also beaten within an inch of his life, Paden begins to reconsider.

Jake’s taking one tumble after another with the lovely Phoebe (Amanda Wyss), then heads home, mostly oblivious to everything that’s going on. The gang of marshals is there, and have bound and gagged his family. They capture him easily, then set the whole house on fire. The gang of four finally take matters into their own hands and descend upon Cobb and McKendrick’s empire and utterly dismantle it Emmett ends up dealing with McKendrick by running him over with his horse, while Paden duels Cobb, easily defeating him.

All’s well that ends well: Paden ends up sheriff of Silverado, Mal and Rae pick up the pieces of their family’s shattered homestead, Emmett and Jake head for California, and no-one end up plowing Hannah’s field.

Achtung Fertig Charlie (2003) — 7/10

Antonio Carrera (Michael Koch) stands in a church in Italy, next to his bride-to-be Laura Moretti (Mia Aegerter). The ceremony is interrupted by two Swiss soldiers, clad in fatigues and sunglasses, who are there to pick him up for boot camp (RS = Rekrutenschule). He spends the first day trying to extricate himself, but eventually resigns himself to having to stay, at least for a little while.

He stays in contact with his manipulative Laura—she calls him Topolino—and then arranges to try the wedding again on a weekend when they all have leave. Well, everyone except him and the stoner, who have to stand watch all weekend. Though Carrera had planned to sneak off, he gets too stoned and only manages to wander off the base in his tuxedo, stumbling along a road until Hauptmann Franz Reiker (Marco Rima) picks him up in his car.

Reiker has a daughter Michelle Bluntschi (Melanie Winiger), who has volunteered for service on the condition that she gets a weapon. Reiker has put her on trumpet duty, though.

Having blown through the second wedding, Carrera is getting desperate.

One of the other recruits proposes that he get thrown out for having sex with Bluntschi. They call it Plan B. This is the kind of plan that only a group of hyper-hormonal young men could come up with. Carrera is a nice, good-looking guy, so he manages to do Bluntschi enough solid favors that she kind of falls for him. Hell, pickings are slim and she’s probably bored out of her mind in the trumpet corps.

They end up consummating their short relationship in a kitchen. Soon, though, at what amounts to their final exam, Laura shows up to show her swollen belly to her Topolino, causing him no end of consternation and trouble with Bluntschi. They end up doing quite well in the training exercise, even defeating the fearsome grenadiers. It also turns out the Laura was lying about being pregnant, which comes as a surprise to absolutely no-one except maybe Topolino.

There’s a bunch of cleanup of various personal situations so that we can put a “happily ever after” stamp on everything.

This movie perfectly captures what I’ve heard about Swiss military service, down to the last detail. The German Wikipedia article mentions that it was the most popular film since 1978's Die Schweizermacher (Wikipedia), which tracks, as that film was about the Einbürgerungsprozess (the naturalization process) and was an absolute work of art, starring iconic Swiss comedian Emil and just eviscerating the Swiss culture of the time..

We watched it in Swiss German, with German subtitles.

Robin Hood: Men in Tights (1993) — 5/10

I could have just remembered this as a movie that I vaguely recall as having liked in my youth. But no, of course not. I thought: I haven’t seen this one in a while, let’s watch it and see how it holds up.

It does not hold up.

It starts off with a bunch of Black, rapping Robin Hoods and doesn’t get much better from there. I have no idea what they were thinking with that. It’s not offensive but it’s not good either. It’s not funny, although it is comedy-shaped.

Robin of Loxley (Cary Elwes) is in a prison in Jerusalem after having been captured as part of King Richard’s crusader army. Loxley is so-named as a setup for an elaborate pun at the end of the movie where he is to marry Maid Marian of Bagelle so that they are “Bagelle and Loxley” 😱 😂. Elwes is trying to recapture the swagger and cool of his character in The Princess Bride but doesn’t quite manage it. He doesn’t seem wildly interested in being in this movie, to be honest.

After escaping, Robin swims back to an England ruled by King John (Richard Lewis) and the Sheriff of Rottingham (Roger Rees). The Sheriff covets Maid Marian (Amy Yasbeck) deeply but cannot get anywhere near her because of the Everlast chastity belt that she wears and the avid defense run by Broomhilde (Megan Cavanagh).

