Courage Mountain, or the one where Heidi falls in love with Charlie Sheen

It’s been a while since I read Heidi but I have some fairly solid memories of it. Mountains. Goodness. Goats. That sort of jazz. It was with interest then that I came across a film called Courage Mountain which was a sequel to Heidi, but involving an Italian boarding school and the advent of World War One.  Naturally, I watched it to save you all the bother….

(spoilers ahead!)

Now boarding school stories are one of my greatest love (this might not come as a surprise to many of you but I thought it was worth putting out there) and this one starred the wonderful Leslie Caron and, uh, Charlie Sheen. As Peter. Peter the goatherd with whom Heidi has a romance, and I can’t quite write a sentence that conveys how much my toes curl at remembering this. Sheen can be good. He can be blinding. He is woefully miscast in this role and it’s quite the thing to hear Heidi in her cut-glass English accent chatting to Sheen, about four hundred times her age and size with his American accent wholly intact, on the mountain surrounded by goats. And there’s panpipes. Did I mention that? Lots of miming to panpipes, and when Charlie Sheen gives Heidi his panpipes to remember him by, reader, I died.

So. Heidi has money now and has been invited to an Italian boarding school run by an Frenchwoman who was bought up in England (or something, there is a terribly convoluted line to explain Caron’s accent) and she must decide whether to go or stay. Naturally Heidi and her Beautiful Hair That Never Loses Volume leave. She encounters cockney urchins in the train station (there is a lot you just need to accept in this film), and ends up at the school. Heidi is an Innocent Urchin and thus comes across the staples of these stories; the mean girl, the girl-who-will-be-friends, and then Leslie Caron leads all the girls in skipping across the verandah and Heidi wigs out glamorously at the gramophone because She Is An Innocent Urchin With Beautiful Hair.

Oh I forgot, whilst at the station Heidi comes across the panto villain of the piece who is nattily dressed and practically twiddles his moustache at her (Not a euphemism….).

The school section is relatively brief, before the house is requisitioned by the Italian Army who throw in the odd ‘Signora’ because They Are Italian. Most of the girls are sent home save a handful whose parents or Noble Mountain Grandfathers can’t be reached. Heidi and her fellow Beautiful Haired Urchins With Artful Smears of Grease end up at the workhouse where the moustachiod villain and his paramour (sister? Factotum? lover? the film is very unclear about this) put all of the urchins at work making soap. Heidi glowers at everyone (and never once loses the volume in her hair) before escaping down the drain with her school friends. The other urchins are basically forgotten about at this point.

This is the bit where the film gets spectacular (more so). Heidi points at some mountain in the distance and goes “That’s Switzerland over there” and so the girls decide to go there. On foot. Through World War One.Whilst being chased by the moustachiod villain from one side, and noble Charlie Sheen coming to save the day from the other. It’s handy, really, that there’s only one mountain between Switzerland and that Sheen’s a bit of a dab hand on his skis (the ski sequence is, in itself, outstanding. It’s a James Bond rip off done by Channel Five…).

Everything ends up well though! Charlie Sheen skis the villain off the mountain, Heidi and him get together, my toes curl so far that they practically fall off my feet, and Leslie Caron ends up shacking up with Noble Grandfather and the Urchins Are All Safe And Their Hair Is Spectacular.

Here’s the trailer. It’s pretty much the whole film in two minutes.  I hope you enjoy every single thing about it.

“Their climb to freedom will be their greatest adventure”