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APOCRYPHA CANDIDATE: ADELA HAS NOT HAD SUPPER YET (1978)

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Adéla ještě nevečeřela
AKA Dinner For Adele; Nick Carter in Prague; Adele Hasn’t Had Her Dinner Yet

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DIRECTED BY:

FEATURING: , , , Nad’a Konvalinkova, Ladislav Pesek, Vaclav Lohinsky,

PLOT: Nick Carter (Dočolomanský), America’s Greatest Detective, is requested to come to Prague to solve the disappearance of a member of a prominent noble family. But even with the help of his local guide Inspector Ledvina (Hrušínský), countless gadgets, and his own American know-how and constant vigilance, it might just not be enough against his greatest adversary, The Gardener, and his creation Adela…

… and Adela has not had supper yet!

Still from Adela Has Not Had Supper Yet (1978)

WHY IT MIGHT JOIN THE APOCRYPHA: It’s fun pastiche like Star Wars and Raiders of the Lost Ark, and high adventure like the Bond films—but done at a fraction of the cost, and more smartly, without getting in the way of the fun.

COMMENTS: We open with the sound of an orchestra tuning up, followed by a conductor leading the start of a symphony which is interrupted by flash cuts of a dime novel illustration and the sounds of a tack-piano. This battle goes on for a few seconds, with the illustration and piano winning out and the credits beginning. High culture and low culture merged into entertainment, which is a pretty good encapsulation of the work of Oldřich Lipský: pastiche and parody merged with satire and (subtle?) commentary.

Adela is another good-natured lark, much like the director’s earlier Western parody Lemonade Joe. This time, the parody features Nick Carter, a dime-novel detective who was a major character of pop culture in the early 20th Century. In this iteration, he’s a combination of Sherlock Holmes (of whom he has an autographed photo and a note of admiration) and James Bond (with an array of gadgets to assist him). “America’s Greatest Detective,” as the sign on his door states, he effortlessly defeats several perpetrators even before the story gets properly underway.

The adventure melodrama is a standardized form, but the basic plot can take a myriad of variations. In this case, it’s also a Victorian slapstick yarn, with hints of steampunk on the fringes. Plus, it’s actually fun and funny. Lipský’s comedy stagings are almost flawless: only Blake Edwards (specifically The Party and The Pink Panther Strikes Again) comes close—although Lipský was more consistent. Think how much better The Great Race would’ve been if it were a Lipský film…

It’s all very genial and innocent, although there’s a tinge of satire present. Czechs are ribbed, from Carter’s description of them as “down to Earth types,” to Inspector Ledvina’s constant consumption of beer and sausages. America is also gently mocked: “America’s Greatest Detective” lives in New York, “America’s Greatest City,” and as Nick himself affirms, “Americans do everything grandly”. But there’s also American arrogance; “Europe is decay,” Nick states to Ledvina during a limburger lunch, and American puritanism surfaces during his encounters with women, both those who are attempting to kill him and those who are slightly friendlier.

Made more than a decade after Lemonade Joe, this was Lipský’s second of three collaborations with write/animator Jiří Brdečka. It was followed by The Mysterious Castle In The Carpathians with much of the same cast. As with Mysterious Castle and Lemonade Joe, Brdečka’s experience as an animator adds to the visual humor; a reference to the Escher portrait ‘Hand With Reflecting Sphere‘, running gags in the background set up early which pay off in the last third of the film, and Brdečka’s animation of the Gardener’s backstory. Jan Svankmajer assists with animating Adela (a man-eating plant with as much personality, but not the vocabulary, of The Little Shop of Horrors‘ Audrey II)—mainly when she’s having her supper.

Like Mysterious Castle, Adela got its first U.S. home video release on a Deaf Crocodile Blu-ray, with a new restoration and a commentary track from Czech film expert Irena Kovarova and film critic Tereza Brdečková (Brdečka’s daughter). Like the previous release, the extras are weighted towards Brdečka’s career rather than focusing on just Adela. Four of Brdečka’s animated shorts are included; Badly Drawn Hen (Špatně namalovaná slepice), Forester’s Song (Do lesíčka na čekanou), What Did I Not Tell The Prince (Co jsem princi neřekla) and The Miner’s Rose (Horníkova růže). The deluxe limited edition includes a 60 page booklet with essays by Walter Chaw and Jonathan Owen as well as excerpts from the 2015 book “JIŘÍ BRDEČKA: Life-Animation-Magic,” with storyboards from Adela and the shorts.

Lipský disappears a bit from the discussion; but Brdečka benefits from having 1) a direct living relative still able to beat the drum for his accomplishments and 2) having been an integral part of the . There’s still a lot of Lipský left to premiere on USA-friendly home video, so future releases may rectify the slight against Lipský, if indeed there is much bonus material on the director.

