MartinHafer Jan Svankmajer is certainly one of the strangest filmmakers in history....and I am not talking about strange but mega-strange...and often very creepy. This Czech filmmaker has been working on mostly stop-motion films for decades and the movies are almost impossible to describe....you just have to see them to believe the weirdness of Svankmajer's imagination! His version of "Alice in Wonderland" ("Alice", 1988) is about his most bizarre films. But tonight I finally got to see his "Greedy Guts" (also called "Little Otik") and certainly didn't disappoint when it comes to weirdness!"Greedy Guts" is unusual for Svankmajer in that it's mostly a live action film...with some stop-motion here and there. In this bizarre fairy tale- like story, a young couple want to have children but cannot. One day, the husband pulls up a tree stump and fashions it into a crude version of a child. While it obviously looks almost nothing like a child and he apparently intended it as a joke, his deranged wife believes it's her new baby and goes to amazing lengths to convince her neighbors she's pregnant. Ultimately, she pretends to go into labor and soon comes home from the hospital with this tree stump baby! But the couple hide the fact that it's a stump and pretend as if the child is real...and the neighbors are fooled.Now I know this sounds strange....but soon the film will go off the deep end in strangeness! Soon the woman begins to feed this 'baby' cabbage soup. However, the baby soon magically becomes a living creature...and it doesn't want soup...it wants meat! First, it eats a few pets...which is annoying enough. But then it eats a neighbor...and then another neighbor...and then another! But the foster parents of this abomination cannot bring themselves to kill the monster and so they keep it hidden in the basement. During this time, the little girl you've seen throughout the film finds Little Otik and befriends it...and begins bringing it food as well! What's next in this super-bizarro but well made film? Well, get the DVD from Netflix and find out for yourself. And, if you think of it, try "Alice" as well. I would like to say you won't be sorry...but you might! The films are not for normal folks but offer a twisted version of stop-motion that is hard to fathom until you see it for yourself!

Imdbidia A bizarre horror-comedy by Surrealist master Jan Svankmajer that adapts and reinterprets the folk story of Otesanek (aka Greedy Guts) for the big screen.Otesanek tells the story of the struggle of a childless couple, Bozena and Karel, to hide and control heir piece-of-wood son Otesanek -a freak of nature with an insatiable appetite that they brought to life- and to stop him behaving wildly.The film re-examines the myth of the primeval creation, in which the natural order is subverted and disrespected. The couple succumbs to an act of greedy love that produces, as a result, a greedy gluttonous carnivore despite the creature being a piece of wood.On the other hand, Svankmajer depicts with great insight the sins of parenthood in our modern world, in which children are spoiled rotten, to whom everything is allowed, any bad act excused, and nothing denied.The movie also depicts with great humor and realism the social dynamics of small groups in blocks of apartments and neighborhoods, paced by gossip, the power of appearances, the help and support neighbors give to each other, the enmities and tensions existing amongst them, the human types that populate them, etc.The role of food in this movie is also very interesting, as most human characters in the movie eat disgusting porridge-ish meals, despite them fancying meat, while Otesanek is the only one eating meat all the time! The Actors are all great and charming in their respective roles. Veronika Zilková plays with great conviction the non-easy to play barren wife Bozena, while Jan Hartl plays with sweetness her doubtful and confused husband Karel. Also terrific are the actors playing the good-hearted neighbors: Kristina Adamcová as the incisive rebel child Alzbetka -who is also the catalyst of the story-, Jaroslava Kretschmerová as Alzbetka's sensible Mother, Pavel Nový as Alzbetka's typical working-class male Father, and Dagmar Stríbrná as the patient caretaker.The stop-motion animation of Otesanek is delightfully awkward, especially when Otesanek is a baby, and the illustrations by Svankmajer's wife for the original tale in the book Alzbetka is reading are beautifully colorful and artistic. They are a contrast to the ugly-looking 70-80s colors and lighting with which Svankmejer shot the movie. Also delightful are the episodes involving the old spectacled neighbor and Alzbetka, which are really naughty.On the negative side, beyond the ugly film and colors used, the movie is too long and its pace too slow at times.A grotesque mesmerizing humorous adult tale with a great story, terrific performances, and very interesting themes. This is not a film for lazy watchers, though.

