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Who Wants to Kill Jessie?
[Blu-ray]
Blu-ray ALL - United Kingdom - Second Run Review written by and copyright: Eric Cotenas (6th October 2025). |
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The Film
 While scientist Ruzenka Beránková (Ikarie XB 1's Dana Medrická) has developed a serum that can influence dreams – demonstrating her invention on a cow whose nightmares of being bedeviled by gadflies are observed by her and her colleagues through the Wiseman Picture Tube – her husband Jindrich Beránek (The Cassandra Cat's Jirí Sovák) is attempting to crack the secret behind anti-gravity gloves, inspired by the comic strip "Who Wants to Kill Jessie?" about a buxom female scientist constantly imperiled by a villains after her inventions for nefarious purposes after discovering his subordinates in possession of the illicit reading material. Curious about her husband's disturbed sleep after their weekly conjugals, Ruzenka snoops on his dreams and grows jealous when seeing him in the company of a beautiful blonde woman. She injects Jindrich with her serum and banishes him to the couch, unaware of the side effects of her invention which in ridding the subject of their dream matter materializes it into the real world until Jindrich wakes up with Jessie herself (Adela Has Not Had Supper Yet's Olga Schoberová) in his bed while Ruzenka finds cowboy villain Pistolnik (I Killed Einstein, Gentlemen's Karel Effa) in the bathtub and evil Superman (Juraj Visny) raiding the kitchen. Locking the contents of her husband's imagination in the apartment, Ruzenka discovers that this is no mere fluke as the institute is infested with gadflies and the yeasty contents of the dreams of orderly Kolbaba (Tomorrow I'll Wake Up and Scald Myself with Tea's Vladimír Mensík) fills the shelves: "Think what would happened," cries her superior "if someone had some absurd dream and the visions ran amok in the street? A catastrophe!" Focused on realizing the anti-gravity gloves, Jindrich sends his assistant Ivanka (Ferat Vampire's Ilja Racek) to retrieve Jessie – who can only speak in speech bubbles – not realizing that Ruzenka has sent Kolbaba to get rid of Pistolnik and Superman, leading to more confusion when the police also respond to the complaints of neighbors about the destruction radiating outward from the Beránek apartment. While Jindrich is serving a three-day sentence for his part in the massive public disturbance of Jessie and the villains, Ruzenka and her colleagues seek a means of destroying these "visions" whose imaginary superpowers prove formidable to traditional methods. An example of Czech cinema's "crazy comedy" less seen outside the country due as much to its off-the-wall content as its heretofore critical and scholarly derision as a popular genre the largely evaded censorship issues and was thus assumed to be empty of substantive ideas and social commentary, Who Wants to Kill Jessie? is a collaboration between two of the genre's specialists director Václav Vorlícek (How to Wake a Princess) and screenwriter Milos Macourek (Visitors from the Arkana Galaxy) who also penned a few works in the genre for better-known colleague Oldrich Lipský including Happy End (also featuring Mensik). Beyond the absurd surface, however, is a pointed critique of authoritarian regimes illustrated in the contrast between the married couple. Ruzenka develops an invention with beneficial potential to "healthily" infuence dreams which she then puts to personal use when struck by jealousy of a figment of her husband's imagination – seemingly a blow to her ego since she seems to possess as little affection for him as their dog, both of which she treats like test subjects like the rabbits she tasks her husband with looking after that he treats like pets – while Jindrich is inspired by the fantastical comics into creating a device with immediate practical benefits with little thought to its potential for misuse. Superman proclaims (in speech bubble) "liberty for dreams" and Ruzenka seems to take the role of the prosecutor when the three "visions" are rounded up along with her husband, declaring that while dreams cannot be sued for damages, "we can sue the dreamer." Not only does the judge absurdly order Jindrich to stop dreaming but the inhumane – Ruzenka tells her colleagues the visions are technically not human – attempts at destroying them become a spectator sport eagerly observed by them until Ruzenka is struck by Superman's manly immortality. Meanwhile, Jindrich only escapes jail to finish the antigravity gloves – which is only "inspired" by the comic strip not materialized into reality, with Jindrich working out the formula in pencil on the cell walls – in order to rescue Jessie whose only input is to point out an error in his calculations. Ruzenka does develop an antidote serum but immediately misuses it while there is a hint that things might not be so different between Jindrich and Jessie in the real world. Macourek's and Vorlícek's further collaborations included the popular fantasy film Girl on a Broomstick which was popular enough in West Germany to lead to the co-produced miniseries Arabela and its later follow-up series but Vorlícek's most popular work remains Three Wishes for Cinderella, a widely-seen holiday favorite annually in co-production countries Germany and Norway (who recently produced a remake). 
