WHO WANTS TO KILL JESSIE? 1966. Originally released in Czechoslovakia as Kto chce zabíc Jessii? Director: Vaclav Vorlicek.

   Despite the title, Who Wants To Kill Jessie (1966) is not a murder mystery, but a Czechoslovakian pop-art sci-fi satire (you know the type) made the same year as Alphaville and sharing many of that film’s fetishes for pop culture and politics.

   An eminent (and rather dowdy) female scientist invents a serum designed to purge dreams of their unsettling elements, leading to happy, productive dreams (“No longer will people be allowed to dream anything they wish.”) and when she discovers her husband dreaming of a scantly-clad comic-strip heroine constantly menaced by a cowboy and a superhero, she purges his dream, only to have the characters materialize and begin a comic chase through their society.

   A basic situation that could have led to facile clowning or heavy moralizing in lesser hands is handled here with charming slapdash panache and innocent energy delightful to watch.

   Director Vaclav Vorlicek mixes sight gags and verbal humor (that survives the subtitling surprisingly well) with a deft touch and an obvious love of the comic-book culture he’s exploiting, and his players (whose names would mean nothing to you) convey a conflict of bureaucratic buffoonery and pulp-paper passion with that sincerity which is the essence of Comedy. A film that deserves a bigger reputation.

   By the way, I know I said the cast names would mean nothing to you, but for the sake of Academic Correctness, I should add that the actress who plays the comic-strip-heroine starred in some enjoyably gaudy English-language films (like The Vengeance of She) and eventually found her way into the December 1969 issue of Playboy.

   Just thought I’d mention it.

Editorial comment:   And on the cover of the March 1964 issue. Worth mentioning, too, perhaps?