Deaf Crocodile

[TechnicolorAcid]

I’m perhaps far too bias to discuss the announcement of The Man Who Thought Life as I have an essay for it and it’s been my most desired Deaf Crocodile for 3 years now but it is an incredible film, brimming with distressing emptiness, gorgeous cinematography, and an excellent soundscape that feels like what would happen if John Frankenheimer’s Seconds was shot like a Wes Anderson film.

[Lowry_Sam]

The Danish film looks really good, I think that's my most anticipated of those cited so far. Who needs to plan sets for a sci-fi film when you have 50s/60s Danish design?

[MichaelB]

That reminds me of Kim Newman reviewing Luc Besson’s Subway and saying that “various Parisian authorities are to be commended for their imaginative art direction.”

[Finch]

***JULY - DECEMBER 2026 SUBSCRIPTION TITLE REVEAL #10***

We're in the home stretch, the last three titles will be announced this morning, just before we open our doors for subscriptions! For announcement 10, we're welcoming a rare 1981 Anime title into the fold...

FRANKENSTEIN, LEGEND OF TERROR (KYOFU DENSETSU: KAIKI! FURANKENSHUTAIN) – 1981, Toei Animation, 98 min. Dir. Yûgo Serikawa.

Adapted from the “Frankenstein’s Monster” character in Marvel Comics, this rarely-seen Japanese anime feature is surprisingly adult, violent and R-rated – newly restored in 4K for this release by Deaf Crocodile and Toei Animation!

In Japanese w/ English subtitles.

NOTE: The order of title announcements does not correspond to the months of release! All release details will come on Friday, along with the final subscription price.

[What A Disgrace]

I imagine this will be one of their October titles, it's the most horror-centric solo release so far.

[Finch]

***JULY - DECEMBER 2026 SUBSCRIPTION TITLE REVEAL #11***

Our penultimate announcement is a very rare, little-seen film by a Czech director who has been given some much-deserved love by the boutique Blu-ray community over the past few years. Deaf Croc is stoked to present an all-new in-house restoration of Juraj Herz's puzzle box/Moebius strip film from 1997, PASSAGE:

PASSAGE, 1997, Czech TV, 102 min.
An incredible rediscovery from Czech / Slovak master filmmaker Juraj Herz (THE CREMATOR, MORGIANA, THE BEAUTY & THE BEAST), PASSAGE is one of the most obscure and rarely-seen works in his filmography – until now. The very definition of a Kafkaesque / Escher-like / cinematic Moebius strip, PASSAGE follows a businessman, Michal Forman (Jacek Borkowski) caught in a blinding rainstorm, who seems to witness his doppelganger being run down by a car. He takes refuge in the Lucerna Palace, a labyrinthine early 1900s entertainment complex in Prague where he encounters an increasingly surreal, Fellini-esque carnival of characters: an enigmatic woman (Małgorzata Kożuchowska) in spiked heels who apparently screws men to death (!) in a filthy bathroom; homeless punks and harried shoppers, night watchmen and beefy sauna operators; a mysterious film crew who may or may not be making the movie we’re watching unfold … Forman finds himself frustrated in every attempt to leave the maze-like Lucerna, which increasingly resembles a sunken luxury liner or the Paris Opera, with endless passageways and workers and prostitutes all jostled together.

Comparisons abound, to Scorsese’s AFTER HOURS, Terry Gilliam’s BRAZIL, Shakhnazarov’s ZEROGRAD – all labyrinthine narratives about worlds that follow their own twisted, impenetrable logic – but PASSAGE stands on its own as one of Herz’s finest undiscovered gems, the film as strangely lost as Forman himself.

(It’s worth nothing that PASSAGE and THE CREMATOR were Juraj Herz’s two personal favorites from his filmography.)

Newly restored after an exhaustive archival search by Deaf Crocodile and Comeback Company for its first-ever worldwide Blu-ray release. In Czech with English subtitles.

