VividSimon Simply Perfect

Maleeha Vincent It's funny, it's tense, it features two great performances from two actors and the director expertly creates a web of odd tension where you actually don't know what is happening for the majority of the run time.

Zlatica One of the worst ways to make a cult movie is to set out to make a cult movie.

Marva It is an exhilarating, distressing, funny and profound film, with one of the more memorable film scores in years,

christopher-underwood I saw rather a lot of East European 60s cinema back in the day but had never heard of this one. Seems it only came to light recently so that explains that because otherwise I was bound to have stumbled upon it as it is such an amazing film. From the stunning opening credits, beyond the startlingly close-up shots of a family visit to the zoo, and on as the cremator of the title goes from seeming curious, to creepy and downright cuckoo, and worse. Spellbinding imagery plus the doings of this extremely worrying man hold ones attention throughout as this caring family man leads us and everybody else to the abyss. There are so many ways in which the director ensures that we follow his narrative flow despite ourselves. This is a very uncomfortable film to watch. The way the cremator has to touch everybody, dead and alive, the way he must comb his hair after that of a corpse and then his own family but there is so much worse to come.

Terrell-4 This odd, calm, unnerving Czech movie is not for the faint of heart. It's not for those who mind some slow stretches, either. Still, there is a masterful, upsetting, sad, frightening and crazy-as-a-loon ending that brings the movie back sharply into focus Kopfrkingl is the director of the town's only crematorium, a business his father started 40 years earlier. The place is Czechoslovakia just before WWII. Nazis and their Czech collaborators are soon to take over. Kopfrkingl is a sincere man, a bit pudgy, in early middle age who is dedicated to the services he provides. He thinks of his crematorium almost as a temple. He's married to the woman he met at the panther cage in the zoo. He has two children. He dotes on them all. He has an elderly Jewish doctor check his blood every month to make sure, he says, that he has caught nothing from his corpses. He's probably more worried about catching something from his favorite prostitute he visits every month. He is teaching a young, new assistant the procedures of the crematorium. We see all this in the first twelve minutes of the movie...and if these first twelve minutes of Spalovac Mrtvol (The Cremator) don't capture you, then you're no connoisseur of the odd and unsettling. For that matter, if Rudolf Hrusinsky's portrayal of Kopfrkingl doesn't capture you with his quiet voice and solicitude, then you're no connoisseur of odd and unsettling characters. "Cremation is humane," Kopfrkingl tells his 14-year-old son, Mili, his 16-year-old-daughter, Zina, and us, "It rids people of the fear of death. Dear children, do not fear cremation." Death is just the liberation of the soul. The purity of cremation brings purity to the soul. Only 75 minutes in the oven and the cremator has returned dust to dust, and without the messiness that the other way guarantees. It will be only a matter of time before Kopfrkingl's Czech friends with pure German blood show him that a new order is needed to bring purity and rectitude. His crematorium will give his life its own purpose and purity that was meant to be. An hour into the movie we learn how calm and monstrous he is. Since Kopfrkingl is, of course, as crazy as a loon...a calm, soothing loon. He combs a corpse's hair, then without a thought combs his own hair with the same comb. Kopfrkingl's calmness comes from the certitude that what he does serves a noble purpose. There is tenderness but without compassion, morals but without morality, love but without commitment, belief but with nothing but derangement. Did I mention...his wife had a Jewish grandmother and his children are now classified as part Jews? To be cleansed, we all must die. "Frost burns the flowers' flush cheeks, and the Angel of Death takes his toll." The Cremator is not at all a black comedy. It's more an ironic funeral dirge. Once we get the point that the director, Juraj Herz, sets up for us, there's not much more to develop. What's left is to watch how things play out. An hour into the movie we realize things will not play out well for almost anyone. In a strange and perhaps unplanned reversal of symbolism, the Nazi slaughter of Jews involving the efficient use of crematoriums becomes a metaphor for Kopfrkingl's looniness. Shouldn't it be the other way around? By the end of the movie, it is. Give this movie a chance and I think you'll be rewarded.

oowawa This film is hypnotic. The soothing voice of the lead character, coming out of his cherubic always sweetly smiling face, almost lulls the viewer into a serene calm--if not for the fact that we know in our guts that this is the calm a cobra induces in its prey before the kill. This is, after all, Czechoslovakia on the eve of being taken over by Hitler, and the main character runs a crematorium. We know what is coming next. And yet, we cannot take our eyes from the screen; we are filled with foreboding.Like the best of Fellini, the director, Juraj Herz, frames virtually every scene perfectly; a collection of stills taken from this black-and-white masterpiece could fill a photographic art gallery with a distinguished collection indeed.How could the holocaust ever have happened in the middle of the most "civilized" culture in the world, the cradle of elegant music? How could rational "civilized" human beings have abetted this monstrosity? This film provides a fable that can help us answer these most important questions. But do not think this movie is some boring treatise on the banal roots of evil. It is a very entertaining horror film that will keep you spellbound.

NateManD "The Cremator" is a film that is dark and unforgettable with its horrifying images. At times it's an extremely dark comedy, but mostly a psychological horror satire. In Wold War II Czechoslovakia, Kopfrkingl is a rich and wealthy cremator. He's obsessed with his job to the point of sadistic insanity. He thinks that cremating people is a way to free them for the afterlife. His hunger for power causes him to join up with the Nazi occupiers. That's when he really goes nuts, he even thinks his family needs to be killed; including his son Milli for being too flamboyant. He takes over the crematory by murdering the head director. He longs to build a larger crematorium, where he can pretty much dispose of anyone not living up to the Reich's standards. Again in his own sick mind, he wants to free them for the afterlife and reincarnation. The film is extremely disturbing in it's psychological atmosphere. Director Juraj Herz builds tension as the film progressively gets worse as it goes on. Amazing cinematography, surreal images and a hallucinatory feel. Herz has created a masterpiece that still remains undiscovered to many. Also the film was pretty groundbreaking for its time with its sexual content and macabre violence. So watch "The Cremator"; it's worth tracking down a copy.