Social & External
Unknown Role
A beautiful temptress re-kindles an old romance while trying to escape her past during a tension-packed train journey.
While a plague devastates the peasantry, a mad prince hosts a masquerade ball for the noble class in his castle. A long-lost twin, hidden among the lower class, enters the castle and is received into a decadent world of orgies, opium, power schemes, revenge, and decapitations.
Conducting clandestine experiments within the morgue at Miskatonic University, scientist Herbert West reveals to a fellow graduate student his groundbreaking work concerning the re-animation of fresh corpses.
Four people recount different versions of the story of a man's murder and the rape of his wife.
A certain Mr. Mlácen is brought to the asylum, wanting to sell two church bells. He first offers them to merchants in an inn. He claims that he received them as an inheritance from his uncle, but he doesn't know what to do with them. But no one wants to buy them. Because of this, he first finds himself in a commissary and is eventually sent to an asylum. The professor (L. Kopřiva), who believes that Mr. Mlácen suffers from some kind of fixed idea and is mentally ill, promises him that he will buy his two bells back...
Newly-widowed Mabel Lederer, who has psychic and mediumistic abilities, sells her house and belongings, changes her name, and moves to a new town. There she rents a room in a boarding house and holds a seance with the other tenants, with comical results.
A selfish self-centered widowed ruler, barely tolerated by his subjects and called appropriately enough, 'King Myself, First' asks his three daughters to name the measure of their love for him. When one of them says, "more than salt", he banishes her from the kingdom. Not understanding what she meant the King assumes love can only be measured by precious metals or one's own talent, the 'correct' answers from his other two daughters. The arrogance of the King leads him to gather all the salt in the kingdom and destroy it. Of course, this backfires as he slowly learns the universal value of the substance, and of course, the essence of his daughter's reply. With the help of the wise and magical old 'herb woman', the King also learns what it means to be a true and wise ruler.
Schmitke is an old German wind turbine engineer. One day, he is dispatched to the Czech side of the Ore Mountains to fix an old squeaking wind turbine. His colleague disappears and mysterious things begin to happen in the forest.
In a suburban villa, a woman of means is murdered. Police Superintendent Zdychynec from the Prague Liben neighborhood reports the case to Police Councilman Vacátko, upon whose order an investigation is launched immediately. Zdychynec begins to suspect the wooer of his own daughter, a handsome dragoon named Rudi, of the crime. In Rudi's absence, Zdychynec searches his rented room in the apartment of the elegant Mrs Dragicová. All his findings - among others, sand left on Rudi's jackboots and a decent amount of money in his bedside table - convince the superintendent that he is following the right lead, especially when Rudi refuses to say where he was at the time of the murder.
In Vražda v hotelu Excelsior, the interwar period homicide detective squad from Prague investigates the murder of a wealthy woman, Mrs Matoušová, which threatens the reputation of the eponymous luxury hotel popular with Prague’s elite. Even the retired police inspector Mrázek (František Filipovský), who works at the Excelsior as a hotel detective, is unable to help at first. Although the investigation inevitably uncovers the hotel staff’s scheming, Vacátko and his team unerringly follow the trail that leads them to the murderer…
Spiritual medium Openshaw is so removed from real life that he confuses a military alarm with a signal from the other world. Father Brown returns the professor to reality and the problems of modern life. Based on the "The Blast of the Book" short story from "The Scandal of Father Brown" stories collection, written in 1935 by Gilbert K. Chesterton.
In the morning twilight of Prague, the dead body of the safe-breaker Toufar is found floating on the river Vltava with a knife in his back. Police inspectors visit Toufar's lover, the prostitute Anna Kulatá (Jirina Bohdalová), nicknamed Umbrella, and it is apparent that the moment before she opened the door of her flat, someone fled through the window. Umbrella is summoned for examination to the head of the criminal police - Police Councilman Vacátko Jaroslav Marvan, but although shocked by the photograph of the dead man, she does not confess to anything. Before Toufar, Umbrella lived with the safe-breaker Penicka (Radoslav Brzobohatý), who loved her very much and made her quit her street trade. But when he was sentenced to three years' imprisonment, Umbrella began to live with the brute Toufar, who chased her to street again. In the case of the murder, Penicka is therefore the prime suspect.
Monette, a middle-aged salesman, picks up a deaf/mute hitchhiker on the road. The hitchhiker falls asleep and Monette vents his problems knowing they fall on deaf ears. He rants about his wife’s infidelity and her embezzlement from her employer. Monette thinks nothing of this encounter until two days later his wife and her lover are found murdered.
A year in the life of a turn-of-the-century middle class family, leading up to the opening of the 1904 St. Louis World's Fair.