A black humour comedy by Czech New Wave filmmaker Juraj Herz, based on the novel by Ladislav Fuks. The 1930s, the Munich Agreement cedes the Sudetenland to Germany, and the army assembles on the Czechoslovak border. Karl Kopfrkingl, a crematorium worker and gentle family man, becomes convinced of Nazi ideas and sets out to realise a nightmarish vision of a better future, one that only requires a more efficient crematorium. The Cremator was completed just after the Prague Spring and banned in Moscow in 1969, so the "party" that transforms Karl Kopfrkingl into one of the most horrific villains in the history of cinema can be perceived ambiguously.
