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The unknown world of ROMANIAN horror, sci-fi, and fantasy films (with LOTS of screencaps!)

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doctor kiss	The unknown world of ROMANIAN horror, sci-fi, and fantasy films (with LOTS of screencaps!)	Lead	[-]
Mar 17 10 4:49 AM Reply Quote More My Recent Posts	PART ONE, 1933-1972 The idea for this blog-like post grew out of Dave Sindelar’s ongoing Essential 300 Movies list (well worth a look, if you haven’t checked it out already: direct link). I hope the following may be of interest to some of the other ‘completists’ who frequent the CHFB! Russian and Czechoslovak horror, sci-fi, and fantasy pictures have come to enjoy a solid reputation in the West, with some of their most gifted creators enjoying particular acclaim: Karel Zeman, known especially for JOURNEY TO THE BEGINNING OF TIME (1955), THE FABULOUS WORLD OF JULES VERNE (1958), and THE FABULOUS BARON MUNCHAUSEN (1961); Aleksandr Ptushko, whose SADKO (1953) and SAMPO (1959) became known to U.S. audiences as THE MAGIC VOYAGE OF SINBAD (1962) and THE DAY THE EARTH FROZE (1964); or works by less celebrated directors including PLANETA BUR (1962) and MECHTE NAVSTRECHU (1963), long-familiar through their use in Corman pictures such as VOYAGE TO THE PREHISTORIC PLANET (1965), QUEEN OF BLOOD (1966), or VOYAGE TO THE PLANET OF PREHISTORIC WOMEN (1968). The fantastic works of another major Eastern European cinema, Romania, meanwhile, remain more or less unknown; partly because they just weren’t seen in the U.S. in the way that the titles mentioned above were, and partly because they’ve remained stubbornly unavailable over the years. Likewise, the major Romanian creator of fantasy films, Ion Popescu Gopo, remains a total unknown, even though two of his major works, STEPS TO THE MOON (1963) and A FANTASTIC COMEDY (1975) are reviewed in Phil Hardy’s seminal 1984 tome The Overlook Film Encyclopedia: Science Fiction. What follows isn’t a complete or comprehensive list, but just an overview of some of the most interesting Romanian genre movies that I’ve seen to date. Very few of the films are available on DVD, although I’ve noted those which are, and would generally recommend looking for these DVDs on eBay, unless you feel like navigating through a Romanian-language site! 1. THE GHOST TRAIN (TRENUL FANTOMĂ) (1933, dir. Jean Mihail, 1h 14mins.) Ironically, the earliest surviving Romanian horror-thriller is distinctly un-Romanian in several ways: an adaptation of Arnold Ridley’s play of the same name (best known through its 1941 film version starring Arthur Askey), TRENUL FANTOMĂ was shot in Hungary as an alternate-language version of KÍSÉRTETEK VONATA (1933), with both films using footage taken from the 1931 British movie adaptation. Consequently, we see actors in near-identical costumes to the British version (so as to match in long-shots) and riding aboard Great Western Railway carriages with adverts for the Cornish Riviera (!). Like all other adaptations of the play, this becomes a very stagy piece once the passengers arrive at the train station, enlivened by a few brief expressionistic shots when the ghost train appears actually to be arriving. Trivia note: the female lead of TRENUL FANTOMĂ, singer Lisette Verea, would appear in only one other feature film... starred opposite the Marx Brothers in A NIGHT IN CASABLANCA (1946).
doctor kiss		#1	[-]
Mar 17 10 4:51 AM Reply Quote More My Recent Posts	2. A SHORT HISTORY (SCURTĂ ISTORIE) (1956, dir. Ion Popescu Gopo, 3m 41secs.) The winner of the Golden Palm for best short film at the 1957 Cannes Film Festival, this animated movie offers a highly accelerated record of life on Earth from the Big Bang (the planets are literally sneezed into existence) via the dinosaurs, and through key stages of human existence, represented by a man carrying a flower he picked. The first work of director Ion Popescu Gopo to gain wide international acclaim, A SHORT HISTORY is of greater note retrospectively, having influenced several of his later features, beginning with the one immediately below.
