A Disappointing Continuation

In truth, there is barely enough story here to make a film.

Mostly, the movie is committed to the value of a good time.

The film never slows down or bores, plunging from one harrowing sequence to the next.

Talking to a DVD seller I found out that he had recently tracked down a Comic-Book-style Czech movie.Being interested to see a Comic- Book film from a rather unexpected place,I decided it was time to discover who would try to kill Jessie.The plot:Hired to delete "undesirable" elements from peoples dreams,scientist Doc. Ruzenka Beránková invents a device and a formula which allows her to view dreams and alter them.As his wife tests the device, Doc. Jindrich Beránek reads a Jessie Comic-Book that one of his students has left laying round.Taking a hands on approach to the machine, Ruzenka decides to secretly hook Jindrich to the machine during his sleep,and is horrified to find Jindrich dreaming of Jessie.Unknown to Ruzenka,her device contains a fault which brings peoples dreams to life.View on the film:Whilst the decision to shoot in b & w does drain the paternal juicy pulp colours away,co-writer/(along with Milos Macourek) director Václav Vorlícek still draws an extravagantly zany piece of Sci-Fi Comic- Book pop-art.Filling the screen with speech bubbles, Vorlícek & cinematographer Jan Nemecek display a sharp sense of style as quirky sound effects,and off-centre superhero appearances (including Superman!) give the title a delightfully playful mood. Painting the Comic-Book panels on the screen, Vorlícek pushes the 4th wall down with a mischievous atmosphere which fires sped-up film speeds and pop-out special effects into the latest issue.Largely keeping away from being overly serious,the screenplay by Vorlícek and Macourek does spin a sharp satirical sidebar over how the attempted suppression of peoples thoughts can lead to them being unleashed in unexpected directions.Lapping up the spirit of 50's Sci-Fi,the writers wonderfully mix B-Movie,white coat wearing scientists with vivid Comic-Book 60's cool,as Ruzenka desperately tries to get Jindrich's creations off her page. Pushing him out of his comfort zone, Jirí Sovák gives a terrific performance as Doc. Jindrich Beránek,thanks to Sovák striking Jindrich with a delightfully nervous reaction over seeing his dreams come to life.Wrapped in a head- turning dress,the cute Olga Schoberová gives an excellent performance as Jessie.Given a minimal amount of dialogue, Schoberová superbly uses her expressive face to reveal Jessie's happiness round Ruzenka,and her annoyance around the scientist,as Jindrich discovers who wants to kill Jessie.

