Attack The Bloc, the Twitch curated program of Cold War era science fiction films from the Eastern Bloc, has been a constant parade of curiosities thus far. It has included space ships, robots, and random bursts of dancing. It has even featured a vampire car that feeds on the blood of its driver. But what it has lacked thus far is topless, bearded, sterile women. That changes tonight, with a rare screening of 1970 scifi comedy I Killed Einstein, Gentlemen.
This is an odd little gem of a film, one rarely seen for the simple reason that there is no subtitled print in existence. But we like it so much - and want you to see it bad enough - that we'll be subtitling the film live and by hand for you. Okay, it'll be a Powerpoint file with someone tapping the space bar at the appropriate time, but you get the point. It's good. Come see it.In the distant year 1999, a group of terrorist physicists drop nuclear "G-bombs" that render all women bearded and infertile (though still buxom) -- a situation which is both scratchy and detrimental to the survival of the human race. So the world's greatest scientific minds come up with a foolproof plan: build a time machine, travel back to 1911 and kill Albert Einstein (Petr Cepek, also appearing this season in Ferat Vampire) before he can concoct the theories that paved the way for nuclear technology. Mishaps, hijinks and drastic alterations in the space-time continuum naturally ensue in Oldrich Lipsky's hilariously lowbrow sci-fi comedy, which plays like Sleeper/Bananas-era Woody Allen. Looking like a Czech version of Peter Sellers in The Mouse That Roared, Jirí Sovák (who also stars in Who Wants to Kill Jessie?) makes for a fabulous comedic lead.


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