doctor kiss		#2	[-]
Mar 17 10 4:59 AM Reply Quote More My Recent Posts	3. A BOMB WAS STOLEN (S-A FURAT O BOMBA) (1961, dir. Ion Popescu Gopo, 1h 16mins.) Popescu Gopo’s first feature, A BOMB WAS STOLEN is a dialog-free utopian sci-fi comedy that was nominated for best picture at the 1962 Cannes Film Festival. Like A SHORT HISTORY (1956), it commences with an ‘everyman’ character picking a flower... only to find himself at the mercy of comedy versions of movie serial villains sporting buckets on their heads. In this world of nuclear tests and computing machines powered by brains in glass jars, our hero also makes a noteworthy trip to a cinema, where the lobby display for a Jekyll-and-Hyde movie prompts all kinds of horrified reactions, ending with one woman being carried out in a faint (perfectly matching the poses on movie posters of the period) while various Romanian monster kids merely sport broad smiles on their faces. Being dialog-free, there are no hindrances to understanding the movie, which has recently become available on DVD in Spain under the title HAN ROBADO UNA BOMBA: link. There’s also a lengthy and insightful recent review of the film at The Auteurs site: http://www.theauteurs.com/notebook/posts/1469
doctor kiss		#3	[-]
Mar 17 10 5:02 AM Reply Quote More My Recent Posts	4. STEPS TO THE MOON (PASI SPRE LUNĂ) (1963, dir. Ion Popescu Gopo, 1h 1min.) Popescu Gopo’s second dialog-free feature (with the exception of one musical number) is one of his two movies reviewed in Phil Hardy’s The Overlook Film Encyclopedia: Science Fiction. At a rocketport in the near future, our nameless protagonist accidentally causes a short-circuit with his electric shaver, and finds himself transported back to the prehistoric era. Thereafter, like his animated precursor in A SHORT HISTORY (1956), he experiences an accelerated trip through the history of human achievement, this time involving both factual and fictional attempts to fly, via Icarus, the flying carpets of the 1001 Nights, witches’ broomsticks, Leonardo Da Vinci, and even a Méliès-inspired winged devil. Particularly memorable is one sequence showing Galileo Galilei about to be burned at the stake, accompanied by an argumentative exchange of pop-song lyrics as to whether the Earth is round or flat. I found this to be a captivating film, and hope that rumors it may be coming to Spanish DVD in the coming year prove to be true; currently it’s fallen so far out of sight that it hasn’t received even a single vote at IMDb.
doctor kiss		#4	[-]
Mar 17 10 5:06 AM Reply Quote More My Recent Posts	5. THE WHITE MOOR (DE-AŞ FI... HARAP ALB) (1965, dir. Ion Popescu Gopo, 1h 26mins.) Popescu Gopo’s first Eastmancolor movie is truly a beautiful spectacle, also available on DVD (from which the screen-captures below are taken). The film stars heartthrob Florin Piersic (a kind of Romanian Tab Hunter, all the more so with his hair dyed blond here) as the bumbling son of a medieval king who wants to find favor as a warrior. An act of kindness to an old hag helps him on his way, since she turns out to be a good witch in disguise, and thereafter he battles his way through landscapes and peoples who frequently look to be pre-empting THE ROAD WARRIOR, also in terms of their costuming. The gorgeous-looking widescreen DVD (in unsubtitled Romanian, but it’s easy enough to follow) is almost always available on eBay through sellers based in Romania.
