Indy's Summer Movie Marathon . . . SECOND COMING and I SERVED THE KING OF ENGLA

[indianasmith]

Yesterday afternoon I returned the last two movies I reviewed and checked out a couple more . . . I got a thriller entitled  SECOND COMING, and a strange Czech comedy called I SERVED THE KING OF ENGLAND.

SECOND COMING is a tale of twin sisters who lost their mother at an early age, and were raised by a cruel and abusive father.  One flees the rural hometown to go to college and become a photographer; the other stays home, living in the old place long after the father who molested her dies in an "accident", and working as a waitress at the local diner.  There she meets a businessman named Barry from a nearby town, who goes back with her to the old home place for a quickie.  But then he suffers some sort of siezure and throws her off the bed.  She hits her head and dies.  Lora is tormented by visions of her sister's ghost, begging her to find the body.  Barry is tormented by tinnititus - a constant, agonizing ringing in the ears.  Barry's wife is tormented by suspicions of his infidelity.  The viewer is tormented by how incredibly BAD this movie is!!  AAAAAAAAGGGGHHHH!  Bad acting, subplots that go nowhere, and the worst of all possible endings!  A few decent ghost scares do not even begin to make up for how awful this mess was.  Avoid this movie at all costs!!!

   I SERVED THE KING OF ENGLAND is typical of Czech comedies set during the days of the Nazi takeover in 1938-39.  Wait - there are no other Czech comedies set during the days of the Nazi takeover!  Maybe that explains why this film is so very bizarre.  Told in a series of flashbacks, we see our main character Ditie, a diminutive Czech opportunist, rise from busboy to headwaiter to millionaire hotelier,  romancing beautiful women, dropping coins for the sheer joy of watching people scrabble for them, and finally marrying a beautiful Sudeten Czech (who is also a passionate Nazi), only to have their Wagnerian idyll shattered by the war and the Communist takeover afterward.
   This movie was beautifully filmed and very, very strange.  First of all, GHouck, this one had all the nudity you could ask for.  At one point Ditie is asked by the Nazis to take over one of the luxury hotels he once worked at, only they have turned it into an Aryan breeding center, and he is constantly surrounded by a bevy of mostly nude blonde Germans. Beautiful women seem to be drawn to the short, blonde waiter with the pencil-thin moustache.
   The story is told in the form of flashbacks by an older, sadder, wiser Ditie, who survived the war only to be cast into jail by the Communists for the crime of becoming a millionaire.  In the end, he is able to look back on his life with a certain fond satisfaction, for he has, at one time or another, done everything he set out to do.
  This one is  very, very foreign, and not just the language.  I think it is a  movie that Czechs specifically, and Eastern  Europeans in general, can understand and relate to better than most Americans.  But it is worth watching for the gorgeous cinematography and many beautiful women, even if much of the dialogue is incomprehensible.

[WingedSerpent]

Thanks for the warnings

Was it just me, or did anyone else think they might have been Christian movies based on their titles?

[BoyScoutKevin]

I'm not surprised by the description for "I Served the King of England," as most Czech films I've seen are as strange or even stranger. My favorite Czech film is from 1958 and is called "Vynalez Zkazy," or as it translates into English "The Fabulous World of Jules Verne."

One of my favorite film guns comes from that film. A wind-up pistol that--seemingly--also serves as an anti-aircraft gun.

One does wonder what happened to the Czech film industry. You don't hear much about them anymore, but I can remember back in the late '60's--I believe--Czech films were all the rage.

[Rev. Powell]

I'm not surprised by the description for "I Served the King of England," as most Czech films I've seen are as strange or even stranger...

One does wonder what happened to the Czech film industry. You don't hear much about them anymore, but I can remember back in the late '60's--I believe--Czech films were all the rage.

I'm fairly certain that the Czechs turned to making these surreal, fantastic movies in the 1960s as a way of criticizing the Communist regime.  The Czech Communists would not censor things they considered to be nonsense.  I want to do research and do an article on thois someday.

Jan Svankmejer still carries on that bizarre Czech tradition today.  And there's also the Czech bestiality mockumentary COMING SOON that I featured on my site a while back.  Love the Czechs!

[dean]

I'm fairly certain that the Czechs turned to making these surreal, fantastic movies in the 1960s as a way of criticizing the Communist regime.  The Czech Communists would not censor things they considered to be nonsense.  I want to do research and do an article on thois someday.

Jan Svankmejer still carries on that bizarre Czech tradition today.  And there's also the Czech bestiality mockumentary COMING SOON that I featured on my site a while back.  Love the Czechs!

It's funny because I think Svankmajer was banned from making films for something like 20 years by the communists.  Can't slip things past them all the time I suppose...

He still is one of my top 10 directors.  Crazy man.