Robin puts together his merry band, which includes, amazingly enough, Achoo (Dave Chappelle), his blind family servant Blinken (Mark Blankfield), Will Scarlet O’Hara (Matthew Porretta), and the large Little John (Eric Allan Kramer). On King John’s team is Don Giovanni (Dom DeLuise), who plays his role in the style of Marlon Brando.

There is an archery competition. Robin wins, obviously. Robin and the Sheriff sword-fight, with Robin triumphing—like, of course—and Rottingham being saved by the ugly oracle/witch Latrine (Tracey Ullman), who forced him into marriage in exchange for saving his worthless life.

Mel Brooks only shows up as the traveling Rabbi Tuckman. He sets up shop with a sign, Circumcisions. Special offer: half off! Tuckman doesn’t show up a lot but he does make a callback to History of the World Part I when King Richard (Patrick Stewart, who only appears in this scene, for two minutes) deep-kisses Maid Marian: a nice callback to History of the World Part I, where he’d delivered the same line after deep-kissing several winsome lasses himself as the King of France.

In a second callback, the whole crowd says “A black sheriff!?!” when Achoo is nominated sheriff, a callback to Blazing Saddles. This unfortunately reminds me of how much better that movie was. I’m not sure that was the intent.

Moon (2009) — 8/10

I watched and reviewed this in 2011.

It mostly held up on a reviewing but I did think it was a bit too long for the material this time. It’s still a tour de force for Sam Rockwell, who plays a couple of versions of Sam Bell, who are pretty much the only characters in the movie.

Sam Bell (Sam Rockwell) is running Helium-3 harvesters on the moon. He is alone, a bit worse for wear, supposedly two weeks from heading back to Earth after a three-year shift. He is very alone because the satellite that allows for live communication with Earth has been damaged for a while. Sam is injured on a rover mission to one of the harvesters and wakes up back in the base. The robot GERTY (Kevin Spacey) takes care of him.

Sam is suspicious and finagles his way into returning to the crash site, where he finds himself. He is a clone. How many clones have there been? The two clones discover that there are many, many more clones and that there have been many, many before them. Sam’s messages from his wife were all recorded long ago. His daughter is no longer a baby. She has grown up without him. She tells Sam that her mother died a while ago.

Sam is dying of the same symptoms as every other clone before him. With “rescuers” on their way to his base, he, GERTY, and the newest clone concoct a plan: The Sam we met at the beginning, who is deteriorating, will return to the rover for the “rescue team” to find. GERTY will wake another clone for them to find in the medical bay. The other clone will finally take a shuttle back to Earth, where he causes quite a stir, as he is an illegal alien. A decade-and-a-half later, this still very much tracks.

The sets are spare but convincing. It’s a bit long but it’s pretty good.

Gotthard (2016) — 8/10

This is a three-hour movie about the building of the original train tunnel through the Passo Gottardo in Switzerland. It was a technical achievement, whose laurels and profits would go to everyone who didn’t suffer and die building it. Once again, as in so many movies that Switzerland makes about itself, it’s not a great look. It was only after the tunnel was built that Switzerland would finally grant workers any sorts of rights. It was the 1870s, when there was almost no-one who thought that workers should have any rights whatsoever, but it is still grim to be confronted with how it was 150 years ago.

Max Bühl (Maxim Mehmet) is a German engineer who arrives at the building site for the original Gotthard tunnel being built from 1873 to 1882. There he meets Tommaso Lazzaroni (Pasquale Aleardi), an Italian laborer, one among many. They at first compete for the same room, let by Anna Tresch (Miriam Stein) against the will of her father Anton (Christoph Gaugler), who runs a delivery company in Göschenen and is none too impressed with all of the goings-on. He’s right to be suspicious because the companies running things couldn’t care less about anyone on the building site. The worst of these is Louis Favre (Carlos Leal), who is ruthless and arrogant, seemingly never fearing for his life no matter how elitist he acts in remote places. His arrogance is occasionally breathtaking.

