Sometimes when digging back through the decades to find “new” movies to review, a film will stand out as something so bright and marvellous that it feels like an antidote to our cynical times, with tentpole Hollywood blockbusters and cinematic universes dominating the box office.
One such film is Karel Zeman’s wondrous Invention for Destruction, a delightful flight of fancy that continually staggers the viewer with its imagination and sense of old school adventure…
Taking ideas from several of Jules Verne’s works but based primarily on his novel Facing the Flag, it’s the story of gentlemanly megalomaniac Count Artigas (Miloslav Holub) who rules the sea thanks to his steam-powered submarine and band of pirates. The lethal craft has enabled him to amass vast wealth, plundering treasure from old shipwrecks. When there’s not a shipwreck around to plunder, he can make one, using his sub to sink merchant’s vessels.
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Now the Count wants to conquer the land and the air. To this end, he kidnaps Professor Roch (Arnošt Navrátil) and his dapper young assistant, Hart (Lubor Tokoš). The professor is working on futuristic technology, not unlike the atom bomb. While he intends the new tech for the benefit of mankind, Artigas wants to use it for a superweapon. He takes the captives to his secret lair in a dormant volcano to work on his fiendish plan, picking up a pretty survivor from a shipwreck, Jana (Jana Zatloukalová), along the way…
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