Valerie and Her Week of Wonders (1974)

Very very predictable, including the post credit scene !!!

What makes it different from others?

Surprisingly incoherent and boring

Your blood may run cold, but you now find yourself pinioned to the story.

Once upon a time there was filmmakers free to do whatever they wanted and it was glorious! This movie is purely refreshing. Between Nosferatu, Lolita and Alice, there's this erotic fantasy. Freedom without judgment. I'm not sure I understood everything, but isn't it the point? Like a dream a little bit dizzy a little bit confused. It was weird and magical. Valerie and her week of wonders is the best Alice I've ever seen. This movie is a delightful experience.

Sweet and virginal young lass Valerie (well played with wide-eyed charm to spare by the delicately fetching Jaroslava Schallerova) undergoes a sexual awakening in a strange, yet sensual fantasy land where she runs afoul of a creepy vampiric being known as Polecat (a marvelously sinister portrayal by Jiri Prymek) and gets accused by the superstitious locals of witchcraft.Director Jaromil Jires, who also co-wrote the thoughtful script with Ester Krumbachova, does a masterful job of crafting a beguilingly dreamy and surreal atmosphere that's bristling with dark emotions, barely suppressed carnal desires, and severe religious repression. Moreover, Jire not only manages the remarkable feat of presenting a genuinely arousing mood that never becomes too explicit or remotely exploitative, but also delivers a potent and provocative central message on the impossibility of preserving a state of childlike innocence for perpetuity. Petr Kopriva contributes a likable turn as Valerie's smitten boyfriend Eaglet while Helena Anyzova does impressive work in the dual roles of both Valerie's stern grandmother and wicked aunt Elsa. Jan Curik's sumptuous cinematography offers a wealth of striking poetic imagery. Lubos Fiser's gentle folkloric score hits the harmonic spot. Recommended viewing for fans of esoteric cinematic fare.

Second Run DVD brought out an excellent edition of this film in 2008. It's a new digital transfer that, while not quite up to Criterion standards, does justice to this criminally neglected film. Nice extra features, too: an informative introduction by film historian Michael Brooke; an interview with Jaroslava Schallerova (Valerie); and a superb booklet, containing an in-depth essay and a lovely appreciative piece by Joseph A. Gervasi of Exhumed Films. This dream of a film seems to have been a one-off for director Jaromil Jires, whose other films - from what I've read - appear to be more conventional in scope. There are so many films that deserve to be consigned to the celluloid bonfire. This is not one of them. Well done, Second Run!

This came to me yclept "The Valerie Project" as a buncha Yank musicians turned down the soundtrack and cranked up their own (it's got subtitles, so why not?) This made it an Event, and a highly enjoyable event it was. But what counted was the movie itself, which ain't no tractor movie although it was made under the watchful eyes of Soviet occupation in late sixties Czechoslovakia. What it is is a surrealist pedophile vampire movie, with that inimitably Czech edge of absurd creepiness. The rhythms are all angular, the camera placements gratuitously audacious, and the acting is as bizarrely theatrical as the makeup, with a bad-toothed road company Max Schreck scooting around town and helping Valerie's unconvincingly aged grandmother rediscover her lost and horny youth. The imagery is so compellingly sensual that you don't really get too worried about the fetishization of the 13-year-old protagonist - it's more Alice in Wonderland than Stealing Beauty, and anyway everything else is so utterly upside-down, you don't have time to think about it. It's totally nuts, and a great time was had by all. Before the screening a Czech diplomat came out to assure everyone that "Not all people from our country are vampires"!