doctor kiss		#5	[-]
Mar 17 10 5:10 AM Reply Quote More My Recent Posts	6. THREE TIMES BUCHAREST (DE TRE ORI BUCUREŞTI) (1967, dir. Mihai Iacob, Horea Popescu, Ion Popescu Gopo, 1h 29mins.) “Intoarcerea” (‘U-Turn’, Iacob) “Aterizare fortata” (‘Forced Landing’, Popescu) “Bucureşti” (‘Bucharest’, Popescu Gopo) Perhaps the most borderline inclusion in this overview, this three-part movie, with each section directed by a different leading Romanian director of the period, offers a fine example of how filmmakers can shine even when handed the most unpromising of projects: the Ceauşescu regime ordered a kind of ‘travelog’ movie charting the urban regeneration of Bucharest. What the regime received in return was a tale of a flight in a small plane over the city which turns into an adventure movie when the landing gears fail; a fantasy-laden segment by Popescu Gopo, translating patterns within the cityscape into song-and-dance routines (also featuring an incredibly literal flying saucer); and an equally fantastic reimagining of the city by Mihai Iacob, in which streets become perfectly laid-out parts of a circuit board --- this latter idea would be returned to much later by Popescu Gopo for his final film, MARIA AND MIRABELLA IN TRANSYSTORIA (1989, mentioned below). Some parts of this film were originally in color, although current television prints are in black-and-white only.
doctor kiss		#6	[-]
Mar 17 10 5:13 AM Reply Quote More My Recent Posts	7. KINGDOM IN THE CLOUDS (TINEREŢE FĂRĂ BĂTRÎNEŢE) (1969, dir. Elisabeta Bostan, Nicolae Codrescu, 1h 37mins.) The only one of these Romanian fantastic movies which received a general release in the States, firstly as a ‘kiddie matinee’ from Xerox Films in 1971, and secondly as a ‘family matinee’ re-release by Paramount in 1975; on neither occasion were its Romanian origins mentioned, needless to say, at the height of the Cold War. Even full-screen television copies (as per the screen-captures below) reveal this to have been a pictorially outstanding fairytale about a mythical kingdom reached via a strand of wool (a recurring concept in several Romanian fantasy productions).
doctor kiss		#7	[-]
Mar 17 10 5:16 AM Reply Quote More My Recent Posts	PART TWO, 1973-1992 1973 represented the point in time when the Ceauşescu regime started to meddle in matters of cinema with a heavier hand. This meddling came in particular as a result of the movie 100 DE LEI (1973), a realistic drama highlighting low levels of education among young Romanians and a rise in juvenile delinquency. The film’s negative was destroyed at the personal command of Elena Ceauşescu, leading its producer Constantin Roates to suffer a fatal heart attack, while its 45-year-old director, Mircea Săucan, likewise ended up in hospital and never directed another film. With Nicolae Ceauşescu establishing himself as President of the nation in 1974, the outlook in Romania (and within Romanian fantasy movies) shifted from one of embracing a larger world beyond oneself to one of introspection, although here too a spirit of creativity would yield some noteworthy results. 8. PACALA (1974, dir. Geo Saizescu, 2h 7mins.) Pacala is a character from Romanian folklore, a kind of country bumpkin who wins out over his supposed ‘betters’ through sheer ingenuity and his occasionally fantastic abilities at harnessing nature. Indeed, he appeared in one of the earliest of all Romanian sci-fi pictures, the animated PACALA ÎN LUNĂ (PACALA ON THE MOON, 1920). However, this sprawling two-hour ‘comedy’ from 1974 is about as cheap-looking and parochial as it gets, marking the lowest ebb, in my opinion, of the inward-focused phase of Romanian cinema under the Ceauşescus. Its fantastic content is reduced to Pacala’s arrival via stork, while the presence of an ominous hangman tends to overshadow the intended ‘light’ comic mood of the conclusion, for my tastes at least!