In 1960's America, millions tuned in to the 'BIFF!' 'BAM!' 'POW!' action of the Batman television series. But this 'pop art' phenomenon was not limited to the North American shores. A continent away, another comic book hero, or in this case heroine, was quite literally springing to life in the Czech film 'Who Wants to Kill Jessie?'.'Who Wants to Kill Jessie?' is a nonsensical film, which begins with a fantastical premise and then madly and unapologetically dashes from one ridiculous situation to another. Which, in the case of a film of this type, is not necessarily a bad thing.Dana Medrická as Dr. Rose Beránková is the catalyst for all events in the film. Dr. Beránková has just invented a serum that allows dreams to be altered so that undesirable elements can be removed. The effectiveness of this invention can be tested via a dream scanner which allows observers to monitor a person's drams on a TV screen. This remarkable device is seemingly so commonplace that the good doctor keeps one next to her own bed.The trouble begins when the jealous Rose catches her husband, Henry (Jirí Sovák) dreaming about the gorgeous blonde comic book heroine, Jessie, though in fact he is dreaming about her anti-gravity gloves, and decides to eliminate her dream girl rival by injecting Henry with the new serum.The next morning however, Rose discovers that subjects removed from dreams, rather simply disappearing, are brought into the real world, and now not only Jessie (the beautiful Olga Schoberová) but her two adversaries, an evil cowboy and a villainous superman, have come to life. Jessie quickly escapes her two foes and begins to track Henry to the University where he is lecturing, pursued by the destructive superman and cowboy, who are in turn being pursued by the police.When the police finally catch up with the dream trio, Henry is arrested as well. Rose is perfectly willing to let her husband take the blame for the whole mess, testifying at his trial that if he had dreamed about his wife instead of Jessie, none of this would have happened. In the end, while Rose plots a way to dispose of the dream characters, it is up to an imprisoned Henry to save the day, by actually creating the anti-gravity gloves from the comic book.Interestingly, the film's two comic book villains are not really very evil. They are greedy and destructive, but not cruel or vicious. While the Cowboy is constantly threatening people with his six shooter, he never actually shoots anyone. No one is hurt and no one is killed. Likely this is because these manifestations are not the villains from the Jessie comic, but Henry's interpretation of them from his dreams. Since Henry's dreams are not violent, neither are the realized dream villains. In the same way, while the comic book Jessie has never heard of Henry, the dream Jessie is attracted to him and so the manifested Jessie professes her love for him – which does nothing to improve Henry's standing with Rose.The closest thing to a true villain the film has is Rose. It is her petty jealously that leads her to first create the problem, then allow her befuddled husband to be jailed for it, and finally to attempt, futilely, to destroy the dream people in quite horrible and savage ways. The viciousness of Rose's actions is muted only by the film's consistently light tone, and the fact that her attempts are completely ineffectual against the seemingly indestructible manifestations.Undoubtedly the most remarkable thing about this film is that it exists at all. While comic book style films were all the rage in Italy, France and America, in the 1960's Czechoslovakia was still an Iron Curtain country, albeit one experiencing a period of cultural freedom. A film as utterly and delightfully frivolous as 'Who Wants to Kill Jessie?' is as a bold departure from the popular stereotype of the bleak, somber, pathos drenched film of the Soviet Bloc era as one could imagine. This is a film that has no political agenda, aside from a very few light jabs at rigid bureaucracy, tosses away logic and simply delights in being silly.Long a difficult film to see, usually available for viewing only at film festivals, 'Who Wants to Kill Jessie?' has at last been released on DVD in a very nice 2.35:1 widescreen edition by Centrum Video in Europe, complete with English subtitles. The bonus features, including an interview with writer/director Václav Vorlícek, are unfortunately in Czech only with no English subtitling.

If Fellini had developed a sense of humour and had directed a film about a 1920's serial damsel in distress this would be the result.This was shown at the Brisbane International Film Festival as part of "Czech Gothic", but it was anything but Gothic. This is one of those films, like "The Umbrellas of Cherbourg" which are about the pure joy of the cinema. This is not one of those dreary, pretentious films you expect from Europe. It's been nearly 2 hours since I saw it and I'm still grinning.Other people have written about the plot, so I'll just mention some highlights.The comic characters can only speak in speech bubbles, which are treated as real objects, in one scene they are moved around so the court reporter can read them.A cow's nightmare of being bitten by gadflies, is altered to the cow lying on a hammock, on a beautiful day. The camera pans out, and we find that a string quartet is playing for the cow's amusement.After demolishing one apartment. The evil superman breaks into the neighbors apartment, by pulling their phone through the wall, sits down at their piano and starts to play Mozart.Czech it out.

