Limonádový Joe aneb Konská opera
Tags: absurd, psychedelic

Plot synopsis:
In the frontier town of Stetson City, Arizona, in 1885, business is booming at the Trigger Whisky Saloon. Tornado Lou, the local chanteuse, regales the saloon-goers with a sultry ballad ("Když v báru houstne dým"), while the saloon owner Doug Badman tries in vain to woo her. Two evangelists, Ezra Goodman and his daughter Winnifred, enter the bar attempting to drum up interest in their temperance movement, but the saloon's hard-drinking cowboys scorn them. Into the fracas steps a stranger: Lemonade Joe, a lone cowboy singing the praises of Kolaloka, a non-alcoholic soft drink (in Czech, limonáda, hence the name). His superior gunfighting skill quickly convinces the saloon-goers of the benefits of teetotalism. Before long, Joe and the Goodmans have joined forces, Joe has begun courting Winnifred, and all the cowboys in Stetson City have transferred their loyalty to the cathedral-like God Bless Kolaloka Saloon ("Arizóna, to je pravých mužů zóna").
Doug Badman's business is saved by the arrival of his brother Horace, alias "Hogofogo, the Master Criminal of the Wild West". In a dramatic public appearance, Hogofogo convinces the Kolaloka customers to go back to Trigger Whisky, and soon the old saloon is back in business ("Whisky to je moje gusto"). Joe, unaware of the developments, is riding on the prairie ("Sou fár tů jů áj méj") until, thanks to a mirage, he discovers that Hogofogo has his own designs on Winnifred. Joe saves Winnifred from his clutches, but in the ensuing fight, his account book falls to the ground. Reading it, Winnifred discovers the truth: Joe is not the selfless hero he appears, but rather a traveling salesman for Kolalok & Son, makers of Kolaloka. Delighted at the news, Winnifred pledges her love for Joe. However, the chanteuse Tornado Lou has also fallen for Joe, imagining him as the ideal lover who will make her "different, better."
Joe returns to Trigger Whisky Saloon, where, in another display of fighting skill, he wins the customers back to Kolaloka once again ("Můj bóže, můj bóže"). Hogofogo, in disguise, attempts to shoot Joe, but Joe instead engages him in a gunfighting chase through the town, trying to force him into signing a testimonial in favor of Kolaloka. Though Hogofogo seems momentarily to have the upper hand ("Horácova polka"), Tornado Lou attacks Hogofogo and saves Joe's life. Joe, too commercially oriented to understand her devotion, spurns her advances. In misery, she vows to help the Badmans lure Joe to his death. Their plan begins with Hogofogo, now disguised as a blind piano tuner ("Horácův pohřební blues"), kidnapping Winnifred as a bait to lure Joe to Dead Man's Valley ("Balada Mexico Kida"). There, the Badmans' henchmen, led by Grimpo, capture him and torture him, but Lou has a change of heart and saves his life again, reuniting him with Winnifred. Meanwhile, Hogofogo waits for his henchmen to deliver Winnifred to his room. Instead, Joe appears and forces him to sign the testimonial. Hogofogo, taking advantage of Joe's aversion to spirits, ambushes him with a volley of gunshot and leaves him dead.
Hogofogo tracks Winnifred down to the Stetson City cemetery, where he attempts once again to kidnap her. When the now-moral Tornado Lou stops him, he kills her; in revenge, Doug Badman kills Hogofogo, and in his death throes, Hogofogo kills Doug. Just as he is about to shoot Winnifred, Lemonade Joe enters alive and well; surveying the three dead bodies, he notices their birthmarks and discovers that they are his long-lost siblings. He revives them with the same medicine that has just brought him back to life: the miraculous soft drink Kolaloka. Joe's father—none other than Mr. Kolalok himself, owner of Kolalok & Son—enters just in time for a happy ending, in which villains and heroes alike agree to work together and merge their businesses to create a new drink, Whiskola. The entire Kolalok family, including the newly married Winnifred and Joe, ride off into the sunset in a stagecoach as the population of Stetson City cheer.

Review: It is indeed a broad parody of the western movie genre: cliche piled upon cliche, yet still surprising and delightful.