Tim Kidner To those who won't go near World cinema and can't even be talked into giving it a try, Little Otik will (justifiably, maybe) bolster their viewpoint with the oft conceived negative aspects they see some world cinema to have with many elements contained within this part-animated, Czech horror/comedy/drama. It's incoherently weird. A sassy young Czech girl, our protagonist has long blonde ponytails and talks a lot. She has typically Czech parents (or as stereotypes would have us believe); father drinks a lot and watches TV, mother makes vegetable soup with few vegetables - and other various pureed concoctions - all in close up. They live in the next apartment to a young barren couple. Otik, a tree stump, is dug up by the husband and given to comfort his distraught wife, after they return with the bad news from the fertility clinic. This lump of wood has knots and twigs sprouting where male human bodily parts are situated and look rather obviously so. We are left in no doubt as to which parts are what. 'Little' Otik immediately becomes surrogate son to the mother as she takes to it as her very own.One of the most creepy things I've seen, ever, is the animated wooden mouth - and moving 'wooden' lips of this log, suckling on the lovely, womanly breast of its 'mother' as it feeds. Superbly done. She beams, besotted, across to her husband - a perplexed and rather nerdy looking office clerk.To cut a long story short (this is one LONG movie, especially if it's viewed on a commercial TV station - with advert breaks it runs to over 2.5 hours) Otik grows into a giant meat-eating freak, cuckoo-like in its ever open greed for more. First the dog gets 'it', (or was it the cat?) then the janitor, who lusted after the young girl with the pony-tails and soon Otik finds the not particularly welcomed, but plump social worker, come to check up on the "baby" pretty tasty, too! And whatever happened to the postman? The couple themselves, the family in the next apartment, the young girl especially, all try to cover up the ever more ridiculous scenarios, each becoming ever more hilarious. Whenever we see Otik other than a when in his log-like state, he is animated, which means he springs to life, stop-go and superimposed imagery transforming, he changes quickly, often violently, at times crudely and at others skilfully. Reminding me of the Hungarian movie 'Hukkle' (Hiccup), where the basic needs and functions surrounding birth, food and death seem to be under intense scrutiny, Little Otik both celebrates and deplores these themes. Drawn from folklore and even a fairytale, the story triumphs and decries them. Taints of Polanski's Rosemary's Baby creep through; that distaste, that intense sense of wrongness.As to the best in East European cinema bit; well, it's unique, for one. Individual, as in that it genuinely produces something far more scary than bumps in the night and big flashes of thunder. Because it relates to our very base human instincts. It is also at times outrageously funny. I've seen this brilliant, yet weirdly bad film twice - about the number of times its been on UK TV that I'm aware of. One could score it anything from 1 point, to ten; with full justification. Go for it if you feel you could be up for it, but if you're not sure about the whole world cinema scene, steer clear. I wouldn't want this oddity to influence you badly against some of the best cinema going.

GoregirlsDungeon This is one fractured little fairytale! More Grimm Brothers than Disney, it is a truly twisted tale that is definitely not for the kiddies. It is a live action feature with stop motion animation sequences scattered throughout. The characters, although actual actors almost seemed animated themselves. The way it was filmed gave me the impression I was a witness to someone's actual dream (or nightmare). The choice of cast could not have been better. The performances are excellent and even the secondary players are perfect in their roles. The wife is absolutely mad and the husband knows this but cannot quite bring himself to deal with it. He spends much of the picture ranting and raving at the lunacy of it all. The wacky couple are nicely complimented by a parade of strange supporting characters. Among them, a little girl obsessed with sex and babies and a pedophile senior citizen. The characters imagine seeing some truly bizarre images. The first scene is our husband looking down on a fishmonger from a gynecologists office window. Instead of taking fish from the tank he is scooping up babies in his net and wrapping them up in newspaper. And of course there is little Otik. He's a freaking tree stump. An ugly, crying gnarly tree stump. At one point the mother scolds her husband for not varnishing her son enough. There is a body count, but I wouldn't necessarily recommend this to hardcore horror fans. This is for anyone who tastes run towards the strange and unusual. I did feel that the film runs a little long and I would have liked to have seen more of the stop motion animation. The film isn't going to be for everyone as it is definitely odd. It is delightfully demented and at times even disturbing but absolutely entertaining. It is a feast for the eyes and an assault on the senses. Highly Recommended!