SWOOSH! ZOOM! THUD! CRASH! ROAR! RIP! No, not the opening credit sequence from a Batman film - but from "Who Wants to Kill Jessii ?" (released in 1966 - which would be a year Batman fans would recognize;) two years before the Prague Spring was crushed by Soviet tanks rumbling into Czechoslovakia. Books, films, and newspapers were able to get in subtle (and sometimes not so subtle) digs at the establishment; science fiction has frequently provided a way to make social commentary which flies "beneath the radar" of censors, be they capitalist, communist, or socialist. But besides the sly jabs here and there - "Liberty to dreams!" - "Your identity card!" - "Can't she be re-educated?"(said: by a comic superhero; to a comic superhero; about a comic superhero) the film provides much amusement just on its own.Rosie & Henry both work in a university setting. Rosie is a medical researcher doing research on dreams, presenting her KR VI injection as a way of changing nightmares into pleasant dreams. She demonstrates this with a sleeping cow - headphones attached, a monitor shows the cow's dream of being pursued by gadflies. After the injection, the cow is sleeping in a hammock, a string quartet playing for her. Her husband Henry is faced with the problem of securing an extremely heavy piece of machinery to an overhead rail in a university laboratory. He picks up a comic book one of his co-workers has brought in and muses how great it would be if he had the use of Jessii's anti-gravity gloves. The intersection of these story lines provides an abundance of humor and commentary.Read no further if you want to save the surprises, although it's unlikely the 35mm scope print I saw from the Czech Film Archive will be making it to your town anytime soon and I don't think a video version is available.Thursday seems to be the day of the week that the couple sleeps together. Henry is in a dream with Jessii - they are both bound and he's attempting to untie her with his teeth. Rosie sees him chewing his pillow in his sleep. She slips the dream monitor on him, sees Henry with Jessii and gives him an injection of KR VI and sends him to his separate bed. In the morning, much to his astonishment, the comic strip Jessii is alive and in his bed! And she is not the only character brought to life - the bad guys are in the bathroom.Rosie has a feeling that her experiment has gone awry and locks the comic trio in their flat before she and Henry leave for work. Her colleagues tell her that gadlies have appeared in the lab, seemingly from abiogenesis - her serum seems to cause things in dreams to cross over into real life. At the husband's factory he and his co-workers attempt construction of the anti-gravity gloves. Both Henry & Rosie send a co-worker to their flat with instructions: Henry asks a female worker to bring back Jessii; Rosie tells her male coworker to get train tickets and send the comic characters "to Kookle".But by the time they arrive at the flat, Jessii has escaped and the bad guys (a superman-like character and an old-west gunslinger) have broken through the wall of the flat in pursuit, crying "Liberty to dreams!". The police arrive about the same time as the coworkers (each of whom thinks the other is the one they are to bring) and take them into custody over their objections. Jessii tunes in her TV wristwatch to see Henry giving a lecture to a class at university about ideas from science fiction crossing over into reality. The classroom turns into bedlam after Jessii arrives with the strong man in pursuit.Writer Milos Macourek has a lot of fun with comic book convention - those characters talk in "bubbles" of text. When one of them asks a young boy what time it is, the reply is "I can't read, sir." In a court appearance Jessii answers a question by telling Henry "I love you!" and he turns the "bubble" so the court recorder can read it. Henry is sentenced to jail for disruption of the peace. He uses the walls of his cell to do equations for the antigravity gloves.Rosie and the authorities determine that the dream characters are dangerous. Rosie says "I've been charged with their liquidation." The strong man is bound and put on a conveyer belt into a crematorium to the strains of Sibelius. Just about the time they think the problem solved, the strong man appears out of the fire saying "Very refreshing - how much?" Those attempting to dispatch Jessii have similar difficulties. Tying her between two trucks pulling in opposite directions, the trucks only spin their wheels.Henry manages to escape from jail and picks up the partially functioning gloves and uses them to rescue Jessii. They return through the cell bars (Henry pulls them apart with the help of the gloves to get back to his cell surruptitiously) and Jessii points out a mistake in his calculations.Rosie has concocted a new serum, A VII, and finds an injection of this will cause a dream figure to be re-absorbed into a nearby subject. She injects a rabbit from a dream of their dog. It dematerializes and re-appears in the dog's dream on the monitor.Rosie is giving the strong man a sponge bath (I forget exactly how this came to pass) and tells him "It's Thursday!" Apparently he knows what this means and escapes to inject himself with A VII. He dematerializes and also ends up in the dog's dream. Rosie, seeing this on the monitor, injects herself and follows. Henry and Jessii look at the monitor seeing the dog chasing the bunny and the wife chasing the man. Henry remarks that he'll never get away from her.Henry teaches Jessii how to speak without the comic strip bubbles and apparently they live happily ever after.