Production History and Final Thoughts

You are now listening to the Someone's Favorite Productions podcast network . Hello, this is Erin West. I am the author of the A twenty four new wave. In this book, I look at A twenty four's output and I make the argument that we are in a new wave movement right now. A twenty four plays a major role. This book has a supplemental podcast where each episode is a brief conversation about an A twenty four related topic, whether an actor, director, or even a genre . As I continue research for the book and conduct interviews, I expect to record podcast episodes with people involved with the company. You can find the podcast at cinn ies dot com or wherever you find podcasts, and we are proud to be members of the Someone's Favorite Productions podcast network Hello , I'm Sam Dean, a writer and film historian and I am very excited to discuss visitors from Arcana Galaxy , a nineteen eighty one Yugoslavian Czech film from Dushan Vukotich . And this is a sci fi film, but one of the things that I love so much about it is it really does include a number of other genres , including things like fantasy , comedy, even horror . And this film has a number of alternate titles. The original Ghosty Is Galaxia basically means guests from the galaxy . In Czech it's, also known as monsters from the Arcanic Galaxy . And so you can find, I think, earlier versions under a number of different titles , but it's a film that I think really could only have been made by somebody who got their training in animation and it has so many inspired, absolutely gorgeous choices visually, including this really wonderful opening sequence . But I also love the premise of this film where you have Robert who's this middle or even working class middle aged guy who, as we learn later works in this hotel as a receptionist , but has much bigger dreams about becoming a science fiction author And in a lot of ways, I feel like we see his type in so much science fiction . In a lot of ways, he's your typical kind of introverted nerd character , but he is really likeable and endearing , even kind of charismatic . And he starts a novel about three aliens who live on this far away planet in this galaxy called Arcan a, and the aliens are Andra, Targu, and Ulu, the latter of whom are two children , who of course we will meet very soon . But his attempts to write this novel and fulfill his dreams are constantly interrupted by the people in his life . His girlfriend Biba , his neighbor, Tino, who is a photographer his neighbor's mother in some very, very funny scenes , and also Biba's family . And I think in a lot of ways , what's so endearing about visitors from the Arcanic Galaxy is there's a lot of really humorous domestic comedy basically about this man being haranged by his girlfriend and his neighbors and there's a lot of badgering all around . It's almost as though this is the only way any of these characters can express love, affection or basic care for others . And I just have to say , I love that in order to get inspired and motivated , he writes his novel by dictating into this little tape recorder while wearing this astronaut helmet that looks like some sort of kids toy , it's wonderful . But as you will soon see, pretty much no one in this film has boundaries from Biba to his neighbors, to their families, to even the aliens themselves later on . And I think you see that in a number of Soviet and Eastern Europe an comedies and not necessarily sci fi films, but domestic comedies, domestic dramas during the sixties, seventies, and into the eighties , when you see a lot of films set in cities that often feature characters living in crowded apartment buildings kind of on top of one another . And so I think this fits into this really interesting place where you can talk about it as this European cult film, you could talk about it as a domestic comedy, as a sci fi film, as a horror movie . And I think it also really is situated as a Yugoslavian film, which is something I will talk a lot more about throughout this commentary. But of course, it is a co production between Yugoslavia and Czechoslo vakia , which of course we have to talk about in different terms now. But I think if you were to explain it in today's standards, you would probably call it a Croatian film and that's where it's set. It makes wonderful use of the scenery. And so I think it doesn't feel quite as dingy or crowded as some of those Soviet domestic dramas that I mentioned that are much more in these kind of crowded urban spaces. Whereas there is a sense of crowding, but I think it comes from the way the characters interact with each other and impose on each other. Like this great sequence with the dog here, they're just barging into his house without even really seeing if he has the time or interest to get in the middle of this argument between the photographer and his mother . But this I think also kind of goes into this beach summer vacation territory because of the setting in Croatia, which I will talk about, but I really want to discuss the film's director a little bit first. So Duchan Vukotich was a wonderful Yugoslavian Croatian director who started off in animation as a cartoonist and And he helped form what's known as the Zagreb School of Animated Films, or the Zagreb School of Animation . Where he was born, and I want to talk a little bit about the geography and the history because I think with the ways that the region really shifted in the twentieth century, it's kind of helpful to give context to how this film came to be and the people involved in it and sort of the cultural climate in the early eighties . So when Vukotish was born, it was then the kingdom of Yugoslavia and he was born in this town called Beleska , which is now located in what's Bosnia and Herzegovina . And so Yugoslavia, which no longer exists, but you'll definitely hear a lot of very nice things being said about Yugoslavian cinema. If you have any interest in Eastern or Central European Art house films, especially from the sixties, seventies, eighties , there are some great filmmakers from this region. But Yugoslavia is basically considered to be part of the Mediterranean , of southern Europe , of central Europe and definitely also of Eastern Europe . I think you can count it as the westernmost region of Eastern Europe in some ways . And right now , what used to be Yugoslavia is a number of countries. So you have Slovenia who borders Italy on the east , Croatia , Bosnia and Herzegovina , Dalmatia, Voivodina in the north, Serbia and Montenegro . And Yugoslavia basically means land of the southern Slavs . And if you watch a lot of these films unless they're set in a kind of major urban capital , you do this wonderful Mediterranean flavor that I think can be really a surprise to American or British audiences who expect Yugoslavia and definitely Croatia to look more like Russia or this sort of traditional idea you might have of Eastern Europe . But as you can see in this film, it's absolutely gorgeous. And there have been so many struggles in this particular region over things like independence and forming an independent kind of statehood for the different countries . And they really developed out of the collapse of the Austrian Hungarian empire and the Ottoman Empire as well . So Yugoslavia doesn't really become an independent country until after World War I , when it's known as the Kingdom of Serbs, Croats and Slovenes , and ultimately just becomes the Kingdom of Yugoslavia. And this is the period in which Duchan Vukotich was born not too long after the kingdom officially formed . And I think in a lot of these sorts of films, this is definitely something that pops up in Czechoslovakian cinema . It definitely pops up in Polish and Lithuanian cinema. And so a lot of the art that came out of this region in different ways really expresses these kind of struggles for independent national identities , especially when you're talking about regions that were occupied for a long time either by, the Aust ro Hungarian Empire or later on by the Russian Empire or by the Soviet Union . And it's interesting to see film doesn't just feel like this kind of, you know, nebulous urban eastern European film, it is very specifically coastal Croatia. And interrupting my discussion of the history briefly here to talk about this great little curveball that is thrown to Robert when his coworker says to him , okay, if you're writing a science fiction novel, you have to have a monster in it. That's what the people want. You have to give the people what