#deafcrocodile #bluray #jurajherz #czechcinema #bluraycollector #cultmovies #filmrestoration

[What A Disgrace]

***JULY - DECEMBER 2026 SUBSCRIPTION TITLE REVEAL #12***
It's our final announcement of the July - December 2026 subscription cycle, and we saved one more huge announcement for the grand finale! It's finally here, the first Lipský / Brdečka film in their collaborative "trilogy." Before THE MYSTERIOUS CASTLE IN THE CARPATHIANS, before ADELA HAS NOT HAD SUPPER YET, there was...SODA POP JOE.

SODA POP JOE (LIMONÁDOVÝ JOE ANEB KOŇSKÁ OPERA) – 1964, NFA, 100 min.
A decade before BLAZING SADDLES, there was…SODA POP JOE! Originally released here as LEMONADE JOE, the film opens in Stetson City, 1885, a lawless, booze-soaked town where musical “artiste” Tornado Lou (Květa Fialová) belts out Marlene Dietrich-like tearjerkers: "As the barroom smoke grows thicker/I sit over my liquor/And dream that he will come..." Her dream appears in the form of spotlessly clean Lone Ranger-lookalike Soda Pop Joe (Karel Fiala), who can shoot flies from mid-air, and turns out to be a traveling sales rep for Kolaloka Soda (an entertaining pun meaning “a sip of Cola”), which he relentlessly hawks in the film’s very barbed satire of Western capitalism and consumerism. (His rendition – dubbed/sung by Karel Gott, one of the pop-stars of the era – of "Smith & Wessons on my hip/Nothing else comes near my lips...Kolaloka!" is one of the film’s many musical high points.)

Czech director Oldřich Lipský’s delightful spoof of all things Western (including Karl May’s stories, DESTRY RIDES AGAIN and more) and the dominance of corporates brands like Coca-Cola was the first and best-loved of three comedies he made with writer Jiří Brdečka, followed by ADELA HAS NOT HAD SUPPER YET and THE MYSTERIOUS CASTLE IN THE CARPATHIANS (also released by Deaf Crocodile and Comeback Company.) Co-starring Lipský’s frequent collaborators Olga Schoberová (WHO WANTS TO KILL JESSIE?, THE VENGEANCE OF SHE) as a pure-hearted crusader for teetotaling and Miloš Kopecký (from ADELA and MYSTERIOUS CASTLE) as elegant, trickster villain Hogo Fogo, the film features stunning color-tinted B&W cinematography by Vladimír Novotný and irresistible music by the team of Jan Rychlík and Vlastimil Hála.

Filled with nonstop visual puns and sight gags and an almost Karel Zeman-like Gothic/fantastic touch, the film has been gorgeously restored in 4K by the Národni filmový archiv, Prague. And remember: When whiskey fills the glasses/Then the profits pile up fastest!

In Czech with English subtitles.

[ryannichols7]

I feel for Deaf Crocodile so bad that they're having to release the film as Soda Pop Joe

[MichaelB]

Yes, I’d love to know the story behind this, as it’s been known in English as Lemonade Joe for a full 62 years.

And, unlike something like The 400 Blows, it was never a mistranslation.

(Or rather, The 400 Blows is a literal translation, but the problem is that it’s much too literal, as the French idiom that it translates is meaningless in English.)

[TechnicolorAcid]

Yes, I’d love to know the story behind this, as it’s been known in English as Lemonade Joe for a full 62 years.

And, unlike something like The 400 Blows, it was never a mistranslation.

(Or rather, The 400 Blows is a literal translation, but the problem is that it’s much too literal, as the French idiom that it translates is meaningless in English.)

From the Discord:

Dennis explained this to me better than I can, and hopefully he'll weigh in if I'm getting this wrong, but I think he said LIMONÁDOVÝ is a brand name of a soda pop over there, and that western distributors just saw the word and said, "oh, it's called Lemonade Joe, is it?" Which means we basically have to sell it as SODA POP JOE, but constantly add "also known as LEMONADE JOE" so nobody gets confused. Fun!