Historical note: the version I saw was dubbed, not subtitled (I long thought it Italian in origin); the tinting was not sepia with yellow highlights, it was just glaring yellow; and it was called "The Lemonaid Kid" not "Lemonaid Joe" (hence part of the difficulty tracking it down).
(Since this release title is reminiscent of "The Lemondrop Kid", I can imagine paranoid lawyers at MGM giving this film's release a lot of hassle, which may explain how it got so buried.) I thought it the funniest thing I had ever seen and that impression stuck with me as I grew older and developed a taste for the more absurdist and aggressive style of comedy, e.g., the Marx Brothers, Monty Python, etc.
i knew I had seen something very special in "Lemonaid", but found no references to it in movie catalogs like the Maltin book, and nobody who knew films seemed to know anything about it - and I come from Rochester, NY, home of the second largest collection of film in the country, the Dryden-Eastman collection.
I certainly hope another viewing will justify my warm memories of it.Note added August 26, 2009:Well, I finally found it - it is currently available in 10 chapters at Youtube.It is not only everything I remember it for, but far more - one of the wildest visual comedies of its era and one of the sharpest satires I have ever seen.The only weakness is the ending - while it makes its point, it's too blunt and too easy.But the rest of the film is basically Brecht-Weill remaking "Support Your Local Sheriff" (which hadn't been made yet, of course) - absolutely incredible mix of pop culture and art-house comedy styles, as unforgettable now as it was 40 years ago (well beyond mere 'camp,' it hasn't aged a bit), decidedly one of a kind.(PS - I've read Leone fans wondering if this film references "fistful of Dollars" - oh, no - Leone, Corbucci, and other Italian directors were almost certainly influenced by this.).
Bizarre, but interesting, communist-era satire of traditional American Westerns.
The concept of this film (an affectionate send-up of old-fashioned American cowboy films) is one that seems to have been kicked around in the movie business, both here and abroad, for quite a few years.
With no more dialog than some snickers and shouts, along with an operatic-style song performed by the singing cowboy hero and his heroine, it does a nice job of satirizing the old conventions of the singing cowboy movie.
It's a charming film, well worth seeing."Lemonade Joe," done in 1964 by yet another Czech filmmaker, Oldrich Lipsky, seems to be expanding greatly on the subject in order to extend it to feature length, and aside from the basic concept the plot bears no relation to "Song of the Prairie."  Yet, anyone who's seen "Song of the Prairie" will immediately see the connection.
To an English-speaking person like myself, the lyrics sound tantalizingly like English, even finishing up with the repeated phrase "goodbye, goodbye." Yet, if you look at the lyrics spelled out (as they are in the Czech DVD that I watched), you can see that they mean nothing at all in English.
Are they in fact Czech, or some gibberish concocted to sound like English?
Not understanding Czech, I can't really say.Laurie Edwards' sourpuss review (see "External Reviews" and "CultureDose.net") demonstrates that not everyone will appreciate this film's style, which is certainly foreign in comparison to typical Hollywood fare.
While the film's basic concept appeals to me greatly and I enjoyed its bizarre, surreal, and anarchic qualities, I can see how it might rub people the wrong way, particularly those with more conventional tastes.
On the other hand, far harsher criticisms were made by American filmmakers in American films during the same era, so I wouldn't dream of taking any offense at it at this point in time.The most recent attempt to satirize the singing cowboy genre that I'm aware of is Hugh Wilson's 1985 film "Rustlers' Rhapsody," starring Tom Berenger as the western hero.
It seems to me more subtle and complex than "Lemonade Joe," but not nearly as stylish or entertaining.I enjoy seeing all three of the above films, but I think perhaps the cartoon format is the best for this concept after all.
"Song of the Prairie" is my favorite, being an actual animated film, followed by "Lemonade Joe" which is a live-action film that is decidedly cartoon-like, followed by "Rustlers' Rhapsody," which to my taste seems a bit tame and conventional in execution..
Oldrich Lipsky was a Czech director who was well known in his country for unique bizarre comedies.
"Lemonade Joe" is a musical western comedy.
It's a fun parody that pays homage to the old west, and is filmed in awesome sepia tones.
The movie makes many jokes and references to western culture, such as the town name of Stenson City.
Did I mention the film has hot and voluptuous Czech actresses.
