January 2026 – Czech Film Review

Lubomir Lipsky's hapless Georg Camel gazes at his love interest Sabrina, covered in soap suds, in Four Murders Are Enough, Darling

After parodying old-fashioned Hollywood cowboy movies in Lemonade Joe, the Czech Mel Brooks returned to affectionately lampooning American genres with Four Murders Are Enough, Darling. This time, classic crime flicks and pulp fiction are the targets, and Oldřich Lipský apparently never encountered a gag that he didn’t deem unworthy for inclusion in his movies. I say that in the best possible sense – here, the sheer deluge of broad jokes, irreverent wordplay, comic misunderstandings, and slapstick humour has a cumulative effect, rolled into a madcap farce with the purest intention: To make the audience laugh as often as possible.

Whether all the hilarity fully translates if you don’t speak Czech is another matter, but you’ll get the general vibe. The movie starts fast and sets the tone with a jaunty title sequence with evocatively dynamic comic book art by Kája Saudek. Then we’re on a night train where Dr. James Porter (Viktor Maurer), is nervously transporting a million-dollar cheque from Michago to San Fernando. Unfortunately for them, rival gangs from each city are also onboard with murderous designs on the loot.

Segue to Springtown, where Lipský’s brother Lubomír (a regular actor in the director’s films) plays George Camel, a straight-laced school teacher with lofty literary ideals who doesn’t get much respect from his class – the kids would rather read comic books than Macbeth. He lives a solitary bachelor’s existence in a boarding house where he plays tuba and constantly gets nagged by his landlady, and tries to sell his highfalutin poetry to the local tabloid.

Lubomir Lipsky's George Camel in trouble with his nagging landlady again in Four Murders Are Enough, Darling

This is where he catches the eye of bored reporter Sabrina (Jiřina Bohdalová), who decides to woo George to make her roguish illustrator boyfriend jealous. George is excitedly getting ready for his hot date with her when the recently deceased Dr. Porter appears on his doorstep. Rather than call the police, however, George hastily stashes the stiff before Sabrina arrives.

Things escalate quickly as both gangs descend on the boarding house and take rooms, bumping each other off as they try to shake down George for the missing cheque. Already suspected of one murder by the bumbling cops, George arouses further suspicion when another dead body falls into his arms every time he opens a door. Initially setting out to clear his name by trying to find out who poisoned Dr. Porter, George grows to enjoy the notoriety as a feared killer and the increasingly amorous advances of Sabrina…

Residents struggle through the rubble in Prefab Story

When I first visited Prague at the tail end of the ’90s, I was captivated by the city to the extent that it dominated my every waking thought. Like for millions of tourists each year, it was the historic centre’s visual splendour that first set my heart racing, but it wasn’t long before I got to know the less postcard-friendly side as well.

Attending a teaching course in the freezing winter of early 2002, the school provided cheap digs in a Communist-era Panelák out in the Barrandov district – namely, a block of flats constructed from panels of prefabricated concrete. In truth, it didn’t look all that different from similar eyesores in Britain, but it was still a striking contrast to the “Golden City” image of Prague. Just as the towers, domes, and spires of the centrum appeared etched in crystal thanks to the crisp, cold January air, the stark right angles and brute bulk of the housing project were brought into sharp focus in the snow and ice.

There was heavy construction going on at the time, which meant a lot of rubble and heaps of earth for the locals to pick their way through as they went about their daily business. One night, my flatmate was staggering back from the pub when he fell into an open trench and lay unconscious as the falling snow began covering him up. Luckily, a passing group of teenagers spotted him, fished him out, and took him back to the pub for a few reviving rounds of beer and shots.

I was reminded of this incident continually while watching Prefab Story, Věra Chytilová’s tragicomic day-in-the-life of the vast Jižní Město housing estate in Prague. The narrative, such as it is, follows an elderly man who arrives from the countryside to live with his daughter in one of the concrete monstrosities, but neither the taxi driver nor the harried locals can pinpoint the correct tower block…