[TechnicolorAcid]

Either way regardless of the title I think this is the highlight of the lineup and I think it’s an even better Brdecka/Lipsky collaboration than Adela, if only because of how fully it commits to its comic madness and Brdecka’s clear love of the Western

[swo17]

they're having to release the film as

we basically have to sell it as

Who's making them do this?

What's next? Soda Pop Swo?

[TechnicolorAcid]

they're having to release the film as

we basically have to sell it as

Who's making them do this?

What's next? Soda Pop Swo?

They mentioned this on the Discord but the “they” is the Narondi filmovy archiv, aka the National Film Archive of the Czech Republic

[MichaelB]

I’ve done a bit of dictionary delving, and it seems that “limonadovy” does indeed generically mean what I know as “a fizzy drink” and what Americans call “soda pop”.

But it seems odd to change it now; as my 400 Blows example illustrates, even if the title has been “wrong” from the start, there are cases where it’s so famous that it would be a significant culture shock to change it now. I daresay Criterion did it when they put out Bicycle Thieves under that title (as opposed to the singular The Bicycle Thief, but that’s less of a shift.

That said, I have myself been involved with sanctioning title changes decades after the fact, whether it’s deliberately releasing La notte di San Lorenzo under its American title The Night of the Shooting Stars (on the grounds that the UK couldn’t decide between The Night of San Lorenzo or The Night of Saint Lawrence and the overwhelming bulk of English-language criticism uses the American title), reinstating the planned but previously unreleased Girls Without Shame as the primary English title of Schoolgirl Hitchhikers (since we had a full set of English credits for the former, while the latter consisted of the French credits with “Schoolgirl Hitchhikers” crudely spliced in in an entirely different font), and The Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Miss Osbourne, Walerian Borowczyk’s preferred title of his 1981 opus that in any case had had so many different titles (Docteur Jekyll et les femmes, The Blood of Dr Jekyll, Bloodbath of Dr Jekyll, Bloodlust) that one more wouldn’t hurt. And in that particular case the film’s female lead Marina Pierro made it a dealbreaker as regards her involvement, although she was pushing at a door that was already wide open.

And while I normally cringe at overtly American English being imposed on obviously European films, Soda Pop Joe (as I daresay I’ll have to get used to going forward) is such a bizarrely “Americanesque” film that it actually kind of works even to native British English speakers.

[MichaelB]

They mentioned this on the Discord but the “they” is the Narondi filmovy archiv, aka the National Film Archive of the Czech Republic

I can confirm from my own first-hand experience that they prefer licensees to use their favoured English title.

That said, I argued that changing the extremely well-known (as both novel and film) Closely Observed Trains to Closely Watched Trains made little sense half a century later, which they grudgingly accepted, and I believe Second Run made a similar argument over what the NFA wanted released as The Shop on Main Street, which in that case was compounded by the fact that "Main Street" is an overtly American English phrase that would have been jarring in the context of a UK release of a film set in a small Slovak town. So in both cases the UK editions remained Closely Observed Trains and The Shop on the High Street.

[Mr Sausage]

And while I normally cringe at overtly American English being imposed on obviously European films, Soda Pop Joe (as I daresay I’ll have to get used to going forward) is such a bizarrely “Americanesque” film that it actually kind of works even to native British English speakers.

It sounds oddly quaint to my ears. North Americans don’t really say soda pop any more, we say one or the other word depending on region (in Canada we tend to say ‘pop’). It’s like taxi cab in that way. Soda pop makes me think of root beer floats and old fashioned diners and such things from my dad’s generation. Haven’t seen the film, so maybe that’s all very appropriate.

[MichaelB]

“Quaint” actually does work in this particular instance!

[Mr.DarjeelingLimited]

Passage in HD is very exciting.

[ryannichols7]

I'm surprised no post about the July titles yet! both are up for preorder already.

