Dinner for Adele

Background

It combines the major idea of The Little Shop of Horrors by Roger Corman with the adventures of the literary character Nick Carter. It was directed by Oldřich Lipský with Rudolf Hrušínský, Michal Dočolomanský, and Miloš Kopecký in the leading roles. The bizarre gadgets and animated sequances were created by Jan Švankmajer, a famous Czech artist.

Plot

It is the turn from the nineteenth to the twentieth century. The Prague police commissar Ledvina asked the famous New York detective Nick Carter, who is on a visit to Prague, for assistance to solve the strange case of a missing dog. Mysterious murder cases happenen during the investigations, done by the malicious botanist Baron von Kratzmar and his carnivorous plant Adele. Von Kratzmar kidnapped his victims, bound them and whenever he played a gramophone with the melody "Schlafe, mein Prinzchen" (a lullaby by Bernhard Flies but previously associated with Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart) it is the time for Adele to awaken and eat her victims for dinner. Baron von Kratzmar considered himself a misjudged genius and wanted to take revenge on one of his former professors. He called himself "the Gardener" a notorious criminal, who Nick Carter thought had died in the swamps years ago. With the help of bizarre inventions, Ledvina and Carter succeed in catching von Kratzmar and delivering him to the legal authorities.

Awards and nominations

The film was also selected as the Czechoslovakian entry for the Best Foreign Language Film at the 51st Academy Awards, but was not accepted as a nominee.