Soda Pop Joe

Limited Edition

SODA POP JOE (LIMONÁDOVÝ JOE ANEB KOŇSKÁ OPERA) – 1964, NFA, 100 min.  A decade before BLAZING SADDLES, there was … SODA POP JOE!  Originally released here as LEMONADE JOE, the film opens in Stetson City, 1885, a booze-soaked town where musical artiste Tornado Lou (Květa Fialová) belts out Marlene Dietrich-like tearjerkers. Her dream appears in the form of spotlessly clean Soda Pop Joe (Karel Fiala), who turns out to be a traveling sales rep for Kolaloka Soda (an entertaining pun meaning “a sip of Cola”), which he relentlessly hawks in the film’s barbed satire of Western consumerism.  (His rendition – dubbed by Karel Gott, one of the pop-stars of the era – of  "Smith & Wessons on my hip / Nothing else comes near my lips ... Kolaloka!" is one of the film’s many musical gems.)  Czech director Oldřich Lipský’s delightful spoof of all things Western and the dominance of corporate brands was the first of three comedies he made with writer Jiří Brdečka, followed by ADELA HAS NOT HAD SUPPER YET and MYSTERIOUS CASTLE IN THE CARPATHIANS.  Co-starring Lipský’s frequent collaborators Olga Schoberová (WHO WANTS TO KILL JESSIE?) as a pure-hearted crusader for teetotaling and Miloš Kopecký as trickster villain Hogo Fogo.  Filled with nonstop visual puns and sight gags, and an almost Karel Zeman-like Gothic / fantastic touch, the film has been gorgeously restored in 4K by the Národni filmový archiv, Prague.  In Czech with English subtitles.

Special Features

• Four rare short films:

• “My Darling Clementine” – 1959, 6 min. Jiří Brdečka’s delightful Folk Art style animated short set to a Czech version of the famed song. 

•  “Song of the Prairie” – 1949, NFA, 19 min.  Famed director Jiří Trnka’s stop-motion homage to John Ford’s STAGECOACH, adapted from a Jiří Brdečka novel.

• "The Face -- 1973, 3 min.  Dir. Jiří Brdečka.  Pre-Bill Plympton, this minimalist short shows a man’s face changing as he passes through life.

• "Reason and Emotion" -- 1962, 15 min.  Dir. Jiří Brdečka.  This mid-century animated short follows a man with a trumpet who tries to modify the world around him.

• 48-page booklet featuring:

• New essay by film historian Jonathan Owen

• New essay by film critic Walter Chaw

• New commentary by film critic and screenwriter Tereza Brdečková and Czech film expert Irena Kovarova of Comeback Company

• New visual essay “Soda Pop Joe: The Gospel of the Brand” (2026, 13 min.) by experimental filmmaker and film scholar Stephen Broomer

• New graphic design and cover artwork by Beth Morris

• Blu-ray authoring by Vital Passenger