doctor kiss		#8	[-]
Mar 17 10 5:19 AM Reply Quote More My Recent Posts	9. A FANTASTIC COMEDY (COMEDIE FANTASTICĂ) (1975, dir. Ion Popescu Gopo, 1h 27mins.) If PACALA disappoints with its focus on a world which has suddenly grown much smaller, then Popescu Gopo’s A FANTASTIC COMEDY by contrast shows how a filmmaker can triumph over such limitations; it’s also the second of his features reviewed in Phil Hardy’s The Overlook Film Encyclopedia: Science Fiction. The film opens with a sinister stranger arriving at a bar during a power outage. He speaks using oddly technical jargon and asks questions about a local science professor who constructed a habitation sphere modeled in part on the command module from Apollo 11. The capsule, it appears, was home to an artificially-created child, raised at an accelerated pace by a robot and via educational films (which include, appropriately enough, Popescu Gopo’s A SHORT HISTORY, with its own depiction of accelerated human progress). The capsule also contains a primitive holodeck, although this ultimately leaves the artificially-created man feeling more trapped than before, since although he can see the world beyond, he can’t touch it, and is contained always within a space the size of the tiny dimensions of the proto-holodeck; a potent metaphor for Romania under the Ceauşescus, one might argue. Popescu Gopo’s ultimate message is one of hope, though, for a time which progresses beyond such a limiting space: the mysterious investigator turns out to be from some unspecified future time, having returned to research this early attempt at artificially creating a human being.
doctor kiss		#9	[-]
Mar 17 10 5:22 AM Reply Quote More My Recent Posts	10. THE YOUTH ELIXIR (ELIXIRUL TINEREŢII) (1975, dir. Gheorghe Naghi, 1h 32mins.) A fantastic film (represented by the first five screen-captures below) promises a future in which youth can be restored. By chance, a combination of chemicals mixed together during an accident create just such a potion, but it comes with unexpected consequences: being detained by police for having false papers, being mistaken for a burglar by neighbors, only being able to talk to friends over the telephone for fear they won’t recognize you. A very inspired and energetic take on the ‘youth elixir’ idea, starring Florin Piersic from THE WHITE MOOR (1963).
doctor kiss		#10	[-]
Mar 17 10 5:25 AM Reply Quote More My Recent Posts	11. THE EFFECT OF GAMMA RAYS ON MAN-IN-THE-MOON MARIGOLDS (EFECTUL RAZELOR GAMMA ASUPRA ANEMONELOR) (1977 made-for-television, dir. Cătălina Buzoianu, 1h 42mins. at 25fps) An overlooked small-screen adaptation of Paul Zindel’s play, whose dysfunctional, introspective focus seems every bit as potent within the context of 1970s Romania (even though it’s still nominally set in America, to appease television censors of the period). In terms of ‘filmed theatre,’ this is one of the more inspired works you could ever hope to see, with science-fictional special effects, film inserts, and creative camerawork throughout; it also features a standout performance by Romanian theatre doyenne Olga Tudorache. The only drawbacks are that the actors still ‘play to the back row’ throughout rather than tempering their performance for the small screen, and also that there are some possibly-more-than-coincidental similarities to the 1966 U.S. television version starring Eileen Heckart. Nevertheless, if you’re interested at all in stage acting, then this adaptation may keep you as captivated as it did me. Sections of both this version and the 1966 Heckart version can regularly be found posted at YouTube.
doctor kiss		#11	[-]
Mar 17 10 5:28 AM Reply Quote More My Recent Posts	12. CASTLE IN THE CARPATHIANS (CASTELUL DIN CARPAŢI) (1981, dir. Stere Gulea, 1h 36mins.) While numerous English-language sources mention the 1981 Terry Gilliam-style Czechoslovak adaptation of Jules Verne’s story by Oldrich Lipský, THE MYSTERIOUS CASTLE IN THE CARPATHIANS, the fact that there’s a Romanian adaptation from the same year has been almost completely overlooked. In fact, the two films provide an interesting contrast, with the Czechoslovak adaptation throwing the audience immediately into a strange psychedelic world that grows ever stranger, while the Romanian adaptation follows a more conventional ‘period drama’ approach in which strangeness asserts itself only gradually, but to no less memorable effect.