they want. And he kind of pushes back and doesn't really want a monster involved , but once the idea gets into his head , it has some hilarious and also quite horrific , unintended consequences that we will see later in the film . But someone I haven't mentioned who worth discussing in the context of Croatia is of course Yosef Broad ito who was the leader of the Federal People's Republic of Yugoslavia. So during World War two, Yugoslavia goes through a difficult time. It's invaded by the Axis powers in nineteen forty one and basically taken over by Nazi Germany . There was also history of a fascist movement, the Ustaza in the area who contributes to that. So that occupation is coming from internal fascism as well as Nazi Germany. So there is also a very strong resistance movement and partisan films a huge , huge part of Yugoslavian cinema history . And you get this whole branch of resistance fighters who basically declare this government in exile , which at the time was King Peter II was in charge of that government . And that all ends in nineteen forty five with the foundation of this communist government under Tito that Federal People's Republic of Yuuosklavia that I mentioned. And so Tito rules the country until his death in nineteen eighty , not too much before this film is made. And Tito really had an incredible impact on the country and I don't know if I have a ton of time to go into the communist history in this commentary because I don't think it plays a huge part into the plot of this film , but needless to say that unlike a lot of the other Soviet satellite states, places that I've mentioned like Czechoslovakia at the time, Poland Tito was really, really headstrong. In a lot of ways he was a great leader and I think really did at least in the first couple of decades, try to bring this kind of communist vision to Yugoslavia and because of that , he broke off from Stalin and from the Soviet Union, which definitely caused some problems early on , but within the context of cinema in the region , there was a lot more artistic freedom and a lot of the younger filmmakers especially could get away with more than really anyone got away with in the Soviet Union or the Soviet satellite states with the exception of Czechoslovakia for part of the sixties . And I think that period of freedom there definitely goes on to influence science fiction and fantasy films and kind of more surrealist cinema in the seventies and eighties . So I do think there is a connection there which I will talk about a little bit later on because there's this really incredibly rich history of science fiction and fantasy in the Soviet Union, even before that in Russia and in a lot of different regions of Eastern and Central Europe , and this film, of course , belongs in that tradition . And I think it can also be a little bit confusing when you hear that something is a Yugoslavian film, but you don't really have a lot of context for that now . And so because it's broken into those different countries that I mentioned earlier, you also have different languages going on . And in the twentieth century, there were a lot of regions , especially communist regions, like China is a good example of this . Where you start to have these standardized language initiatives so that everyone can understand each other. It's easier for people to be educated. And so at the time there were three major languages in Yugoslavia, and one of them was Serbo Croatian. And so Serbian and Croatian are basically sister languages and I think there is a lot of mutually exclus ive vocabulary and it's very easy to understand them both. And for a time , that fused Serbo Croatian language was one of the main languages in Yugoslavia. So I think sometimes you'll see this written as being in Yugoslavian or being in servo Croatian or being in Croatian and that is why . And now at this point, I think there's a little bit more difference because it's not sort of forced to be a standard language of a much larger country . And so I think now you'll hear people making a film in that area today just describe it as Croatian or if it's next door in Bosnian or in Serbian. And so that I think is why you have the difference here. This film also has some Check because it has a number of Czech filmmakers and performers involved and is also, as I said , a co production with Czechoslovakia, and I will talk much, much more about that . But we are coming up on this great sequence where the aliens have communicated with Robert through his tape recorder that he uses for dictation and let him know they've arrived and they're waiting for him on this island . And this is such a gorgeous place and I think one of the ways that a film like this can get around budgetary constraints and maybe even constraints of not having these big huge expensive science fict ion set pieces, but using the natural landscape in such a gorgeous way and I think because part of the film is set on this very strange old but beautiful island , it makes it feel a little bit like a fairy tale sometimes . And that definitely leads me back to my discussion of Duchenfukotich and the way that he is so important to the founding of this production company called Zagreb Film , which is one of the oldest in the area . Their main focus for a long time was on animation and that's why he's one of the founding members . He worked there as a director making short animated films for a couple of decades , made some cartoons, and of course eventually as we see here branched out into feature films . But Zegrab Film is this Croatian company based in the capital of Zegreb , founded in nineteen fifty three and they've done hundreds of films , not just animation, though certainly a lot of animation, a lot of cartoons , short films, feature films, TV series , but also , you know, TV commercials and documentaries and other non fiction films, educational things , really all over the place. And a huge, huge amount of output. They did some more popular children's cartoon series like this one called Professor Balthazar . And I think they established a name for themselves, especially in Central Europe and Europe , where some of their films, I think, were much more popular than here . And certainly they have a rich history of winning lots of film awards and that involves Vukotich . He was one of the first people, maybe the first Europe an animated filmmaker to win an Oscar for one of his short films . And I think for animation, that I for fantasy and for children's films I think leads to some of the really innovative visual decisions that you see in this film . Like some of his shorts, which are of course included in this release , give you an example of how his brain worked and really what he was capable of. Like his film Surrogot, which won the Oscar in nineteen sixty one is something that I think gave him the clout to go on and make feature films. And certainly up to the early seventies , he continued to make a lot of short films continuing on to features . But I should note that he kept making shorts off and on pretty much throughout his career . And his first feature is this nineteen seventy three cartoon film called Man The Polluter that's sort of this anti pollution pro environmental film made by Yugoslavian animators. I think there were also Canadian artists involved and And it's one of those kind of typical seventies, eighties, even early nineties cartoons the importance of saving the environment humans can contribute to that and how if they don't they will destroy the planet. And so it's good that we've taken that advice to heart . But meeting these aliens is so wonderful. I love this blue globe effect because it does lead to a very comedic scene while at the same time being wonderfully fantastic and otherworldly . And the personality of the aliens is so great because they have this kind of tension with Robert . And I love this line that we get from them about how Targo , one of the children knows that Robert wanted to remove him from the story but it didn't work . And as we see throughout the film, increasingly so by the end , you get the sense that Robert's ideas have a tendency to really get away from him . And some of his dialogue with the Androids, it sort of implies that they know they're all power and they know they're better than him , but because they came from his imagination , they're sort of beholden to him in some way . But I just want to briefly talk about Vukotish's other feature films. You have this live action movie from nineteen seventy seven called Operation Stadium , which is