WHAT THE CRITICS SAY:

“The dialogue, in subtitles, is strictly 70’s streetrap, and its non sequitur placement in the turn-of-the century provinciality is hysterical. The performances are well timed camp, and the entire colorful romp is strictly for fun.”–Michael Lasky, Bay Area Reporter (contemporaneous)Still from Adela Has Not Had Supper Yet (1978)

Adela Has Not Had Supper Yet [blu-ray]

Adela Has Not Had Supper Yet [blu-ray]
  • The beloved Czech cult comedy / horror / mystery about a handsome but bumbling detective and a man-eating plant
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List Candidates

APOCRYPHA CANDIDATE: ALABAMA’S GHOST (1973)

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DIRECTED BY:

FEATURING: , Peggy Browne, , , Ken Grantham

PLOT: A janitor-turned-magician gets more than he bargains for after signing up with a mysterious impresario, as a conspiracy unfolds around the greatest magic show ever.

Still from Alabama's Ghost (1973)

COMMENTS: When you see a credit for “Go-Go Dancers,” you know you’re in for a good time. Especially when those credits are front-loaded, and an array of oddities is laid out before the movie hits you. Especially especially when there’s a jaunty Dixieland jazz tune dancing through the speakers while the promises unspool (Doctor Caligula? Mama-Bama? Marilyn Midnight?). Alabama’s Ghost segues into a live performance of that opening tune—with an establishing shot of a foreshortened trombone sliding uncannily toward and away from the camera. Yessir, ma’am, there’s jivin’ style to spare in this extravaganza from the inimitable Fredric Hobbs, dealing out countless exciting genres in this slice of wonderment.

Navigating this variety show is the titular Alabama (who, despite what that title implies, is very much alive), leaning back at a bar, high on something (“it’s like a hundred yellow-haired cats, dancing on jade”) but whose mellow is about to harshed by the boss-man. Alabama’s gotta pack up the band’s gear, and stack it nice. After bringing the gear to the basement, he drives his loaded forklift through a false wall, revealing the collected possessions of Carter, a legendary magician who disappeared in Delhi in 1935. So begins the rise of Alabama: King of the Cosmos!

Hobbs pulls out the genre stops like they were going out of style, and so Alabama’s Ghost has something for everyone. Do you like magic? Got it in spades. Questionable ’70s sci-fi science? Let me tell you about the powers—and dangers—of transmitting raw zeta waves (not to mention the atomically adjacent deadly zeta waves). Is music your thing? A Scottish-accented impresario who goes by Otto Max (well illustrated by the steel business card, with his name stamped in the metal) will ensure there’s plenty of grooviness, man. Vampires? Comely Nazi scientists? Doomsday? An elephant?

Frickin’-A. These far-out goodies hop around the plotline like horseflies at a cosmic rodeo. Otto Max, with all his Puritan fop garb swagger, pitches his vision of a giant magic show to Alabama: “Surrealism’s in—surrealism’s where it’s at.” He might as well be pitching this very movie. Fredric Hobbs gave the film world far too few gifts, but his Godmonster/Ghost double-shot is pam-jacked with strange sights to see, peculiar paths to take, and, in the case of his sophomore feature, a vampire so full of ham that the Go-Go Dancers might gorge on pig flesh for weeks.

(As it stands, they gorge on people. Add “cannibalism” to that earlier mix. Peace out.)

WHAT THE CRITICS SAY:

“Whatever you can say about the movie, it does appear that director Fredric Hobbs had a vision of sorts… Believe me, low-budget horror doesn’t come much stranger than this one.” — David Sindelar, Fantastic Movie Musings

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CAPSULE: SLINGSHOT (2024)

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DIRECTED BY: Mikael Håfström

FEATURING: Casey Affleck, Emily Beecham, , Tomer Capone

Still from Slingshot (2024)

PLOT: Nearing Jupiter’s orbit, John develops growing concerns about the structural integrity of his craft and the mental well-being of its crew.

COMMENTS: Laurence Fishburne is obviously enjoying himself. Tomer Capone looks on the verge of a mental breakdown. Emily Beecham is either too wily—or not wily enough. And Casey Affleck, well, it’s kind of hard to say. Some critics have described his performance in unenthusiastic terms, with phrases like “phoned-in” bandied about. However, Affleck’s turn as John the astronaut, a man on a deep space mission kicked in and out of induced hibernation, rang true to me. John’s reactions, and perceptions, are muted, to be sure; but I can’t imagine a better frame of mind for his isolated ordeal.