As Max rises through the ranks of the company, his arrogance rises accordingly, with a rift growing between himself and Massimo. The rift grows the largest when Max leaves to continue his studies in Luzern while Massimo marries Anna in what is at first a marriage of convenience—Anna needs Massimo to officially own her business for her in a country that allows women zero autonomy, and Massimo needs Anna in order to stay in the country—but grows into something real. When Max returns, he appears as a bowling ball amongst the nine pins of a Kegelbahn, browbeating Massimo into accepting fake money for his workers as a holdover during funding problems, and also sleeps with Anna.

But Max is by far not the only bastard—he’s actually portrayed as a bastard against his natural inclination, whereas others are much enthusiastically bastards—there’s also Bachmann (Maximilian Simonischek), who is in charge of the site on the Göschenen side. The town’s police chief is also an incredibly cruel racist. Switzerland does not shine in this story.

On the construction side, they are at first stuck, until they decide to start using dynamite. Then they’re in more trouble with the air quality, which lays low dozens of workers. Then there’s a plague of infection, driven by the dirty drinking water, which mixes with the sewage.

Meanwhile the bigwigs in Zürich are self-satisfied and largely uninterested in how the tunnel is being built and more interested that it be built. They finally break through to the Airolo side, with only a very minor deviation even after so many kilometers. It is honestly much harder to celebrate the literal breakthrough now that we’ve been shown how the sausage was made.

The tunnel exists. Trains go through. Over 1M people are transported in the first year. 177 workers gave their lives for it. Their families did not get rich from it.

Tommaso goes to London to study under Karl Marx. Good for him. Also good for the SRF for having made a movie that showed the dirty side of the tunnel’s creation.

Platzspitzbaby (2020) — 8/10

Mia (Luna Mwezi) lives in Platzspitz in Zürich with her parents. When the park is cleared out in 1995, Mia moves with her mother Sandrine (Sarah Spale) to Züri Oberland. She sees her father Andre (Jerry Hoffmann) once per month. Her mother falls right back into her old ways, traveling to Zürich to get high. She always needs money. She fights with everyone. She’s a mess.

Mia makes some friends but they’re not exactly a good influence—she starts drinking a little. She even tries smoking. She escapes into flights of fancy, planning a trip to the Maldives with her imaginary friend, who appears when she listens to music or plays it. To impress her new friends, she jumps off of a railroad trestle that I recognize from my years of commuting from Winterthur.

Mia travels to Zürich with her mother, where Sandrine makes her buy her some heroin. Later, at a party, Mia has to get her mother out of there when her friend Serge overdoses. She begs her mother to stop doing drugs.

Sarah Spale is nearly unrecognizable from her role in Wilder, where she played a cop. She absolutely looks like a wasted junkie; her legs are so thin. She can’t stop smoking or swearing. She’s crude and awful. She lives in a pigsty. Her daughter takes care of the housework, such as it is.

The depiction of the party lifestyle is merciless. Mia visits with her father, who wants to help her but isn’t allowed to take custody. He gives her some money. She returns home to find her mother looking much the worse for wear, with a strange man leaving the apartment, obviously having traded heroin for sex. Their apartment is getting increasingly filthy.

Mia uses the money her father gave her for food to buy a whole box of scratchers instead. In the woods on the way home, she abandons her imaginary friend in a symbolic break with childhood.

Gambling doesn’t work. She cries out in frustration.

Sandrine makes her go to Zürich with her again, where she sells Mia’s dog Twister for drug money. For some reason, her mom needs her to buy drugs for her. Mia refuses, saying nothing. She throws the money into the street, glaring at her mother. We know what she’s thinking. “Fick di. Kauf dir die eigene scheiss Droge, du verfickte Junkie!” Sandrine is no longer her mother in that moment.

Mia makes it back in time for her starring role in the school play, where she actually manages to pull it off. Afterward, she’s partying with her friends by a campfire, drinking and smoking. Her friend Lola sports a shiner, a gift from her father.

Mia decides to take off with Lola, going upstairs to pack. She finds her mother’s suicide note on her mattress, then finds her mother, overdosed in her room. The EMTs bring her back. Mia stands by her psycho mom as she fights off the social workers.