doctor kiss		#12	[-]
Mar 17 10 5:32 AM Reply Quote More My Recent Posts	13. MARIA AND MIRABELLA (MARIA MIRABELA) (1981, dir. Ion Popescu Gopo, 1h 8mins.) This Romanian-Soviet co-production helmed by Popescu Gopo merges live-action and lyrical animated sequences to present its tale of two young girls who become lost in a fairytale woodland. Visually striking and often quite earnest for a children’s picture, the whole thing is defused ultimately by the appearance of the Fairy Queen at home in her kitchen (!)... whereupon it becomes clear that she is the girls’ mother and the whole adventure merely a dream. Even in children’s films, the idea of truly heading out into a larger world beyond the self seemed taboo by this period in Romanian cinema. To date, MARIA AND MIRABELLA is available only in its Russian-dubbed incarnation on DVD in Russia.
doctor kiss		#13	[-]
Mar 17 10 5:34 AM Reply Quote More My Recent Posts	14. THE BET (RĂMĂŞAGUL) (1984, dir. Ion Popescu Gopo, 1h 23mins.) And you thought THE GIANT CLAW had problems! THE BET is a fantasy about a stop-motion hybrid (hy-bird?) between a chicken and a weather vane, which becomes imperiled after falling into the clutches of a false-nose-wearing witch. Even cheaper than it sounds, and padded out with minute upon minute of footage from Popescu Gopo’s earlier color movies going right back to THE WHITE MOOR (1965), THE BET shows how Romanian fantasy cinema, even in the hands of its leading exponent, had diminished with falling budgets and descended into parochialism by the early 1980s. And yet, Popescu Gopo’s next work (immediately below) would manage to transform such shortcomings into highly productive assets.
doctor kiss		#14	[-]
Mar 17 10 5:37 AM Reply Quote More My Recent Posts	15. GALAX (1984, dir. Ion Popescu Gopo, 1h 21mins.) The official remit for making GALAX was utterly uninspiring: to create a Romanian E.T., but without looking outwards to worlds beyond the Earth (or even Romania)! And yet the resulting work may well be Popescu Gopo’s greatest achievement, and indeed one of the finest pieces of cinema about artificial intelligence ever crafted. Acknowledging its initial inspiration from E.T openly for all to see, GALAX swiftly moves into a realm of its own, centring on the relationship between a maladjusted female student fed a constant diet of antidepressants and a (minimalist, stop-motion) android created at the university where she studies. Both are deemed imperfect by the society around them, with the student ‘too lost in fantasy’ and the android scheduled for destruction because it ‘has no industrial application.’ Counting as one of those rare movies which moved me to tears, GALAX is at once pictorially beautiful (in particular its haunting stop-motion sequences) and an exercise in showing how a tiny cast and a limited number of settings can effectively convey a sense of claustrophobia and social exclusion.
doctor kiss		#15	[-]
Mar 17 10 5:40 AM Reply Quote More My Recent Posts	16. MARIA AND MIRABELLA IN TRANSYSTORIA (MARIA MIRABELA IN TRANZISTORIA) (1989, dir. Ion Popescu Gopo, 1h 10mins.) Popescu Gopo’s final movie prior to his death the same year is a sequel to the Romanian-Soviet co-production MARIA AND MIRABELLA (1981), and is at once highly derivative of other works, while at the same time deploying its borrowings to unique ends, as with GALAX (1984). In a sequence straight out of POLTERGEIST, the girls are drawn to their living room late at night, where the rocking-chair is moving back and forth and a strange light emanates from the television. Mix this with the recurrent Romanian fantasy concept of a strand of wool leading you to another realm (as seen in the earlier KINGDOM IN THE CLOUDS [1969]), and Maria and Mirabella find themselves transported within the television set, to a place called Transystoria (a pun on Transylvania), a kind of circuit-board land that is part-TRON and partly inspired by a similar idea seen in THREE TIMES BUCHAREST (1967), only with whacked-out 1980s pop routines (including one involving synchronized vacuum cleaners?!) rather than 1960s ones! As with the original MARIA AND MIRABELLA, all is revealed ultimately merely to have been a dream, with the girls awakening clutching a ball of wool.