Spoiler

SHIPPING IN LATE JULY

SLIPCOVER EDITION LIMITED TO 1250

THE ARRIVAL FROM THE DARKNESS + ST. WENCESLAS

Jan S. Kolar Czech Silents

One of the great pioneers of the early Czech film industry, director and writer Jan S. Kolár (1896-1973) worked in a number of genres: supernatural fantasy, medieval epics, romantic melodrama, sci-fi and more. Deaf Crocodile is thrilled to collaborate with the Národní filmový archív, Prague and Comeback Company on this first-ever Blu-ray release of two of Kolár’s finest Silent features and a number of rare shorts.

THE ARRIVAL FROM THE DARKNESS (PŘÍCHOZÍ Z TEMNOT) – 1921, NFA, 62 min., dir. Jan S. Kolár. Much wilder-than-you-think-it-will-be occult story about a book collector (Theodor Pištěk) who uses an ancient manuscript to revive his long-dormant 16th century ancestor (Karel Lamač) – who then tries to steal the collector’s wife (Anny Ondra), thinking she’s his long-lost love Alena. Mad esoteric shenanigans involving ruined castles, alchemists, time travel, the Elixir of Life, the Black Plague and Black Magic rituals make this one of the most surprising genre treats of the Silent era. With an experimental musical score by the Silent film trio Neuvěřitelno.

ST. WENCESLAS (SVATÝ VÁCLAV) – 1929, NFA, 103 min., Kolár’s sweeping medieval epic set in 10th century Bohemia about the struggle between paganism and Christianity, centered around the prince (and later saint) Wenceslas (Zdeněk Štěpánek), who became the model for "the righteous king." Lavish and highly entertaining mixture of ALEXANDER NEVSKY and ILYA MUROMETS, filled with knights in armor, murders, betrayals between brothers, between mothers and sons, between daughters and mothers-in-law -- betrayals everywhere you look. The most expensive Czech film made up to that point, filmed during the Silent era but only released after the transition to sound. With a new score for this release by Silent film composer Ben Model.

All films feature Czech intertitles with English subtitles.

------------------------

Special Features

Six Short Films:
“Polykarp’s Winter Adventure” (Polykarpovo Zimní Dobrodružství ) 1917, 11 min. Kolár’s first film is this charming comedy shot outdoors in the snowy winter in Prague.

“The Oriental Languages’ Teacher” (Učitel Orientálních Jazyků) - 1918, 35 min. Co-directed by Kolár and Olga Rautenkranzová, the first Czech female filmmaker.

“The Lady With The Small Foot” (Dáma S Malou Nožkou) - 1919, 31 min., dir. Jan S. Kolár. An ambitious mix of Louis Feuillade-style detective thriller / fantasy and comedy. With Anny Ondra from ARRIVAL ...

“The Torn Photograph” (Roztržené Foto) - 1921, 27 min., dir. Jan S. Kolár. A surreal romantic comedy about four confirmed bachelors who swear they’ll never marry.

“How We Used To Make Movies” (Jak Se U Nás Kdysi Filmovalo) - 1954, 23 min. Fascinating compilation by Bohumil Veselý of behind-the-scenes footage from Czech Silent films shot between 1918-1929 (including several by Kolár) and assembled in the 1950s.

“The Wedding Shirt” (Svatební Košile) -- 1925, co-dir. Josef Kokeisl. The only surviving 4 min. fragment from this haunting Silent Horror film, co-directed by Theodor Pištěk who starred in ARRIVAL.

48-page booklet featuring new essays by film historian Jan-Christopher Horak and film critic Walter Chaw.

New audio commentary by film historian Peter Hames and Czech film expert Irena Kovarova of Comeback Company.

New visual essay “Face of Centuries: Jan S. Kolár and the Afterlives of History” (2026, 18 min.) by experimental filmmaker and film scholar Stephen Broomer.

New artwork by Beth Morris.

Blu-ray authoring by Vital Passenger.

Slipcover Edition limited to 1250 units, featuring new artwork by Dave McKean.

Spoiler

SHIPPING IN LATE JULY

SLIPCOVER EDITION LIMITED TO 1000

CAT CITY + CATCHER: CAT CITY 2

This deluxe 2-disc edition features the original Hungarian animated sci-fi classic CAT CITY (1986) paired for the first time with its sequel CATCHER: CAT CITY 2 (2007) making its U.S. Blu-ray debut!