Poor Lola is left alone, waiting for Mia. Abandoned again.

Sandrine shoots up. Nods off.

At school, Lola doesn’t want to see Mia. Understandably.

Mia shoplifts cigarettes and booze to buy drugs for her mom. She finds Lola snorting cocaine at the house where her mother’s also on the nod. Lola doesn’t want to be rescued. Neither does her mom, who’s living in a pigsty, just wallowing in her own filth.

Mia asks her mom to show her how to roll and smoke a joint. It’s the only way she’ll do anything with her. The look of pride on Sandrine’s face at being able to roll a joint is so pathetic. She’s so proud of this small, stupid, useless task.

“I hör uf. I schwör’s. Versproche.”

Mia believes her. Again.

Mia awakes to a small fire in the bed, which her mom had accidentally set before passing out.

“Versproche.”

Mia drops Sandrine’s drugs off the porch, then runs away from home, while her mom digs in the bushes. Mia calls her father to pick her up, finally finished with Sandrine. Absolutely brutal.

Die Schwarze Spinne (2022) — 5/10

This is a pretty unevenly made film. It’s about a village in 13th-century Switzerland. It is based on a relatively well-known novel written by Jeremias Gotthelf in 1842.

Christine (Lilith Stangenberg) is a midwife in the village, with a bit of a mysterious reputation, mostly because she takes care of lady things and pregnancy is next-door to the devil’s work, if you really think about it. None of the men in this story cover themselves in glory.

The biggest bastards are the lord of the area, what looks like a knight, and his few assorted companions, all of whom are absolute animals. They visit the people of the village on a hot day to celebrate the opening of the castle that the people have just finishing building for the lord. They suffered not only in building it but also in the hunger caused by not having had enough time to harvest their food for two seasons. The lord is incensed that they would even mention this inconvenience.

In a fit of pique, The lord of the manor, orders them to make a shaded lane leading up to it, so he won’t be so hot next time. He tells them to erect 100 trees, uprooting them from a nearby forest and replanting them near the lane. This would be a herculean effort in the 21st century—it seems nearly impossible in the 13th. He concludes his glorious day by upending a cartful of food that the people had brought for the opening celebration, leaving it on the ground to feed his dogs instead. He’s a great guy.

The people of the village set about trying to move the trees, which they quickly realize is impossible, though that doesn’t stop them from trying, as they must show themselves to be making an effort, as the lord’s men show up occasionally to piss on things and just generally be assholes.

Christine’s father is killed by a falling tree. Things go from bad to worse. Christine is desperate.

The devil, in the form of the Karrenmacher (Anatole Taubman) shows up, to make her an offer. He will move and replant the trees and all he wants is one baby. One little, eensy-weensy, teeny-tiny baby. You won’t even notice it’s gone. He kisses Christine on the cheek, planting his curse. At one point, we see a spider moving around in there, just under the skin. Christine slices it out with a knife in a grisly scene.

Christine goes a bit crazy when there’s a baby around, like a werewolf at full moon, and must be physically restrained from “harvesting” the next couple of babies. The villagers manage to baptize these babies before she can get to them. The devil is frustrated and curses the village with a plague of spiders. The villagers get the hint and decide to sacrifice the next one. One farmer (Marcus Signer, Kägi from Wilder) is particularly eager to get this all behind them.

The priest changes his mind at the last minute, baptizing the baby, and somehow shrinking Christine to the size of a giant spider. In spider form, Christine kills everything in sight. She bites villagers and livestock alike. The village looks like an abattoir.

Christine’s sister brings a baby into this world—a child of rape from the lord of the manor, naturally—and manages to protect it from Christine’s spidery jaws. Instead, she traps Christine in a hole in a fire-blackened pillar in the center of their home, ramming the plug back in and trapping the unkillable spider for good.

She and her three children have survived but it’s utterly unclear how they will continue to do so, with everyone and everyting else in the village and surrounding environs having been killed.

The devil is seen driving his carriage away, frustrated but banished, for now.

We watched it in the original Swiss German / High German with French subtitles.