doctor kiss		#16	[-]
Mar 17 10 5:48 AM Reply Quote More My Recent Posts	17. IF I WERE PETER PAN (DE-AŞ FI... PETER PAN) (1992, dir. Gheorghe Naghi, 1h 27mins.) Following the fall of Communism, a single attempt was made to create a fantasy epic by an ‘old school’ director, Gheorge Naghi, who had previously directed THE YOUTH ELIXIR (1975). A largely lacklustre low-budgeter, it feels like a relic of a bygone age, looking a couple of decades older than it really is. It was Naghi’s final film, and effectively signalled the end of classic-era Romanian fantastic cinema. Postscript I. VLAD THE IMPALER (VLAD ŢEPEŞ) (1979, dir. Doru Năstase, 2h 20mins.) One Romanian title contained in numerous horror and fantasy guides is VLAD THE IMPALER, even though it isn’t a genre work at all, but rather a sprawling historical epic presenting Vlad Tepes as an heroic tactician who held back Ottoman invaders. Certainly it’s interesting to see medieval images of Tepes, familiar from so many horror-related books and magazines, brought to life, but there are mere seconds of bloodletting and impaling in the movie. There is one standout sequence, though, when the leader of the Saracen forces must ride through a hillside of impaled skeletons. A German DVD of the film is available under the title VLAD DER PFÄHLER, with both German and Romanian audio tracks: link. However, it’s far from a perfect presentation: the print is a little scratched and splicy in places, and is presented in 1.77:1 widescreen. Sadly, VLAD THE IMPALER was shot in 2.35:1 format, and the DVD merely shows the middle portion of the image (as per the screen-caps below), with characters frequently entirely eradicated from the screen even when they’re talking. Postscript II. FAUST XX (1966, dir. Ion Popescu Gopo) THE STORY OF LOVE (POVESTEA DRAGOSTEI) (1976, dir. Ion Popescu Gopo) SPACE MISSION DELTA (MISIUNEA SPAŢIALĂ DELTA) (1984, dir. Călin Cazan, Mircea Toia) SON OF THE STARS (FIUL STELELOR) (1988, dir. Mircea Toia) As I said at the beginning, this thread isn’t meant to be comprehensive, and there are still plenty of key Romanian works I haven’t seen. For example, I’m particularly keen to see two of Popescu Gopo’s major features, a modernday version of Faust titled FAUST XX (1966) and a lavish fairytale titled THE STORY OF LOVE (1976; see upper right-hand image below). And then there are the two animated features inspired by STAR WARS, titled SPACE MISSION DELTA and SON OF THE STARS... which I daren’t even try to imagine without watching them...! A new world of Fairytales and Monsters worthy of further exploration, to be sure.
Rick		#17	[-]
Mar 17 10 2:01 PM Reply Quote More My Recent Posts	Wow! Treeemendous stuff, Doc. New things to look for, or more likely, hope for. It's not surprising that I haven't seen any of the films you covered, but I take some comfort in having at least heard of a few of them. Thanks so much. This is really great stuff.
todmichel		#18	[-]
Mar 17 10 4:47 PM Reply Quote More My Recent Posts	A magnificent and informative survey of the Romanian horror / fantasy cinema. Thank you very much, Doctor Kiss. To date I only saw three of the movies above: "Trenul fantomâ" (1933), "Maria Mirabela" (1981), and "Vlad the Impaler" (1979) - the last one was released on VHS in France many years ago.
Yongary		#19	[-]
Mar 17 10 5:00 PM Reply Quote More My Recent Posts	This is an incredible article! You're always a font of information about these sorts of crazy obscure stuff. The only one of these that I'd ever heard of was KINGDOM IN THE CLOUDS; the rest were new to me. Some of these look pretty wild; A BOMB WAS STOLEN in particular looks great. Where did you find these, anyway? If anyone is interested in learning more about Xerox Films (the company that released KINGDOM IN THE CLOUDS in the US), KiddieMatinee has a fairly comprehensive article about them.
Dread		#20	[-]
Mar 17 10 10:12 PM Reply Quote More My Recent Posts	This is an incredible posting. Thank you very much.