Video
The only English-speaking country Who Wants to Kill Jessie? apparently played in originally was Australia, but it did get exported to several eastern and western European countries, being particularly popular in Italy with a version that included some scenes shot exclusively for their market. The film made the rounds on the bootleg circuit with a dodgy translation before a DVD was released in the Czech Republic with optional English subtitles which was ported to Italian DVD by NoShame films including the English subtitles while also adding the Italian version in its entirely along with the scenes exclusive to that version as a separate extra while the PAL master was also ported over to the United States by Facets (there was another Czech release from a newer HDTV master but it was not English-friendly). Second Run's 1080p24 MPEG-4 AVC 2.35:1 widescreen Blu-ray comes from a "new HD transfer by the Czech National Film Archive" rather than a restoration, so rather than the archive's efforts to clean up everything but the defects organic to the theatrical projection, this transfer boasts light archival damage throughout which is sometimes difficult to distinguish from the generational loss throughout due to extensive use of opticals including comic strip speech bubbles – which the "human" characters must read to understand – action lines, and various materializations and dematerializations (even the opening credits consists of both animation and further optical overlays). The dream sequences in Jessie's domain along with some sewer scenes and a couple night exterior shots seem darker than they should be which might be due to the greater contrast of the print materials (since the Italian version features its own speech bubbles, it is unknown whether all of the optical shots are separate from original camera negative if still existing or if they would have been cut into the negative after an export element was created). 
Audio
The sole audio option is a Czech LPCM 2.0 mono track that sounds clean enough. Dialogue is post-dubbed and hiss is at a minimum during silent passages. Apart from the credits, music functions more as commentary, accenting the fantastical bits while sound effects can be exaggerated but it is not a particularly elaborate mix (it is too bad the film was not mixed in four-track stereo like the earlier The Cassandra Cat whose surround track is preserved on the Second Run Blu-ray). 
Extras
Extras include what is described as a "commentary" but is actually an episode of the Projection Booth by podcasters Mike White, Jim Laczkowski, and Jonathan Owen from 2018 in which they puzzle out some of the plot based on subtitles from earlier releases – points which are clearer in this disc's translation – while also discussing the Czech "crazy comedy" genre, the careers and filmographies of Macourek and Vorlícek including some unavailable films that sound interesting on the basis of their titles alone, genre colleague Lipský, and the film's cast. They also discuss the film's veiled social commentary and themes of social control and creative freedom (as well as suggesting a degree of chauvinism in its treatment of the female characters).  Also included is "Those Crazy Czechs" (47:04), a video essay by film historian Michael Brooke who discusses the key elements of the genre – including the wacky titles, deranged premises, and the recurring casts – and the reasons that critics were so dismissive of them and continued to hold them up as ideologically suspect until more recent assessment. Brooke also discusses the key practitioners, particularly the aforementioned Vorlícek and Lipský along with writer Macourek (revealing that Macourek and Lipský even fell out briefly because the latter was annoyed that the former did not bring Who Wants to Kill Jessie? to him despite the fact that it was Vorlícek's idea). He also provides background on the film's unproduced color English-language remake. Brooke provides an overview of their collaborations as well as other tantalizing films including Lipský's hugely-successful Lemonade Joe and Happy End as well as The Cassandra Cat (also available from Second Run). The disc also includes Vorlíček's 1955 short film "Directive [Direktiva]" (23:38). 
Packaging
Housed with the disc is a 24-page booklet with new writing on the film by author and Czech cinema expert Jonathan Owen who covers a lot of the same ground as the commentary and interview about the collaborations of Macourek and Vorlícek but does provide a bit more detail about the development of the script and production as well as Owen's own observations about the film's characters and themes.
Overall
Although director Václav Vorlícek was better known for the enduring holiday favorite Three Wishes for Cinderella, Who Wants to Kill Jessie? gives Western viewers more insight into his career as well as the "crazy comedy" genre beyond the more recent releases of films by colleague Oldrich Lipský.
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