a historical film about that situation in World War two that I was talking about in Yugoslavia, especially in Zegreb in Croatia, about how Nazis and some of the Croatian fascists rounded up all these students and it was basically headed for disaster , but the people did fight back. And so it's just interesting to see him do a more serious World War II drama , certainly that kind of subject matter was extremely popular in Eastern Europe for decades, pretty much for all of the Cold War, because making films about the fight against fascists was considered safe subject matter because it those plots often found a way to depict the citizens of those regions essent,ially the future communists as being fundamentally heroic . He also made this documentary around the same time in ' seventy nine called Carlovach . And even though he sort of moved on from breakneck output of animated films that he made throughout the seventies , he continued, I think, to explore a lot of different fantasy themes. And this sequence in the film is one of my absolute favorites . And you know, so he goes to his psychiatrist and Robert asks what might be wrong with him , are these aliens real ? And he's telling this story to illustrate that sometimes strange things happen to him . And he's talking about how when he was a baby his mother died but he was really hungry , the bottle broke, so his father spontaneously grew breasts in order to feed him. And that's all we hear about this particular incident, but it's such a wonderful kind of quick scene of science fiction comedy . And this whole idea of the psychiatrist just like really taking this at face value, not questioning him , not considering putting him into an asylum . He just says, Oh yes, you have telergy , which as far as I know, that's not a common thing in parasychology or any kind of occult study. It's something that was invented for this film, but it's a wonderful concept that I think really lends itself to fantasy and science fiction and especially these type of somewhat lower budget productions because it's such a flexible concept that if he imagin es something , it has a chance of becoming real . And one of the things that I love about the way it shows up here is they only use it when it's convenient for the plot and it's not the main focus of the plot itself. So this isn't like a film like X Men or the Carrie film for a darker example where the whole purpose is o,kay this, person has powers and how do those powers help them help the universe ? But how do those powers also make their lives more difficult? And so here it just sort of shows up in f its and starts . And one way that that makes sense to me is this idea that he doesn't have any control over this power and it only works sometimes and it seems like it works when he's really inspired and isn't fully thinking it through or isn't using this kind of rational part of his brain . Before I get too much further, I do want to talk about the script , which was co written by Vukotich and Milos McCoreck. And Milos McCoreck was a Czech writer. He also directed films and is somebody who has over a hundred writing credits, including everything from short films , TV movies, television series , of course , feature films . His career really took off in the early sixties , but spanned several decades . And he's worked on a lot of Czech fantasy films and things like fairy tales . And I think you can really see that connection here . And some of the films that he worked on that I think might interest anyone who loves visitors from the Arcana Galaxy are things like The Man From the First Century , which he wrote in nineteen sixty two , which is this sci fi film about this worker who gets accidentally sent to space and he meets an alien . And so I think it has kind of similar plot overlaps with this film . He made some other sci fi comed , things like Who Wants to Kill Jessie from nineteen sixty six ? I killed Eisenstein from nineteen seventy , Gentleman, You are a widow , or you are a widow, sir from nineteen seventy one . And a lot of the people who worked on some of those films also worked on visitors from the Arcanic Galaxy. So there's definitely some crossover . Another really big title that he worked on as a screenwriter is this Czech film called The Girl on a Broomstick from nineteen seventy two that is basically about this young girl who's a witch and the adventures she gets up to. And in certain ways it almost feels like a studio giblee anime film except live action and a Czech film from the seventies , and he's worked with a lot of Czech fantasy directors like Vakla Vorlich , who is somebody that a number of people involved in this film also regularly worked with. I do want to talk about the cast for a minute as well . We have Zarkov Potochnik as Robert . He was a Croatian actor known for a handful of movies that I think kind of belong in this same loose sub genre , especially this film called The Rat Savior from nineteen seventy six , which is a Yugoslav ian kind of horror sci fi film that also involves this writer finds intelligent kind of powered rats who are trying to replace humans . And so it has some of that great sci fi crossover . Patochnak had a pretty prolific career up until his death . In lots of Croatian television, both TV series and made for TV movies , he's another one who started working in around the mid sixties . He's also so he's not just in science fiction films. He's also in a number of dramas that are kind of realistic dramas people just trying to live their lives, but struggling some way either because of government or city corruption or things like that . Later in the eighties after this film he made this pretty famous movie called The Glembase , which is sort of a gothic drama about this wealthy family and Zagreb who have to deal with all of these kind of issues from the past. It seems like they're cursed . And it is this kind of gothic style story about this wealthy family and how they kind of fall into debauchery . And so you do have stuff like that from the period that's examining the kind of class changes and social changes going on in that decade after the death of Tito when you have things like American capitalism and Western consumerism on the rise in the region really for the first time in decades . I actually also while we're still here should talk about the location . So this is on the coast in the city of Dubravnik in Croat and this island that we see here is called Lokrum , which is off the coast of Dubrovnik, and so pretty much what we're seeing here . And so it's really an ancient island that goes back to the Middle Ages , to the Austro Hungarian Empire when you have this Austrian archduke who has all of this area built up partly as a vacation home for himself. There's a botanical garden that you see parts of in this film . There's also this really old monastery . There's some forts from the eighteen hundreds here . So it's just such a fascinating place to be able to set a film. And they really, really make such gorgeous use of it. And I also love that not only is it this really beautiful location that sometimes feels very eerie and kind of sci fi appropriate, like these shots that take place in the coves at night time . And it almost looks like lunar rock. Like you could certainly set a science fiction film here and act like the location was not even on earth at all . But then there are those great sort of botanical garden vegetation heavy sequences where it kind of looks like a fairy tale forest , but that's not enough, and then they have to go on and I of course will talk about this when we get there a bit later . Then they have to go on and have these great landscape sequences where it's used for comedic purposes where you have all these tourists there on summer vacation who get swept up into this plot with the aliens and it is just absolutely wonderful . So I want to talk about the actress who plays Biba. She's really wonderful, Lucy Zulova , a Czech actress from Prague who is some films kind of like this , but more Czech dramas and kind of romantic comedies, things like Darling Are We A Good Match from nineteen seventy five . She was active from the mid sixties and I think her career really kind of peaked in the seventies and eighties . She's actually in I, know I mention ed the Czech director Vaklav Voilacek, who made a lot of fantasy and sci fi films . In his nineteen seventy five film, she is in that, and the other connection to this that that was also written by Milochmacorak . And it's an interesting film that I think is