Deaf Crocodile has two new releases:

Bubble Bath: Hungarian director György Kovásznai’s wildly idiosyncratic animated musical is one of the most indescribably strange, personal and totally irresistible cartoon features ever made. A walking ball of anxieties, shop window decorator Zsolt (voiced by Kornél Gelley, with Albert Antalffy singing) bursts into the apartment of his fiancée’s best friend Anikó (voiced by Vera Venzcel, with Kati Bontovits singing), paralyzed with fear at his impending marriage. Zsolt is like a stoned hippie alleycat, or an Eastern European Frank Zappa in a tux; medical student Anikó a more curvaceous and leggy post-modern Betty Boop – and both unsure of their attraction to each other, of the choices they’ve made, of what life has in store for them.

A truly insane mash-up of styles, from 1920s Art Deco to 1960s Psychedelia to late 1970s louche Roxy Music decadence, Bubble Bath is incredibly restless and creative, the bohemian love-child of Bill Plympton’s off-kilter individualism and Ralph Bakshi’s wonderfully warped, rubbery visual style. In other words: it’s not quite like any animated film you’ve ever seen before. Sadly, this was director and animator Kovásznai’s only feature film — he died of leukemia in 1983. Bubble Bath has been beautifully restored by the National Film Institute in Hungary for its first-ever U.S. release by Deaf Crocodile. In Hungarian with English subtitles.

World War III: The official Iranian entry for Best International Feature Film at the 2023 Academy Awards, and the Winner of the Orizzonti Awards for Best Film and Actor at the Venice Film Festival 2022, director Houman Seyedi’s savage, mysterious thriller/drama World War III is one of the darkest, most enigmatic portraits of class inequality, desperation and murder since Lee Chang-dong’s Burning and Bong Joon-ho’s Parasite. Mohsen Tanabandeh delivers an unforgettable performance as Shakib, an anonymous day laborer still grieving the deaths of his wife and son who’s given a job guarding the set of a film about the Holocaust. When the lead actor playing (yes) Hitler is struck ill, Shakib is enlisted to wear the costume and mustache – and for the first time in his life, he has a little money, respect and a place to sleep. Unexpectedly, his sex worker “girlfriend” (Mahsa Hejazi) shows up, threatening to upset his tenacious hold on prosperity. What starts out as a dark satire of the Iranian film industry quickly evolves into a near-Hitchcockian thriller of the underclass struggling violently to be heard, to be seen – with an apocalyptic ending that is truly something to behold. Rated 100% Fresh on Rotten Tomatoes. In Persian with English subtitles.

Plus they have a movie up for preorder!

The Mysterious Castle In the Carpathians: A unique and almost indescribable mix of Gothic fiction, steampunk gadgetry (designed by Czech animation wizard Jan Švankmajer), slapstick comedy and romantic opera, director Oldřich Lipský’s wonderfully bonkers delight has elements of The Fearless Vampire Killers, Terry Gilliam, Mel Brooks and The Benny Hill Show. Based on an 1892 Jules Verne novel The Carpathian Castle (which partially inspired Bram Stoker to write Dracula), the film follows Count Teleke of Tölökö (Michal Dočolomanský) on the trail of the count’s lost lover, opera singer Salsa Verde (Evelyna Steimarová) – only to discover she’s been abducted by fiendish Baron Gorc of Gorceny (Miloš Kopecký), whose castle home is filled with the bizarre inventions of mad scientist Orfanik (Rudolf Hrušínský). Littered with puns, sight gags and non-sequiturs – “Later, in Werewolfston”, an invented dialect, a detached golden ear for eavesdropping, a staff topped by an enormous TV eyeball – Mysterious Castle was the third fantastical film from the team of director Lipský and writer Jiří Brdečka after their much-loved musical western spoof Lemonade Joe (1966) and their detective/horror satire Adela Has Not Had Supper Yet (1977), both major Czech cult hits. (Note that actor Miloš Kopecký and Jiří Brdečka worked on the supernatural anthology Prague Nights, also released by the Národní filmový archív, Deaf Crocodile and Comeback Company.)

Bonus features include:

• New restoration of Mysterious Castle by Craig Rogers for Deaf Crocodile.
• New video interview with Czech film critic and screenwriter Tereza Brdečková on her father, Jiří Brdečka, writer of Mysterious Castle. (In English).
• New essay by film historian and expert on Eastern European cinema Jonathan Owen.
• New audio commentary by Tereza Brdečková and Czech film expert Irena Kovarova of Comeback Company.
• Two eerie and stunningly beautiful Jiří Brdečka animated short films: Vzducholoď a láska (Love and the Dirigible) (1948, 9 min.) and Třináctá komnata prince Měděnce (Prince Copperslick aka Prince Měděnec’s Thirteenth Chamber) (1980, 9 min.) Both in Czech with English subtitles.
• A feature-length documentary on the life and career of filmmaker, animator, screenwriter and illustrator Jiří Brdečka, covering his childhood, his work as a screenwriter with Jiří Trnka, Karel Zeman and Oldřich Lipský, and his own acclaimed work as an animator and director. In Czech with English subtitles.
• Blu-ray authoring by David Mackenzie of Fidelity In Motion.

You can get this now from Deaf Crocodile.

For more information, visit the Deaf Crocodile website.