Deaf Crocodile FilmsDon’t underestimate the significance of Czech science-fiction — the word “robot” is a Czech invention, coined by author Karel Čapek for his 1920 play R.U.R. (Rossum's Universal Robots). Four years later, Čapek published the novel Krakatit, a prescient cautionary tale about a scientist who creates a seismic explosive and realizes just how hellish its impact on mankind will be. A film adaptation was produced over 20 years later, when Czech director Otakar Vávra used the precarity of post-war Europe to influence his paranoid, hallucinogenic style — making Krakatit a genre hybrid that speaks to the subversive and disquieting arrival of the atomic age.In his essay about Czechoslovak sci-fi, Martin Šrajer puts Krakatit in conversation with “the trend of post-war skeptically-oriented” films in the genre, including The Day the Earth Stood Still, Godzilla, and Invasion of the Body Snatchers. But the noirish nuclear pessimism also makes Krakatit a precursor to Kiss Me Deadly, an American noir film from 1955 that later influenced David Lynch’s Lost Highway. Now available on 4K Blu-ray through Deaf Crocodile Films, Krakatit can be your sci-fi discovery of the year.How was Krakatit received upon release?Details of Krakatit’s original Czechoslovakian release in April 1948 are scarce, but there’s a lot to glean from its historical context. The film’s atomic anxieties would have been compounded by recent events — two months before the film’s release, the Communist Party of Czechoslovakia carried out a coup d'état on the government, bringing the country into the Soviet “sphere of influence” and worsening Cold War tensions. This meant the soon-to-be released Krakatit had to receive the new regime’s approval: a 1948 press report announced that “Krakatit serves as an exceptional example of our nationalised film industry.”When Krakatit released in America in 1951, reviews were less than glowing: a critic for The New York Times singled out strong performances but complained about the “disjointed” storytelling and “overabundance” of flashbacks and dream sequences. It’s an ironic complaint — when viewed today, Krakatit’s dreamlike style is what makes it so singular.Why is Krakatit important to see now?Krakatit nails the anxieties of the atomic age. | Deaf Crocodile FilmsProkop (Karel Höger) has made the discovery of a lifetime, and it’s broken him. He’s just created “Krakatit,” an explosive substance named after the Indonesian volcano Krakatoa, but when his former colleague Jiří Tomeš (Miroslav Homola) finds him on the street, Prokop is sick and delirious. For much of the first act, Prokop slips in and out of consciousness while Tomeš grills him on Krakatit. Vávra’s slippery, shifting style sometimes blends these internal fears with external tension — Prokop wakes to discover that Tomeš has been probing him for the secrets of Krakakit while he sleeps.Paranoid and isolated, Prokop begins a surreal cross-country journey that pushes his fears of humanity obliterating itself to critical levels. He’s flattered by Carson (Eduard Linkers), who represents an arms manufacturer and introduces him to royals and aristocrats who see global war as a way of returning to their former glory. A seductive ambassador, d'Hémon (Jiří Plachý) lets Prokop in on a conspiracy of bomb-worshipping elites and whisks him to a hilltop radio station to show him a spectacle of Europe-wide Krakatit detonation.The narrative unfurls in a fluid, dreamlike manner, but with real momentum — Krakatit is a story of snowballing stakes, always undercutting Prokop’s mental and moral security with frightening revelations and new forms of imprisonment. In the final minutes, Prokop is completely alone in the desolate countryside, walking away from the factory where he tried to warn the scientists, in vain, of the Krakatit’s imminent danger. When Prokop is knocked back by the sudden explosion, the anti-atomic weapon anxiety laced through the film turns into a horrid sense of certainty. It’s the inevitable confrontation between creator and creation, the other shoe dropping on a thermonuclear scale.This resolution is so impactful because Krakatit’s classic, cautionary sci-fi premise is brought to life with surrealist touches, all of which point to our scientist protagonist’s loss of control after inventing something terrible that the world covets. Vlasta Fabianová plays a beautiful veiled woman who asks Prokop to deliver a mysterious letter, a familiar noir archetype that later turns eerie when she appears as an apparition in Prokop’s mirror. She's not the only ghostly character in the film, as Prokop is almost seduced into giving up the secret of Krakatit by a face-changing automaton and, it's implied, by the Devil himself.It's ambiguous whether these surreal choices are the product of Prokop dreaming while in a coma, but it's more interesting to think of Krakatit’s hallucinations, time slippage, and warping identities as something infecting reality itself, a side-effect of a chemical weapon that damages the human psyche long before its detonation harms our physical bodies. Prokop’s experience is the result of continuous exposure to a society that embraces more danger than it can bear.What new features does Krakatir Blu-ray have?Deaf Crocodile Films have assembled a robust package to mark Krakatit’s first ever 4K release. The new restoration comes from the original 35mm nitrate negative, accompanied by an interview with Tereza Frodlová, who works in the Czech National Film Archive. As for other supplements, the Blu-ray includes an essay from Czech film scholar Jonathan Owen, one from critic Walter Chaw, as well as a visual essay by scholar Clayton Dillard.Krakatit 4K Blu-rayAmazon -