Early on in the film, we are provided a good enough reason for this trip to Europa, a planet-sized moon orbiting Jupiter whose gravitational pull is to be utilized as a “slingshot” to send the exploration craft (dubbed “Odyssey”—’cause why not?—and frankly, the kind of name I can see a big-tech consortium thinking as both classy and clever) to the methane-rich moon in question. However, there’s a strange malfunction early on. Is it an impact? …Sabotage? John’s captain, Franks (Fishburne, delightful), is adamant that they crew should trust the vessel’s sensors when they say there’s nothing to worry about. The onboard astrophysics expert, Nash (Capone, frazzled), is immediately certain the team is heading toward their death. And John kind of just floats between the two views, while occasionally seeing and hearing hallucinations about the girl he left behind.

Slingshot is firmly along the indie lines of Moon, but with three closely knit characters growing more and more anxious. The vessel design takes inspiration from 2001: A Space Odyssey (and writing that just now, I notice it also drew the shuttle’s moniker from that film), so everything looks like whizzy, astro-chic IKEA. The sharp delineation of the craft makes for a nice contrast to the fuzziness of the narrative. Director Mikael Håfström begins the story mid-voyage, catching the audience up with extensive use of flashbacks. (I had mixed feelings about this, as the film might have played better with scanter backstory; that said, plenty of viewers are less forgiving of ambiguity.) Tensions rise, orders are disobeyed, and—trapped on some glorified tin some hundreds of millions of miles from home—we mysteriously find a firearm’s been thrown in the mix.

So we have here a chamber drama with an unreliable narrator and the pleasure of three very different actors having the screws turned on them. It’s a small movie with simple pleasures, and a triple-shot of plot twists wrapping up the low key adventure. Disagreeing with other reviews, I think Casey Affleck should be commended for his subdued performance. To reference another Kubrick film, he’s much like Barry Lyndon in this way: he will take the good and bad developments with equal magnanimity, never batting an eye because: he’s there. And this is happening. We should all aspire to be so calm when our habitat is mysteriously smashed and those in charge menace our survival with deadly weapons.

WHAT THE CRITICS SAY:

“At its best, the film manages to capture the forlornness and desperation John experiences on his long, strange trip, and Affleck does a good job conveying that tone as he keeps waking up and going to sleep, over and over.”–Jordan Mintzer, The Hollywood Reporter (contemporaneous)

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CAPSULE: THE BEAST (2023)

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La bête

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DIRECTED BY:

FEATURING: , George MacKay

PLOT: To get a job in a dystopian future, a woman undergoes a procedure designed to dampen her emotional responses by ridding herself of past-life traumas.

Still from The Beast (2023)

COMMENTS: Surely Henry James could never have imagined that, more than a hundred years after he wrote it, a Frenchman would loosely adapt his story “The Beast in the Jungle” as a centuries-spanning science fiction story incorporating a belief in past lives. James’ protagonist suffers a certain paralyzing presentiment of obliteration (the titular Beast), which is shared by (at least one of) Seydoux’s characters; but truthfully, Bertrand Bonello’s ambitious screenplay incorporates almost nothing from the original story—just the theme of loneliness and regret for missed opportunities, and a similar European setting for about 1/3 of the film. It also throws in a metric ton of other concerns, including artificial intelligence, incel culture, and reincarnation.

As suggested by the plot summary and hinted above, The Beast tells three different stories: one set at the turn of the twentieth century, one set approximately in contemporary times, and one set in 2044. This last date is the film’s base reality, despite not being the first story we’re thrown into. The Beast sets up the rather ridiculous premise that past life experiences are encoded in DNA and traumas that lead to automatic emotional responses can be overcome through a therapeutic regression that involves being submerged in a tub of black goo while a computer probes your ear—a concept that sounds like it came out of an esoteric Scientology text. While the procedure, and the theory underlying it, are insane, it doesn’t matter whether we accept them; it only matters that the movie believes in them, and creates a world that operates according to those rules. In Gabrielle’s case, the recurring trauma is her unconsummated passion for Louis, who is a gentleman in the 1900s, a stalker in the early 2000s, and an aspiring functionary like her in his current incarnation. The future’s rationale for the operation is legitimately unsettling, tapping into fears of cybertechnological dehumanization: with so much work automated and taken over by A.I., humans voluntarily try to rid themselves of passion and emotion in order to make more rational decisions that enable them to compete with the dominant machines.