example of the many, many Central Europe an films and certainly lots of sci fi and fantasy films that still need to be rescued and restored and introduced to audiences . That one, it's basically about these kind of water spirits and you basically you get this family in a small town whose house is going to be destroyed and basically team up with these water spirits to try to help save their house . And a lot of these films have these great kind of references to folklore from the region that is often centuries old And I will talk more about this as we go along, but I do think there are a lot of really important connections and overlaps between Russian , Eastern and Central European folklore and the way that it develops into so many of the popular sci fi literary themes that of course trickle down into the films like this one . Andra is played by Kissinia Prohaska , a Yugoslavian actress born in Croatia . And she was mostly active in Yugoslavian films in the eighties and nineties , but she had this really interesting crossover into more international productions . And I think you do see this with some German ic and Scandinavian actors, definitely some Eastern European actors who have careers as models and go on to play these kind of exotic hot lady types. And she's definitely playing a version of that here . You might recognize her from US product ions, things like the wonderful Transylvania six five thousand , which was made just after this in nineteen eighty five. She plays the mummy character and that I think has some really fun similarities to visitors from the Arcanic Galaxy. You know, I started off talking about how this blends a lot of different sub genres together . And so does something like Transylvania six five thousand , which is a horror comedy references a lot of things like universal horror movies from the thirties and comic books and cartoons . But so basically these two reporters go to Transylvania to find Frank enstein's monster and they find this castle with all these other monsters and all this other stuff going on. But because it has this Transylvania setting , there are definitely some Europe and eastern Europe an actors involved , much like Cassenia Prohaska She's also in the Barry Levinson film Bugsy from nineteen ninety one, starring Warren Baty as Bugsy Seagull , the gangster who helped start Las Vegas . And she's in some interesting kind of bigger budget movies like those and also some lower budget thrillers, things like this Chris Christopherson movie called No Place to Hide from nineteen ninety two , and her career has such an interesting kind of wide range As far as the two Android children, Yasminka Alech plays Ulu and that is her only credit . And then Renee Bitoriac is great as Targo . And this was his first film , of course, as a child actor , and he went on to have this really prolific award winning career in Croatian cinema and I think is one of the biggest name actors involved in this movie. He's continued to be in a lot of films in Croatia and I believe also in Bosnia since the eighties and has done a lot of award winning work in the two thousands and the twenty ten s and has gone on to be in popular TV shows and things like that that I absolutely love that there's this really weird rivalry and I guess it's not that weird when you think it through, but this weird rivalry this alien family the domestic environment in Robert's what we might call earthly life . And they really clash up against each other and in a lot of ways it, results in all this comedy where of course we get, you know, Biba in her jealousy and determination to see what the hell's going on comes up against the aliens horrified and in order to kind of try to mitigate her emotions , they turn her into a cube . And so she's a cube for a kind of short period of the film, which results in some great gags where nobody believes it at first, he almost loses the cube and has to dive into the ocean to get it . But it's funny to think about how they also repres ent his dreams, his fantasy , his subconscious, and that that's what's really butting up against the people in his life who are vying for his attention , you have these aliens standing in as kind of guardians from his subconscious to protect him from the influences and the invasiveness of the outside world . I also love that this gag with Andra losing a finger goes on to become a pretty funny comedic part of the film later on . And I think with a film like this with a script that is this funny and whimsical and kind of all over the place in the way it embraces different genre elements , I think there are so many great sequences where you can tell that these are people who have worked on a lot of productions, especially a lot of fantasy and animation and science fiction , and they really know what they're doing. And of course the way that regular people are involved in a lot of science fiction and especially alien invasion plots , I think are some tropes we're really familiar with but that are very, very funny here , especially when Biba's family is involved because of how pushy they are . And you have Biba's older sister who very clearly is kind of the matriarch of the family, bosses her two younger sisters around and gives some very pushy advice and really has no patience for Robert at all, which is hilarious . This actress who plays Biva's older sister is Svieta Mesh , who is a Serbian actress from Belgrade . She's had a pretty consistent career, especially in television since around nineteen seventy . In a little bit, we'll also see Biba's younger sister played by Ivana Androlov a , who we've already seen in the film with these big headphones where she's very bubbly and friendly and interacts with everyone but really only cares about the music that she 's listening to , and I think she's meant to kind of represent this younger generation who are growing up in a very different Yugoslavia anyone in the gener ations before them . And they're much more interested in things like pop culture and western culture and consumerism . And I think you see a little bit of that here with the way that she so often in other scenes around the house has these headphones on . But Ivana Andra Lova is a Czech actress who's been active since she was basically a child act or since the mid seventies . She's in a fair amount of film and television and definitely a lot of fantasy in her early career . She's yet another person involved in this production who worked on some Vakla Vorlochek films , things like The Prince and the Evening Star from nineteen seventy nine , which I want to talk about just for a brief second because I think it's a pretty good example of some of the fantasy being made in the late seventies and the eighties . And like visitors from the Arcanic Galaxy, I think it butts up against these kind of domestic drama and domestic comedy plots . So in the Prince and the Evening Star, you have this king , like in so many fairyestal, who has these children , he wants them to grow up. He wants to take over their rightful positions as rulers or the wives of rulers . And he pressures his son to get married and then to help find husbands for his daughters . But the prince gets kind of taken in by this girl who is actually an evening star and they get married and she convinces his sisters to marry the sun or the sunbeam and the wind. And so of course the king comes home and is very upset because he doesn't have the sort of wealthy daughter and son in laws that he was hoping for, but instead these more kind of folkloric beings. And I think you see a lot of that in the sci fi a little bit, but the fantasy and fairy tale adaptations from the period definitely . But the reason that I think that's important here is a lot of those films this really delightful , kind of childish sense of whimsy . And I think you really see that come through in visitors from the Arcanic Galaxy as well, especially in these kind of vacationer sequences where people are so willing to believe things in a way that often kind of feels like it's more indebted to children's cinema than to an adult science fiction movie about alien invasion . But I should talk about the probably biggest actor in this film plays Tony, the photographer, and that is Lubisa Samargic , who started acting in the sixties . His career went up through the two thousand ten 's and I'm sorry, but this sequence is one of the funniest in the film where they find Andrew's finger and instead of anyone being able to document it, this kid just throws it right in the meat grinder and it shatters . So even though Tony is so excited that he's taking these pictures and he's going to blow his career up , instead of doing any of that , it just looks like a picture where somebody has sprinkled glass into raw meat . And Samarjick has an interesting career. I think he's somebody who started off in this working class family won some awards and studying opportunities pretty early on . He has theatrical training. He went to the Belgrade Drama Arts Acad emy and then eventually in the sixties moved on from being a primarily stage actor into cinema . And he became really popular, I think in these kinds of comedic roles. He's one of the more popular actors in Yugoslavian cinema . And around this time, I think a little bit after visitors from the Arcana Galaxy, he wasn't acting quite as much , but went on to have a career for decades and decades , started his own production company with his family . And is somebody who I think is so funny here, even though he's not in every scene, he's not really in a central role . But I think much like some of the other side characters I've been mentioning and even sort of like Robert himself . Tony is this character who's basically a middle aged guy who has these dreams he's hanging on to . But his dreams I think are an important contrast to Robert's. So Robert wants to write this science fiction novel . You get the sense that it's just something he's really, really passionate about, but he doesn't necessarily have a concrete end goal . Whereas Tony has a lot of language about how he wants to make it big and if he takes pictures of these aliens, he'll be rich and famous and that will totally make his career . And also unlike Robert who works this seemingly boring day job as a hotel receptionist , Tony is a photographer in his day job and there's you'll notice some small details, but there's this very funny sign that he has on his apartment door that says Photo Tony and his boat, which Robert borrows a couple times throughout the film, also is named Photo Tony and says it on the side . But he's some body who seems frustrated by his career which is largely taking pictures of this island and of tourists . And so it's really interesting to see a film like this that looks at this kind of small town vibe where you have all these families who are really on top of each other and as I keep saying, have no boundaries . But at the same time, it's not just a film about a small city or a village , it's also a film about this tourist beach . And in a way , especially in this sequence about halfway through the film , the whole town gets involved, especially all of these tourists who are vacationing on this island . And you don't very often see a film about alien rob ots versus tourists at the beach . And one of my favorite things about this film is instead of being scared, the tourists are very excited even after this kind of violent display here from the children , the tourists are desperate to see the aliens and just want to know that they're real And so having a character like Tony , I think much like Biba's younger sister is a little bit of a portrait of what's going on in the period, and you can certainly read his character as being this interesting commentary on the shift that's happening in the early eighties away from Tito's brand of communism and socialism to a more Western style consumerism where we have this focus on things like bourgeois life or sort of a version of bourgeois life. We have this focus on tourism and you see how Tony really wants to make a profit off of these photos . But I think the reason that everybody wants to see these aliens is part of a sense of wonder, but also part of a sense of they want to take part in this experience and take pictures on their cameras . And one of the things that I think definitely makes this more of a comedy than anything else is if you think about this in comparison to other films with aliens or alien invasion films , it's the total opposite of the standard formula, which if you think about something like HG Wells War of the Worlds and Orson Wells radio version of that and even some of the film adaptations , in that you, initially have people who are really, really skeptical that the aliens are even real . And there's the suggestion that this alien arrival can only be a hostile event and it's greeted with horror and fear once it's clear that aliens are actually coming . But this is the greatest possible alternate take on that, which is these people who are already at the beach already wearing shorts and tank tops and summer clothes, some of them are only in bathing suits and they get this incredible idea that in order to keep the ali ens from running and in order to seem not threatening , because of this woman's suggestion and this scene right here where they're all marching through this cave naked , it plays out like she's a cult leader, but she suggests that they get naked in order to not threaten the aliens and show that they don't have any weapons, they don't have anything that could harm them , and everyone just goes along with it and acts like it's a totally normal suggestion . And you could think of this as being a sort of demented sci fi comedy riff on some of those great American beach party films of the sixties with Frankie Annette . And a lot of those do pull from , you know, biker movie tropes and horror movie tropes. There's my favorite one is called the Ghost in the Invisible Bikini . You also have things like horror at Party Beach where there's this really low budget monster who comes onto this beach full of people in the sixties partying and this definitely feels like it's in that kind of extended universe where there is just this sense of absolute whimsy , even though you're dealing with aliens and later on you're dealing with monsters and it's just an absolutely delightful, really imaginative way to explore science fiction. I mean, having this naked lady screaming where your friends were opening our hearts to you , it's just wonderful . But I think also it speaks to this larger issue of science fiction in film and definitely, I think, to a degree fantasy in film . Both of those sub genres I think really have the potential to be extremely high budget. I mean, if you think about something like Game of Thrones and how expensive that TV series was to be able to show things like these castles and these fortresses , these medieval cities, these dragons . But I do think there is a way to make science fiction and fantasy without those enormous set pieces and those enormous effects expenses . And certainly at a time like this when you don't even have CGI deal with some of those practical issues , there are these great digital effects like the glowing blue orb , but so much of it is dealt with through writing and through the power of imagination . And so I think for a lot of more mainstream people who are as into science fiction , I think for a lot of people, the ultimate of science fiction seems like Star Wars , which to me is just a fantasy film that happens to be set in space with laser swords . But really, you can do something like Star Trek where it's also set in space , but it's all about the future and about a different way of imagining society . And this is something that I think really benefits from such strong imaginative writers who are used to working in things like animation and maybe working with lower budgets. So there's all this really imaginative stuff going on , but this is set in a normal apartment and deals with domestic issues , which is interesting because when you think about those kind of bigger budget science fiction movies and those sort of sci fi fantasy crossovers like Star Wars , they often deal with these huge plot problems . And by huge plot problems I mean the fate of the universe, the fate of a planet the fate of a city , or an entire people Whereas a film like this, I think, is so different and so interesting and definitely in line with some of the Czech and Polish and other Yugoslavian sci fi films happening in the period is they sometimes deal with much smaller problems with an individual person's life, an individual family or this community . And even though we see all of these beach goers and certainly some of them must be locals . Even though we see them, they're not the protagonists. Like this isn't really an ensemble film in any way. This is all about one guy and his dream to write a sci fi book that sort of turns around and disrupts his life by becoming real , which is just such a wonderful plot but definitely also does remind me of kids mov in the way that the script is okay with having this smaller scope which I think allows for more things like fantasy, like comedy, like domestic drama , where you have all these strange things happening, but because people are a little bit more open minded , often the way they would be in an animated kids film , it leads for a very different kind of script . And one of my favorite things about this film is the way in which the aliens become public and the way in which people are so willing to accept what's happening. And I think with genre cinema as a rule , horror films, thrillers, science fiction . They often play up this trope where the protagonist is kind of isolated for a time because the people around them refuse to understand or accept what's happening. They don't want to believe that anything extraordinary or terrifying or supernatural or extraterrestrial could be happening . Then they often stubbornly continue to stick to rational explanations even after they're being hit in the face with all this evidence, sometimes horrifying and violent evidence . And a lot of those films center around very kind of stolid adult refusal to believe in or even be able to see what is extraordinary . What is full of wonder and magic? And in this film , it's so different because pretty much the whole community, regardless of their social position , regardless of age , they're pretty much ready and willing to believe Robert . And certainly some characters like Biba and her sisters have some resistance , but that is sort of contrasted by showing like a hundred people naked on a beach ready for the aliens, just like ready and willing . And I do wish we got a little more of his so called tillergia ability to make his fantasies come true , but it's also great to see a slightly more grounded film that really questions what happens when your fantasies do come true and what happens when you start to lose control over them ? Which of course comes in the form of these aliens leaving the island to get away from the people . And then they all show up in his apartment without really being invited . And there's this great kind of dialogue tension that I mentioned earlier where they have all these powers and abilities and they're not pun y humans and they know that he is , so they look down on him while at the same time being aware that they belong to him because they're entirely his creations and these lines that start to get blurred where Andra wants to come into his house and start cleaning his house and wants to make him food and do all these things that Biba typically does for him that do feel like something a romantic partner or a spouse would do , and now she wants him to touch her and vice versa so that she can understand human sensation and I think more about human desire . And you start to get kind of a sexier riff on something like the Jetsons suggesting that maybe this is going to become an alien sex comedy , although it doesn't go quite that far, of course because we have these kids who get involved and I love that the kids are just stashed in the bedroom kind of hiding out in this levitation stis , and they don't want Andra's attention to go too far away from them , which is how one of them throws his monster toy into the room and we start to get a glimpse of Chekov's monster who, of course, will return and wreak vengeance before the end of the film in probably its most spectacular scene . But the fact that they are in some ways so alien and non human , I think it's really great to have this balance where they are these little kids who basically want their mom's attention and don't want her paying attention to this guy and so they get up to some hijinks and it feels like such an authentically kid thing to do . And so of course, because Andra arrives in his apartment, Robert has now sort of found himself in this love triangle between Andra and Biba . And it's not really clear what Andra's long term goals are. I mean, she's involving herself in Robert's life more and more , but it is very clear that Biba also wants his attention for herself. She gets very resentful when he takes the time to write his novel and seems desperate to pin him down in this more kind of conventional domestic life where she's his number one priority and not this science fiction novel that he's writing. And so I think Biba is this great kind of grounding element in the film where she wants to keep him down to earth . She wants to keep him living in normal society , and it's really his imagination that's the main obstacle there. And I do just want to talk about the ways in which this film borrows from, or maybe not even borrows from, but it's just sort of part of this larger framework of Eastern European and Russian and Soviet science fiction . And I think part of what is necessary to explain is that the boundaries there aren't as firm as I think they are in maybe American literature or American cinema . And I think they really have their root in the absurd literary tradition where, you have people like Franz Kafka , who is probably the best known example to Americans and English language speakers , but also the stories of people like Nikolai Gogol and Dostoevsky, and you also have this whole list of other Czech and Polish and Russian and Ukrainian and Belarusian writers really developing this literary tradition that starts out as absurdism in the nineteenth century and I think gradually grows more into science fiction in the twentieth century, especially after World War II , but they have been a staple of Eastern Europe an and Russian literature since the eighteenth century and I think really grew out of mythology and folkl ore, which is why they're all these great crossovers between science fiction and fantasy, I think, much more so than western science fiction And you really see that bleed over into cinema in the twentieth century with people like Mikhail Bolkakov and the adaptations of his novels and definitely the Strugatski brothers people, like Andre Tarkovsky have this way of combining what we would maybe think of as art house tropes with things like science fiction and absurdism and surrealis m to such beautiful ends , but also influential ends . And that's why, you know, I mentioned this kind of whole network from Russia to parts of Eastern Europe , certainly parts of Central Europe as well, where there's a lot of influence back and forth between things like fantasy, horror, science fiction, absurdism . And definitely in Russian and Eastern Europe an tradition , which sort of is a lot like the French tradition , there are much more hazy boundaries between these sub genres . So sometimes it's known as speculative fiction or scientific fantasy . In France, you have what's called the fantastique, which is this kind of umbrella anything absurd, uncanny, surreal , that it can also refer to outright fantasy or outright horror . But I think having this umbrella that includes a number of related and often overlapping sub genres is much more interesting than trying to narrowly define science fiction or narrowly putting fantasy into a specific corner . And a lot of this, especially in Russian and Eastern European literature, I think a lot of it started out more nebulous with a lot of crossover between absurdist literature, fantasy and science fiction . And I think a lot of it also started out being meant for children and adolescents . So some of the science fiction with heavier philosophical themes doesn't show up until a little bit later or maybe not in the same way . But you have people who are major literary authors like Dost ovsky , includ fantasy in his films. I mean, his novella The Double is a classic of absurdist literature and deals with all of the same types of themes that Edgar Allen Poe was exploring and later on that somebody like Franz Kafka was . He also has this utopian novel called The Dream of a Ridiculous man. And those kinds of utopian stories are very big in Russian and Eastern Europe science fiction, especially in the early decades, like in the nineteen hundreds , and they are often all about ways to imagine a different kind of society or a different way of living . And I think they changed a lot during the Soviet Socialist period, during the Cold War, especially , but early on, I think that idea of going to space, of going to Mars, of going to other planets , and finding this other way to live that maybe is futuristic and more technologically advanced or is just this kind of utopian socialist paradise . I think you see a little hint of that here in that his story isn't about Earth in the future where everyone's driving flying cars . It's about these androids with godlike powers on another planet in another galaxy pay a visit to Earth . And that really connects back to this larger web of Russian science fiction , especially in the twentieth century. And you do start to see, I think, more and more technological innovation getting into the twenties and thirties and certainly leading up to something like this , but it's not just Russian that I think plays a big role here. Certainly things like Elita from nineteen twenty three , which is about this revolution on Mars and there's all this really recognizable, gorgeous promotional material and posters where you see this female robot who does look a lot like Andre in this film , but there's also a really important tradition of science fiction and fantasy in the Czech Republic that I think is even more of a direct influence on visitors from the Arcanic Galaxy because a lot of the people making those types of films also involved in this . And I will talk about the monster in a little bit, but it is truly one of the best parts of this film and one that I think is such a wonderful surprise because for most of the movie it really seems like it's just gonna be this kind of domestic comedy that happens to have aliens , but now all of a sudden we're in this creature feature horror movie where people in a house are just absolutely being terrorized by this nightmare creature named Mumu , and you know, if you can't love that then I don't know if there's joy in your heart at all . It's just so wonderful. But the Czech history with science fiction and fantasy , I think you also have to talk about countries under totalitarianism. And certainly this happened in World War two . It happened in the Soviet Union and Soviet satellite states during the Cold War , but often in times of really conservative restrictive governments , you often find writers and artists and definitely filmmakers expl oring these kinds of genre themes , fantasy films, kids' fairy tales, science fiction , because I think it builds in this buffer that kind of protects you from censorship a little bit because your film is in no way arguably in no way about the real world, it's this total fantasy world . And of course it's more complicated than that. And in a lot of Soviet countries and certainly socialist states around the world like Yugoslavia , for a while socialist realism really was the perf erred means of filmmaking and the preferred type of subject matter . And this is basically as far from socialist realism as you can get in the best way, of course , but I do think there was space , especially in these relative periods of freedom . And I think in terms of cultural output, the eighties kind of counts in that since Tito has passed away at this point . But you do see a lot of these kinds of fantasy themes as a way to make comments about modern society without saying anything too incendiary . And I think in terms of Czech cinema and especially Czech sci fi cinema, first of all, there's a lot of great stuff that really has not had proper English langu age home video releases . And I hope a film like this encourages people to look for more Eastern European science fiction and fantasy in general . But a lot of people who worked on this film worked on a number of pretty influential Czech science fiction films that I think have overlaps with this. Things like Voyage to the End of the Universe from nineteen sixty three , who wants to kill Jesse from nineteen sixty six, which I've already mentioned because it has some cast and crew in common . Late August of the Hotel Ozone is another big one. I killed Eisen stein gentlemen, which is one I've mentioned as well as you are a widow, sir. Another big one is tomorrow I'll wake up and scald myself with tea . So there really is this kind of running tradition of great Czech science fiction films and you find it certainly in Polish cinema as well. And I think there are some overlaps here , but generally speaking, the Polish science fiction films tend to be a little bit more nihilistic, lots of existential angst , whereas the Yugoslavian and Czech films have a little bit more fantasy, sometimes a lot more fantasy, and often have a lot more comedy and whimsy . And I think it's important to say that a lot of the Czech science fiction, the literary science fiction that these films build upon and are inspired by really started out as kind of pulp fiction collected in magazines and they're really, really influenced by both Russian English language science fiction, everything from Jules Verne to some of the things that I've already mentioned like Alita . And you do start to see the kind of utopian themes in a slightly different way that show up in some of the Russian films . But I think you can draw a pretty straight line from some of that literature to these films of the seventies and eighties especially in the way that they feel like kids films. And of course , this has now become a very gory horror film, but instead of these people being dismembered feeling like a disgusting terrifying thing . You know, you have the guy's head floating in the bowl of soup that kind of comes back to life . And so it is a horror film, but there's this sense of real fun about it . And the thing that this sequence reminds me the most of is maybe something like Evil Dead , although it doesn't feel quite as scary sexually violent as certain moments in at least the first evil dead film . And the thing that it really reminds me of is something like Peter Jackson's Dead Alive where it's made with this real sense of fun . Much like Dead Alive, there is this kind of adult coming of age plot about a guy who has tension with his family and is getting this pressure from his girlfriend who wants to be with him . So there's just so much great stuff going on here and I do think there are some other Yugoslavian films that are sci fi that kind of lean into these horror themes like the Rat Savior, which I mentioned from nineteen seventy seven , which does have fantasy and horror components. You know, I mentioned that that's the one about the rat s who are trying to take over humanity sort of invasion of the body snatchers style . And some of them deal more with themes like World War and nuclear war . So this is definitely a much more fun one, even though we have this monster toy who's grown to full size and is causing just absolute mayhem . And I want to talk about performer. So of course, the suit is incredible and I will talk about that in a second . But the performer playing Mumu who's inside the suit is this Czech actor Peter Drozda . And Peter Drozda has this incredible career as an actor, but also as a stunt performer . And he's in Czech films and certain ly some other eastern European films like in Croatia and Yugoslavia, but he's also in a ton of Hollywood and international productions from around the mid nineties up until today . And he does have this great connection to sci fi and horror films. His first role was in that check sci fi film I mentioned Tomorrow I'll Wake Up and Scaled Myself with Tea, but he's also in one of my favorite German splatter films weirdly by Olaf Itenbach , this movie called Primudo's The Fallen Angel , which has a lot of incredible effects. Also, you love to see this guy stick his hand into the monster's mouth thinking, surely not . I've seen people get limbs ripped off and be decapitated, but this thing's not going to eat my hand . But Peter Drosda is wonderful here. He's also in some of those bigger Hollywood productions I mentioned like Solomon Cain , and even Ridley Scott's Gladiator, Antonia Byrd's raven ous and you'll see him credited as an actor in a lot of things as a stunt performer and also as a stunt coordinator, which is more of what he does in the more recent decades of his career. And of course, I would be an absolute villain to not talk about the incredible special effects , not only in this film, but especially in this scene where you have these people who are at a wedding, they're celebrating, they're, you know, feasting , and it gets interrupted by this monster who was kind of stowed away in a bag. And these effects are from none other than Jan Sfankmeier , the great Czech filmmaker . He started off training in puppetry , has this wonderful theatrical background , he's an artist, an animator , and one of surely the great surrealists of late twentieth century cinema , hugely influential , and this is relative ly actually early in his career, and he's somebody who worked for a long time, as I said, in puppetry and experimental theater before he started to get into like stop motion and these sorts of surrealist films that he's known for . But this sequence here, I mean the fire looks amazing. All of it looks incredible. But the sequence here, I think, is really reminiscent of some of his later films. So not only do you have these really funny effects, everything from it biting people's hands and ripping people's head off, it has these tentacles , it has eyeballs and teeth everywhere and these weird kind of ridged lip orifices . But what is so spancerian about this scene other than the great effects, including some stop motion, is he has all of these films that involve sequences where people are eating , but the way that they're edited and shot and especially the way they're edited make these really routine kind of domestic activities like eating into something strange and foreign and surreal and of ten really irritating in a way that can be very funny if you like that style of filmmaking . But so the fact that they're at this dinner party and food is involved and you have this blind guy who's just none the wiser and is just sitting there playing music . It feels a lot like the type of comedy and the type of surrealism and definitely the type of creature effects that would show up in his later feature films , where he does everything from puppetry and animation and stop motion to claymation . He's just incredible . And you know, I think it's hard for me to imagine someone making their way to visitors from the Arcana Galaxy without having seen any of his films at all because he's just wonderful. And is someone who, I think, really found a way to revive great history of check surrealism . And I don't have a lot of time to talk about this because we are very close to the end of the film here, but there's this wonderful history of deeply subversive, really surreal Czech films from the sixties , which were made in this period where there was kind of a relative thaw in censorship. And so you get all these gray edgy films that would disappear by the late sixties because of the political situation and because of the failed Czech Revolution . But I think those films begin this great cinematic tradition of surrealism that certainly begins earlier than that things like Czech literature and Czech folklore . But with somebody like Sonkmeyer, I feel like he's really picking up that torch from the sixties , which did really influence him as well. And he's now using it in his short films in the seventies and in films like this in the eighties . And he doesn't actually go on to make his first feature film until Alice in nineteen eighty eight. And I think you can see some of the work here , especially in the great dinner massacre scene . You can see them as prefiguring things from Alice , definitely prefiguring things from his just classic films like Faust from ninety four , Conspirators of Pleasure from ninety six, and so on . I should also mention speaking of Czech Talents , the cinematographer, Hiri Mach , who's somebody who worked on a lot of the science fiction I've been mentioning, like late August at the Hotel Ozone in ' sixty seven he shot and did some great work in Czech cinema. And this really is an absolutely gorgeous film. I think part of it is you have this beautiful location . You have this really talented team of young special effects wizards working on it. This amazing director with this great background in art and animation and a really talented cinematographer . Also briefly here at the end I do just want to talk about some of the production companies involved in making this film because I think it helps to sort of break down the co product ion between different countries and sort of what that means. So you have Zagreb film involved. They are the animation studio. I mentioned that Vukotich was involved in forming and was a really central presence too for decades. So it's no surprise that they helped fund this film . And they were a huge, huge production company at the time. As I said, they made hundreds of films. You also have funding from Yadran Film, who's another company from Zegreb, Croatia , they were an even bigger production companies. And certainly in their heyday , I think from the sixties, seventies to the eighties , they made some really amazing productions and they focused more so than Zagreb. They focused on feature films and live action films and worked with a lot of intern ational productions that were set in Yugoslavia and everything from Orson Welles to more mainstream Hollywood productions they were involved with and also a dozen dozens and dozens of Yugoslavian films as well . And then the third production company involved is Barondov. And Barondov is this absolutely legend ary Czech film studio based in Prague. It's one of the most important in cinema history , and it's great to see them involved here. But I think because of the location of the film and the people who worked on it , it's something that was more celebrated in Europe an cinema and certainly in people interested in fantasy cinema, like the Fantasport o film festival in Portugal, which has been going on for decades now It was honored and won an award there , but it's something that I think has never really had an audience in mainstream cinema outside of Yugoslavia or outside of then Czechoslovakia now Czech Republic . And it's something that I think will be so popular with people who like smaller, more personal science fiction films . It's an incredible comedy. It has incredible effects. I think anyone who likes Jan Spenckmeyer's work will of course want to check this out because it has such great examples of his early work . And it has this absolutely whimsical, wonderful ending where he agrees to go off with the aliens back to their home planet . And partly you get the sense that he wants to do this so that he can just finish his book in peace and work on his science fiction career . But part of it, I think also is he realizes the sheer destruction that his fantasies and his imagination has caused . And there's this great very kind of safe and comforting plot trope written in , which is that because the aliens have these godlike powers , they're able to turn time back to before when something horrible occurs. So if somebody dies , they can just kind of rewind the tape and go back to before the death, even though they still remember that it happened. And so you get this kind of nebulous ending here where he goes off to live happily ever after in the Arcana Galaxy with these aliens and then gets this call from Biba on the tape recorder. And so I think there is kind of this suggestion , which is something that you see in a lot of kids fantasy and sci fi books, there is this suggestion that the protagonist can go on to have a whole life and a whole series of adventures in this other fantastic world , but they're also still connected to home and to the people who love them in a way. I absolutely love love this film. I'm so happy it's getting a restoration and I think people are really going to be crazy about it. Certainly, I hope everyone loves it as much as I do and it encourages you to check out more Yugoslavian and Czech science fiction films Hello, my name is Kevin Tutor and I'm one of the three hosts of almost major film podcast dissecting many major indie studios in the films they release. Every week myself, Charlie Nash and Bryden Doyle discuss overlooked, forgotten, or bonafide classic indie films via studio specific miniseries. We've previously covered numerous films from Artisan Entertainment, Lionsgate Films, and New Line Cinema. Titles including the Blair Witch Project, American Psycho, Dogville, but I'm a cheerleader, Saw, rec ream for a dream, and ringmaster. You know , the Jerry Springer film. Anyways, we have a fun time every week and we hope you will join us. Subscribe to Almost Major wherever you get your podcast. Now proudly a part of the Someone's favorite productions podcast network The Audio Commentary It's a dying art form, but here at One Track Mind, I , your wonky and affable host Frian Luis Rodriguez , analyze film through the prism of these embryonic forms of podcasting one audio commentary at a time . Masterpieces, cra pster pieces, live action, animation, cult classics, films literally no one has ever heard of. No track is too small, and no track is too big. Join me and my guests from the Entertainment world as we keep these features alive every other Tuesday . 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