Pehavý Max a strašidlá
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DIRECTED BY: Juraj Jakubisko
FEATURING: Viveca Lindfors, Eddie Constantine, Ferdinand Mayne, Gerhardt Karzel, Martin Hrebeň, Barbara De Rossi, Jacques Herlin, Mercedes Sampietro, Flavio Bucci, Milan Lasica, Julius Satinsky
PLOT: Orphan Max ditches the traveling circus and ends up at a castle just as Victor Frankenstein is preparing to animate his new creation, “Albert”; Count Dracula, water and fire spirits, Igor, the White Lady, and the Wolfman also haunt the premises.
COMMENTS: At first glance, the clunkily-titled Freckled Max and the Spooks hits all the marks as more-than-decent family entertainment, with a plucky orphan who falls in with a bevy of misfit monsters, leading to wacky adventures. Those of a certain age (OK, 60+) may be reminded of the Saturday morning show “Monster Squad” where the “Love Boat”‘s Fred Grandy solved mysteries with Dracula, Frankenstein’s Monster and the Wolfman. Young Frankenstein and 1972’s The Girl on a Broomstick are also similar in tone. Freckled Max‘s comedy isn’t quite as broad as those, but there is a fair amount of slapstick, mainly involving Martin Hrebeň’s monster Albert, in a performance that’s sort of a proto-Jason Segel. A slight element of European bawdiness intrudes from time to time, but the characters have an underlying sweetness—as well as a bittersweet sadness, notably in the backstories of Igor and The White Lady. As Count Dracula tells Max, “When someone ends up alone, he turns into a ghost.”
Freckled Max is stacked with a cast of stellar actors: Lindfors, Constantine, Mayne (who also played a vampire in The Fearless Vampire Killers), and familiar faces from Italian (De Rossi and Bucci) and Czech cinema (Lasica and Satinsky) cinema. If there’s one criticism about the film, it’s that you wish that you could spend more time with the characters. Freckled Max is a drastically reduced theatrical version of a 7-episode Czech miniseries, “Frankenstein’s Aunt” based on a book by Allan Rune Petterson. That it holds up as a satisfying viewing experience even in its truncated version is a testament to the skill of everyone involved.
Juraj Jakubisko was an acclaimed Czech New Wave director (1969’s Birds, Orphans and Fools) who, like most of his contemporaries who remained in the country after the post-Prague Spring crackdown, fell into disfavor. When allowed to make films, their projects skewed towards non-problematic fare: documentaries or family-friendly subjects like fairy tales. Jakubisko did a magical realist miniseries, “The Millennial Bee” (1983, based on a novel by Peter Jaroš), which also got a reduced theatrical version, and the feature The Feather Fairy (1985, based on the Brothers Grimm tale “Mother Hulda” and starring Giulietta Masina.)
Restored by the Slovak Film Institute, Freckled Max gets its first ever U.S. Blu-ray release via Deaf Crocodile in limited and standard editions. Extras include a commentary by Samm Deighan and a visual essay “Frankenstein’s Faster” by Ryan Verrill and Dr. Will Dobson. Deighan digs into the differences between the mini-series and movie while Verill and Dobson examine the source material. The disc also includes interviews with director of photography Jan Duris, assistant director Petra Galkova, and director of the Slovak Film Institute Rastislav Steranka; a short (5 minutes) behind the scenes featurette; and “Portrait of a Film Director,” a 45 minute documentary about Jakubisko. The limited edition comes in a slipcase with art by Beth Morris and a booklet with essays by writers Walter Chaw and Stephen Peros.
The full miniseries got a DVD release in Germany (“Frankenstein’s Tante”), but with no English subtitles. It is not currently on any streaming services. However, the curious, motivated, and bilingual might find a Spanish language version (“La Tia de Frankenstein”) out on the interwebs.
WHAT THE CRITICS SAY: