I understand it was Saturday 16th January 1982 when I first saw this film. Dallas was on BBC 1 and Match of the Day wouldn't start for another half hour or so. So my brother and I decided to watch the beginning of this film on BBC 2 and then turn over for the football. Except we watched the whole thing. It really was that good.

Fast forward to 2006 and I finally got a copy of the DVD in my grubby mitts. I had to get it from the Czech Republic but it's PAL and the same region as the UK. I watched it and couldn't believe just how much I remembered from over twenty years previously.

Petr Koska is brilliant in his three roles: Jan Bures, Karel Bures and Jan pretending to be Karel. In this third role he improves his performance to the other characters as the film goes on because he has figured out how the plot should take shape after nearly mucking things up somewhat the first time round.

For me, getting the DVD has been a delightful piece of nostalgia!

With this being one of the first Czech Sci-Fi movies that I heard about,I was disappointed to find that the only DVD on sale was an expensive out of print edition.Whilst looking on Youtube for other Czech films,I was delighted to somehow stumble upon this title,which led to me getting ready to scald myself with tea.

The plot:

Spending his life regretting that Hitler failed to win (!),former Nazi Klaus Abard decides to travel back in time with modern weapons that will help Hitler to win the war.Joined by some of the world's brightest,the time travelling machine driver Karel Bures goes for a bite with his twin brother Jan,and ends up choking to death on a bread roll.Aware of the mission that Karel has signed up for,Jan decides to secretly pretend to be his brother.Going back in time,Jan,Klaus and the other guests get an unexpected frosty reception from Hitler.

View on the film:

Shot when the Soviet Union was building major new infrastructure in the country,co-writer/(along with Josef Nesvadba & Milos Macourek) director Jindrich Polák and cinematographer Jan Kalis wrap the movie in an oddly optimistic atmosphere,thanks to breaking out of the studio and using the new buildings for a chic Sci-Fi sheen,and the frosty outdoors to cover the gang in the ice of Nazi Germany.Making most of the gang Nazi supporters,the screenplay by Polák/ Nesvadba and Macourek treads a fine line by taking a merciless dagger to the gang,who the writers hilariously paint as being a bunch of pompous, stubborn buffoons who even get on Hitler's nerves.

Joined by a funky score from Karel Svoboda,the writers superbly loop the Sci-Fi loop with real precision,as an avoidance of the "traditional" time travel changes history route leads to the opening of alt realities and sharp twist and turns in the trust that the gang have for each other.Taking on two roles, Petr Kostka gives an excellent performance as Jan and Karel Bures,who Koska makes look wonderfully uncomfortable in their own skin,as the Bures scald themselves with tea.

The problem is that he scalds himself with coffee. That triggers an avalanche of complications, centered around a plot to use the latest time travel technique to go back for a visit at Hitler's to present him with a recently stolen A-bomb to make him win the war, but as is commonly the case with political intrigue, things don't always turn out exactly as expected or planned.

Just to mention a few of the complexities, the pilot has a twin brother, and as one of them chokes on a roll his brother takes his place without knowing what on earth he is going for on this trip, and accidentally a few time travel tourists are booked on the same trip without knowing they will be joining some modern nazi weirdos on their venture to make Hitler win the second world war. There are many such complications, for instance, accidentally, the time travel rocket lands three years before schedule just after Pearl Harbor when Hitler stands outside Moscow and is already certain that he can't lose the war, so there is some double confusion here.

It's a brilliant tongue-in-cheek comedy all the way, and it's admirable how serious everyone remains in the middle of amounting hilarities that constantly increase in absurdity. The paralyzing pistol that turns its victims green is sensational. This is a unique science fiction comedy of refreshing self irony all the way, making fun of everything, society, bureaucracy, gangsters, Nazis and even the genre itself, while at the same time there is some serious business: the highlight is the tremendous scene with Hitler himself when he is compelled to watch documentaries from the future of the fall of his Reich with its consequences. Of course, he can't believe his eyes, and still, when he is alone, he can't resist the temptation to watch it all over again, not to gloat in it, but to try to understand what is to him absolutely impossible. This is ingenious science fiction with an intelligent psychological touch to it.

The whole film is over-intelligent, and as the complications keep towering it becomes increasingly difficult to follow the constant turnings of the bizarre events which eventually turn to some heaps of killings, but it all makes sense at least mathematically and logically, although fortunately so far it is all completely impossible - unless you believe in Stephen Hawking's persistent assertions. Maybe he is next to be favored by some cure from the future...