Disc One:
CAT CITY (MACSKAFOGÓ), 1986, Hungary, 96 min. Unflappable mouse secret agent Nick Grabovsky (László Sinkó) goes up against the criminal cat gang run by sinister, metal-pawed Mr. Teufel (Miklós Benedek), in director Béla Ternovszky’s surreal animated sci-fi treasure. Set in the year 80 AMM (“After Mickey Mouse”) on Planet X where cats and rats have banded together to eliminate mice, the film features a show-stopping series of musical numbers including a bizarre chorus of Mexican vampire bats who inhabit an ancient Mayan temple. A cross between 1980s Don Bluth-style animation (THE SECRET OF NIMH) and the British TV series “Danger Mouse”, CAT CITY has long been a beloved cult favorite in Eastern Europe – recently restored by the National Film Institute in Budapest. In Hungarian with English subtitles.

Bonus Features:
3 rare Béla Ternovszky animated shorts: “Modern Training Methods (Modern edzésmódszerek)” - 1970, 7 min. + “Let Us Keep A Dog (Tartsunk kutyát)” – 1974, 6 min. + “Where Is The Limit? (Mindennek van határa)” – 1975, 7 min.

Video interview with György Ráduly, Director of the National Film Institute-Film Archive on Hungarian animation and CAT CITY.

Commentary track by film historian Samm Deighan.

"The Director Answers: Béla Ternovsky" - 2023, 23 min. Dir. Yvonne Kerékgyártó – interview with Béla Ternovszky.

“Ahead Of Its Time (Megelőzte a maga korát)” – 2020, 25 min. Dir. Péter Szalay. Fascinating video essay produced by the National Film Institute of Hungary on the creative genesis of CAT CITY.

“We Just Made It For The Fun Of It (Jókedvünkben készítettük)” – 2020, 30 min. Dir. Péter Szalay. Béla Ternovszky discusses his long career at Pannonia Studio.

Disc Two:
CATCHER: CAT CITY 2 (MACSKAFOGÓ 2 - A SÁTÁN MACSKÁJA) – 2007, Hungary, 90 min. It’s 20 years after the epochal battle between cats, rats and mice in the beloved original CAT CITY. Planet X is now peacefully run by rodents, and former secret agent Nick Grabovsky has an organic spinach farm – until an African explorer discovers the last untamed tribe of cats in the jungle, who call up the ancient feline demon Moloch to help reclaim their place atop the food chain. Hungarian director Béla Ternovszky’s delightfully quirky sequel brings back familiar characters from the first film (yes, iron-pawed Mr. Teufel returns!) with the same mix of bizarre sight gags, political satire and “Danger Mouse”-style animated fantasy / sci-fi. And the Godzilla vs. Mechagodzilla-like battle between Moloch and the giant Robot Dog is something to see … In Hungarian with English subtitles.

Bonus Features:
New video interview with director Béla Ternovszky, moderated by Dennis Bartok and translated by Anna Klaniczay.

48-page booklet featuring new essays by film critics Dan Schindel and Walter Chaw.

New audio commentary by filmmaker & animator Dorian Saisse.

New visual essay by film historian Evan Chester.

New artwork by Beth Morris.

Blu-ray authoring by Vital Passenger.

Slipcover Edition limited to 1000 units, featuring new artwork by Beth Morris.


This slipcover edition is included in the July-December 2026 subscription.

excited for both. I subscribed for the first time and am glad to not have to worry about ordering these.

[TechnicolorAcid]

FYI for anyone who has the old Jan S. Kolar Czech DVD, that pairs Arrival from the Darkness with The Poisoned Light, don’t throw it away just yet because there are a couple of extras on it that aren’t available on the new Blu-Ray set and seemingly they are:

-The Arrival from the Darkness – unused shots
-Arsenal: The Arrival from the Darkness (2016)
-Cinema of Potentialities (2018)
-The Cross at the Stream (1921)

[MichaelB]

...plus of course The Poisoned Light itself!