Deaf Crocodile: Signals - A Space Adventure & In the Dust of the Stars (1970 - 1976) - Reviewed

Images courtesy of Deaf Crocodile Films

Deaf Crocodile Films remains at the forefront of my favorite boutique releasing labels.  From their top to bottom concentration on all things Eastern European cinema related to their recent jump from Vinegar Syndrome to Diabolikdvd’s webstore and the unveiling of deluxe limited hard boxed special editions of rare hard-to-see movies, they continue to wow and delight world cinema fans off the beaten path.  From Russian to Czechoslovakian to Croatian, there’s no Eastern European country they haven’t tapped into each of its respective film archives.  One arena of film they seem to have left untapped until recently was Soviet occupied Eastern Germany which in 1946 founded the film company Deutsche-Film Aktiengesellschaft or DEFA for short. 
 
While Germany remained divided between East Germany or the German Democratic Republic, the film studio made numerous films across the board of subgenres and during the company’s run until 1992 when Germany reunified they generated some science-fiction space adventures.  Two of them were written and directed by Gottfried Kolditz which have been gathered here for today’s Deaf Crocodile review of their two-film set consisting of the 1970 Polish-German 70mm 6-track widescreen adventure Signals: A Space Adventure and 1976’s German-Romanian funky cool space opera In the Dust of the Stars making their United States debut for the very first time. 

 
In the first of a two-film set, Signals: A Space Adventure in 2.20:1 scope widescreen opens on an ominous title card flying at the screen as electronic music by Karl-Ernst Sasse fills the soundstage telegraphing nebulous fear of the unknown dangers of space travel.  Soon Otto Hanisch’s Orwocolor DEFA 70 Reflex 65mm camera settles on a juxtaposition of miniature models of spaceships by Stanislaw Dulz and Kurt Marks before moving into ornate interior set pieces and corridors reminiscent of Ikarie XB 1.  In this universe the ship the Ikaros and its crew have vanished without a trace, prompting a search and rescue mission to find and retrieve the adrift spacecraft by research ship Laika.  However as the crew of the Laika draws nearer their destination, they begin picking up on those mysterious eerie signals drifting through space in the opening title credits sequence.
 
Partially a space thriller involving the possibility of alien intelligence, partially a carefree ensemble wade through space travel channeling many of the key vistas of Stanley Kubrick’s 2001: A Space Odyssey, this late-sixties mod sci-fi romp with retro-futurist production design, Star Trek costume design and a delightful zero gravity white tunnel sequence that’s closer to Barbarella than anything else is both chilly sleek and deliriously hip.  The crew consisting of Commander Veikko (Piotr Pawlowski), aged hefty Gaston (Helmut Schreiber), Pawel (Evyeniy Zharikov of Ivan’s Childhood) whose girlfriend was on the missing ship and others make up a sizable crew though only the three principal characters are fully defined.  As with 2001: A Space Odyssey, the sets and 65mm camera are the real stars of this science fiction promenade.  Oh and there’s a random animated sequence mid-movie put together as a birthday present for the crew that comes and goes out of nowhere.

 
After diving into a set and effects heavy sci-fi venture with Signals: A Space Adventure, Gottfried Kolditz briefly went back into making ‘Indianers’ or East German westerns which took the sides of Native Americans pitted against imperialist English colonizers and didn’t return to sci-fi for another six years.  Circa 1976 however, Kolditz returned with In the Dust of the Stars, a German-Romanian space opera with elements of both Barbarella and a bit of James Bond villainy.  Making up for the 1970 film’s sterility and floaty opacities with a concrete good vs. evil space saga told countless times over in subsequent epics ala Star Wars or The Man Who Saves the World, it is a welcome if not a little antidote to Signals: A Space Adventure.
 
After the crew of the spaceship Cyrano intercepts a distress call from a nearby planet dubbed TEM 4, they encounter a group of people who call themselves the Temians and deny having sent the call.  After a psychedelic mod-sixties party replete with pythons slithering about freely on tabletops, hallucinogenic oral spray and scantily clad disco partiers cavorting about, the crew eventually discovers another group of indigenous peoples called the Turi have been enslaved by the Temians forced to dig endlessly into underground mines.  Meanwhile the Temians are onto the crew of the Cyrano and soon an outright war between themselves and the enslaved Turi breaks out while attempting to scrub the memory of the ship’s captain.

 
Featuring a psychedelic funky nude dance sequence mid-movie, some groovy James Bond tortures including a headset some will trace years later to Paul Verhoeven’s Total Recall, In the Dust of the Stars boasting a hip score by Signals composer Karl-Ernst Sasse and sleek, mannered 1.66:1 Orwocolor 35mm photography by Peter Suring is pretty damn cool.  Far more colorful and playful with a more urgent ensemble cast including a stern commander Suko (Alfred Struwe), sexy heroine Akala (Czech Amadeus actress Jana Brejchova), ruthless leader Ronk (Milan Beli) and an outlandish flamboyant Chief (Ekkehard Schall) sporting bright blue hair and a Dracula cape, everyone here is diving headfirst into high science-fiction camp.
 
When DEFA eventually disbanded with the reunification of Germany, the library was turned over in 1993 to the University of Massachusetts Amherst research center now dubbed DEFA Film Library Umass Amherst and in 1997 a good number of East German films including but not limited to 16mm and 35mm prints were added to the archive.  Considered to be the singular only archive of East German films to be curated and studied outside of Europe, the company have taken it upon themselves to restore and rerelease a number of these films to boutique labels for either theatrical or home exhibition and in the cases of Gottfried Kolditz’s two sci-fi epics they have gone above and beyond expectation.  In what could’ve been a murky damaged restoration of problematic elements worn to time and tide, both pictures look and sound like they were made yesterday.

 
Scanning the 70mm elements for Signals at 6K resolution before finishing in 4K with the 6-track audio restored in DTS-HD 5.1 while In the Dust of the Stars received a 2K scan with restored 2.0 audio, both films look pristine if not luminescent.  A rare glimpse of East German science-fiction analogues to renowned domestic classics of the genre that enhances the conversation about how Eastern Europe contributed to the universe of space travel imagination, Deaf Crocodile’s deluxe boxed set is one of the strongest contenders for blu-ray disc release of the year.  From the lovely packaging to the amaray case housed in the hardbox to the extensive booklet featuring essay writings from numerous critics including Walter Chaw, Gottfried Kolditz’s Signals: A Space Adventure paired alongside its funky kid cousin In the Dust of the Stars is a most splendid East German sci-fi double-feature.

--Andrew Kotwicki