Trailer Talk and News: Thale (2012) update

Release Date Update:  The US release of Thale has seen some serious delays and, until recently, no one could find anything online with a DVD or theatrical release dates.   Well, we’ve finally heard something!  Thale is premiering at the Toronto International Film Festival and it was announced that arrangements are being made for an early 2013 US theatrical release!

Can’t Wait ’til 2013 to see it?  You can actually watch the film on YouTube.  I hesitate to provide a link, though, since it may be removed at any time and I have not found it available in good quality or in English.  You could hunt down some torrent sites.  But I’ve been told that the best available quality RIPs are European sources and aren’t available in English while, those that are subtitled, are of questionable quality.  But, hey, every day more becomes available online.  Just keep looking.  I refuse to watch this without both good quality and subtitles.  So I’m still rather in the dark about it all.   

Ever since Rare Exports: A Christmas Tale (2010) and the jaw-droppingly amazing related feral-Santa short films (see Rare Exports review for links) I have actively sought out Scandinavian genre films.  Dead Snow (2009) delivered some excellent Nazi zombie action.  Let The Right One In (2008; remade as Let Me in (2010) stateside) was a haunting, vampiric, coming-of-age tale.  And Trollhunter (2010) really blew my expectations away with a strong, understated, and comical fairy-tale-meets-biological-reality kind of way.

I have been waiting to see the full trailer for Thale for well over a year now.  The film premiered in theaters in Norway on February 17^th of this year.  After seeing the original, shorter teaser, we’re left with really nothing.  But now we have an idea of what we’re in for:

CLICK HERE to watch the trailer for Thale (2012).

I see you waggin’ that tail at me you saucy little minx.  Come’ere for a kiss.  What’s the worst that could happen, right?

Much as in Rare Exports, some well-to-do regular Joes stumble across a fragment of Norwegian folklore while on the job.  Not knowing how to handle the situation, they take the “woman” in, clean her up, and try to figure out what to do next.  The story from the folklore is called “Huldra.” A hulder/huldra is a woman with a cow tail who lives in the woods.  Hulders wait to encounter woodsmen, seduce them with their terrestrial siren song, and presumably kill them as the woodsmen never return to their village.  I wonder how deep into the movie our boys will figure this out…?

What’s the worst that could happen?  You end up looking like a drained British dude from that 80s naked space-vamp flick “LifeForce” that’s what!

Some meta-movie background:  There are variations on the mythology.  In some stories the huldra lures men into the forest for sexual encounters, rewarding the satisfactory men and killing the poor performers. In other stories they kidnap men or lure them to the underworld.  Other accounts involve stealing newborns and replacing them with their own ugly “huldra-born” children, forced marriages with humans, hybrid offspring, and even happily ever afters with Christian men.  There are even different physical forms, or species or races (?), of huldras.

I’m expecting a more “horrific” angle of this mythology than even the trailer suggests; perhaps a beautiful creature with a dangerous appetite.  Either way, I’m way stoked to see this.  Some of the images and clips floating around the internet of a transformed huldra almost remind me of Species.  I’ve got tingles!

RUMORMILL ALERT:  In 2014 we can expect an American remake of 2010’s Trollhunter.   The deal was made with director Chris Columbus.

TRIVIA:  The title Thale is pronounced as “tail” and, in Norwegian, means “of noble disposition,” in this case referring to the different species that the huldra represents.  Clever.