ThIS "H&G" film made it out of the release gate first, appearing on SYFY in February 2012, but still was almost certainly anticipating the original release date of WITCH HUNTERS in March of that year. Like many SYFY fantasies it's shot on a very restricted set-- a real forest, to be sure, but only within very limited parameters.
The most amusing thing about the film is the name. Hansel, not Gretl, is the witchslayer of the story, and I can only assume that the producers didn't think "Witchslayer Hansel" was strong enough to let viewers twig that the flick was about "Hansel and Gretel." As in the big studio production, Hansel and Gretel are as children accosted by a witch. But the witches in this tale aren't interested in eating people, only in possessing them. The witch Zora steals Gretl from Hansel's side, leaving little Hansel behind. Since he thinks his sister dead, Hansel devotes his life to hunting witches. During his campaign he picks up two "good witch" aides: mature beauty "Lara" and younger beauty "Ehren," who use their magic to battle Zora's coven. Hansel later learns that his sister is alive, having been kept around into adulthood so that Zora could inhabit her body (played by the film's one big-name star, Shannen Doherty).
GRETL never looks like anything but another made-on-the-cheap knockoff. Yet all the body-switching was at least a trifle more emotionally involving than the outrageous-but-derivative kinetics of WITCH HUNTERS. It's a measured choice at best, but GRETL, despite the awkward title, comes off best of the three.
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