ET Watch Home, a monthly movie essay

For October, Juraj Herz's The Cremator

Paid subscribers get two extra issues a month. One of those is ET Watch Home, a monthly movie essay. This year, each of the movies is a Czech (or, if you prefer, Czechoslovak) New Wave staple. This month, we have Juraj Herz’s The Cremator (1969). This is a week late and I thank you for your patience.

I watched The Cremator because my friend Carol wrote her Master’s thesis on it and recommended it to me. It was one of the creepiest movies I’ve ever seen (though I should here note that my tolerance for horror is very low and so “creepiest movie I’ve ever seen” and “creepiest movie you’ve ever seen” might be very different).

The basic plot of The Cremator is this: A man in Prague in the 1930s works at a crematorium. He is maybe a little too into his work, drawing inspiration from Tibetan mysticism and believing himself to be liberating souls. But he’s basically a man with a family — a wife and a son and a daughter — and a job. Until he isn’t.