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.
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…
The second film adaptation of a 1960 Croatian novel called Entry Forbidden to the Dead, none of Four Murders Are Enough, Darling makes a lick of sense. Instead, Lipský uses the plot as a framework for his usual brand of zany humour, delightfully lo-fi visual gags, and satirical jabs at Western culture. Set in Bonzania, a fictional hybrid of Czechoslovakia and the United States, Lipský clearly loved American kitsch and riffs on tropes that his compatriots would have only had a hazy feel for at the time.
Released in 1971, it’s interesting to note that George Camel is basically the contemporary equivalent of the milquetoast protagonists who were a regular feature in screwball farces from the other side of the Iron Curtain, such as Ryan O’Neal’s buttoned-up professor in What’s Up, Doc? and Woody Allen’s hapless time traveller in Sleeper. As such, Lubomír Lipský is an appealingly bland comic-romantic lead with his plain features and horn-rimmed specs, drawing regular chuckles with his understated reactions to the mayhem unfolding around him.
Elsewhere in the cast, Jiřina Bohdalová brings plenty of lusty energy as Sabrina, but top marks go to Iva Janžurová as Kate Drexler, the cunning leader of the Michago gang. As Janžurová would demonstrate again in the following year’s Morgiana, she was a master of disguise and moves with cool comic timing as Drexler entertainingly slips from one costume to another. If anything, I could’ve spent more time with her rather than the buffoonish gang members, who all tend to blur into one, apart from the one dude speaking with an annoying lisp after losing his false teeth.
Overall, Four Murders Are Enough, Darling isn’t anywhere near as innovative as Oldřich Lipský’s earlier time-reversing masterpiece Happy End or as comically inspired as his later classics like Adele Hasn’t Had Her Dinner Yet and The Mysterious Castle in the Carpathians. With a running time pushing the two-hour mark, it also veers dangerously close to outstaying its welcome as the pure volume of gags gets a little wearying. But Lipský’s desire to make people laugh is never less than infectious, and this movie is sure to raise a few smiles on all but the stoniest of faces.
Czech Film Review 