Spalovac mrtvol (1968) aka The Cremator
Directed by
Juraj Herz
Runtime: 95 min
Country: Czechoslovakia
Language: Czech
Subs: Unknown
Color: Black and White
Sound Mix: Mono
IMDB: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0063633/
On one level The Cremator can be enjoyed simply as something truly strange and different. Although it is live action, the film has much of the oddness and Gothic trappings of Czech animation.
Director Juraj Herz actually studied puppetry rather than film, and is a friend of the Czech surrealist filmmaker Jan Svankmajer. This is a film full of strange angles and odd ways of looking at the world. At its heart is Karl Kopfrkingl (Rudolf Hrusínský) the cremator of the title. Though he loves his job dearly, his strangeness is emphasised in one of the film's key early passages, a trip to a fair during which hes perked up by a visit to an exhibition of gruesome waxworks.
But while you might expect a film this eccentric to be otherworldly, The Cremator is actually grounded in politics. In what isn't a terribly surprising twist given the late 30s setting, Kopfrkingl's interest in the purifying power of the oven chimes in with the rise of Nazism. But the clunky premise - that there is a fine line between rigid middle class conservatism and being a fascist - is less important than the extraordinary atmosphere the film creates, and Hrusínský's portrayal of the increasingly deranged Kopfrkingl.
Cautionary gothic tale
This film of Juraj Herj, like Morgiana, has a decidedly gothic feel. Karl Kopfrkingl, the owner of a modern crematorium gets creepier by the minute. At the beginning of the film at a family outing we see a snow leopard, peacock, tiger, snake, and a lion - Karl makes a comment that "cages are for mute persons." Later at a fair everyone else seems to be having a wonderful time; Karl looks quite glum. But when they enter a "chamber of horrors" exhibit, he's quite happy and intrigued while everyone else is shocked (it reminds me of one of Charles Addams' cartoons with everyone in a movie theatre crying, except for one man who seems positively overjoyed by the cinema situation).
In a sense, Karl lives for dying - or at least lives to compassionately cremate as many people as he can, releasing and purifying their souls for another life. He seems to have a bit of an obsession with Tibetan Buddhism, carrying with him a tome on the Dalia Lama's palace and Buddhist customs.
It doesn't take much flattery and cajoling by Nazi sympathizers to put Karl totally over the edge of sanity . . .
Quite an incredible film, with good use of wide-angle lenses and closeups to indicate Karl's increasing derangement.
Comedies don’t come much blacker than this 1930s-set tale of a fastidious crematorium-operator passionately devoted to his calling. When the Nazis march into Prague, he identifies fervently with his new masters, but the discovery that his wife is half-Jewish sends him off the deep end into madness and murder. One of the most eccentric talents of the Czech New Wave, Juraj Herz combines calculated stylistic excess with a mordant flair for perverse sex and macabre violence.
Spalovac.mrtvol.avi 
Spalovac.Mrtvol.avi (no full sources for now, but lots of unfinished...)
Spalovac.mrtvol.avi (2 sources 1 full. We also need more folks on this one...)
Otras copias
no subs though 
it would be great if one these had them.