So The Beast is, in a sense, three movies in one. There’s the science fiction fable; the Parisian period piece; and a contemporary stalker drama that quickly shades into (pretty effective) thriller territory.  As a standalone film, the full-length petticoat and starched collars of the Belle Epoque section would have made for a staid and respectable period drama, with a tremendous closing image. The modern day incel story can come off as a preachy, with on-the-nose commentary; MacKay’s portrayal of a 30-year old virgin who vlogs about how he’s “magnificent” and “deserves girls” but “can only have sex in my dreams” would seem like an eye-rolling caricature, if the character were not directly based on real-life incel mass-murderer Elliot Rodger (I believe some of MacKay’s monologues were taken verbatim from Rodger’s YouTube videos). But although each section is merely competent on its own—and arguably make for a bloated picture with a lot of unnecessary fat left in—tying them together in the reincarnation format makes for a whole greater than its parts. Certain conversations are repeated in full in different eras, and recurring themes like dolls/puppets resonate across time. Both previous Gabrielles consult psychics, in radically different contexts, who are able to see through the years and reference things that occurred in other lifetimes. Looking for common threads and shared symbols across the three stories engages the mind more than any of the issues the three tales address. And Bonello sprinkles significant weirdness throughout the project, much of it justified as artifacts of the disorientating effects of the procedure, but some of it freestanding. In the latter category is the opening with in a green screen studio, apparently rehearsing a scene for the upcoming film as she takes direction form an unseen voice (belonging to Bonello). Disorienting editing, uncanny dolls, dream interludes, unexpected clips from movies, a panicky laptop pop-up nightmare, and a nightclub with rotating mid-20th century themes all contribute to the strange flavor. The end result is a challenging art-house feature that doesn’t always hit its marks, but nevertheless remains intellectually stimulating.

WHAT THE CRITICS SAY:

“…a weird sweeping romance and sci-fi dystopia mix that taps into so many contemporary anxieties, from AI stealing our jobs to climate disaster and the overall sense that the world is becoming unfeeling. It’s existential, yes, but it’s at its core a love story.”–Sara Clements, Pajiba (contemporaneous)

The Beast (Janus Contemporaries) [Blu-ray]

The Beast (Janus Contemporaries) [Blu-ray]
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It Came from the Reader-Suggested Queue

IT CAME FROM THE READER-SUGGESTED QUEUE: VILLAGE OF THE DAMNED (1960)

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DIRECTED BY: Wolf Rilla

FEATURING: George Sanders, Barbara Shelley, Michael Gwynn, Martin Stephens

PLOT: All the women of child-bearing age in the Midwich  become pregnant after a mysterious period of unconsciousness; their offspring have a distinctive appearance, mature rapidly, and behave in a manner quite unnatural.

Still from village of the damned (1960)

COMMENTS: For two years running, I have celebrated Halloween here with a classic 1950s goofball–monster showcase. So here we are, on the cusp of the 60s, and lots of things look familiar: we’re back in black-and-white, we’re back in England, and something is once more out to get us. But it’s a little different this time. This time, the beasts aren’t strabismus-afflicted giant birds or giddily bouncing brains. They’re children, notable for their platinum hair, their glowing eyes, and their sociopathic behavior. This time, our monster feels earnestly threatening.

We don’t get to them right away, though. The film cleverly serves up its surprises and horrors at a deliberate pace. We must first work through the mystery of the lengthy period of unconsciousness, which the authorities investigate seriously and thoroughly, diligently working through experiments that culminate in a terrible sacrifice. We never get a full explanation for that occurrence, though, because we’re quickly on to the conundrum of the many immaculate conceptions and the havoc they wreak among the populace. In fact, we’re well into Act 2 before we get our first encounter with the enigma of the curious children themselves, who can solve puzzle boxes as toddlers and who get revenge upon their mothers when the feeding bottle is too hot. (The filmmakers were right to forego the original title of John Wyndham’s book; “The Midwich Cuckoos” would have been too much of a giveaway as to the childrens’ origin.) This sense of compounding catastrophes keeps you off-balance like the residents of Midwich, never able to relax before the next dilemma arrives.

The children are appropriately creepy. Lead child David (Stephens, unconvincingly dubbed) does most of the talking, serving up uncomfortable sociopathy by directly confronting the shopkeepers who think them an abomination, or helpfully suggesting to his father that, “If you didn’t suffer from emotions, from feelings… you could be as powerful as we are.” However, the young terrors do most of their intimidation without words. A walk through the town shows the residents in a mixed state of fear and revulsion, responding to the cliquish collection of quiet children as if they were a rowdy biker gang. Luckily, all they need to do is put on their best wish-you-to-the-cornfield look  and the townspeople’s reactions do the rest. They come by their fears honestly, because we’ve seen that the children’s disapproval carries with it the threat of death. This is most evident in Continue reading IT CAME FROM THE READER-SUGGESTED QUEUE: VILLAGE OF THE DAMNED (1960) →