Eastern Europe women rock!(dobre) You must Czech out Lemonade Joe. For more Lipsky madness also watch "Dinner for Adele"..
Parody to Wild West movies.
The fact that this movie was made in the Communist times and that it is a parody to Wild West pictures, does not mean that "Limonadovy Joe" is an ideological trash; I am sure Wild West lovers would not feel offended by this movie.
60-ies were the best time for Czech cinema.
`Limonadovy Joe' fits into those liberal years of good movies.
It is known that Henry Fonda watched this title at the International Film Festival in Karlovy Vary (Carlsbad) and declared it as the greatest enjoyment for the long time.
And he did not know the Czech actors playing in the movie!
This Czech elite made one of the most unforgettable happenings of all the time, and also the collaboration of director Oldrich Lipsky and the writer Jiri Brdecka made one of the best (not only Czech) parodies I have ever seen..
An excellent satire of the Great American Way, with Lemonade Joe a "clean living" gunfighter who drinks only Kola-Loca Lemonade and convinces everyone else in town (with his gun skills) that all "real men" drink ONLY lemonade!
The style of the film mirrors that of silent westerns, including humorous sped-up bar brawls and color-tinting (!).
Worth a look for western fans looking for a spoof that goes beyond "Blazing Saddles" and adds satire to the mix, or for anyone interested in Euro-Westerns in general for an Eastern European take on the genre.
"Lemonade Joe" is one of the funniest movies ever made.
The opening sequence catches you by surprise; you're watching the funniest western fight in a saloon without warning.
Although this film is (obviously) all in Czech, most English speakers won't have any trouble figuring out the story, since it's an extremely broad parody of a genre most people are familiar with.
On the women's side, we have your basic saloon girl with a heart of gold and the virginal ingenue, who we know will eventually end up with Lemonade Joe. Considering this movie was made under Communist rule, it's a pretty dead-on satire of the American Western..
It's a spoof of Westerns, not so much the John Ford type as silent-movie serials.
Therefore, the Comunist regime financed a satire on western films that is, by a long shot, one of the most funny, intelligent, vivid, wild, riotous, excellent movies I saw on TV a wonderful night.
Now I've seen everything...a Czechosloakian parody of an American B-western!.
In many ways it's like a Czechoslovakian version of "The Villain".This western is set in a lawless town in Arizona.
However, when Lemonade Joe shows up, he's out to clean up the town and introduce them to the invigorating effects of a lemonade drink, 'Kolaloka'.
Joe is a clever amalgam of various B-western heroes like Gene Autry and Roy Rogers, though he's even more virtuous--and looks a lot like Gene Raymond.Doug's brother, the even more evil Horace Badman (also known as 'Hogofogo'), arrives in town and is upset to see that order and sobriety are the rule of the day.
I could say more about the plot but don't want to spoil it.The film doesn't even try to be subtle in any way.
You will not understand all of these jokes so typical for the Czechs, like you will not understand all of the jokes in Hasek´s Good Soldier Svejk.
I first saw this film, an excellent English dubbed version which made it totally comprehensible, at an El Paso, Texas movie theatre many years ago.
It is a brilliant, hilarious, outrageous spoof of the early American cowboy western.
The central character, Lemonade Joe, is a personification of "clean living" and a combination of all those early movie cowboy heroes in the tradition of William S.
The movie follows Joe as he attempts to rid the town saloon of liquor and promote his own product creation Kola-Loca-Lemonade.
As you can well imagine, Joe in his efforts has to confront some rather mean varmints especially one appropriately name Duke Badman who at one point in the movie gets the better of Joe by spiking his lemonade drink with liquor causing him to gag and pass out.
But in the end, good triumphs over evil for as Lemonade Joe so philosophically declares at one point in the movie "Evil can not stand against a clean-living man.".
I am happy to find out that also in USA, where the parody aims to, are people that find the movie funny.
It is a bit different view to Europeans and American westerns, using distinctive style of humor.
I am not kind of people who would laugh from the beginning to the end, but i can see it many times and I find always the style of humor interesting and i enjoy the seeing.
There are a bit slower parts what can someone understand as an attempt for seriousness in the movie but it really does not compete with real western movies.For the people writing here about the projections in USA with English dubbing.
Meet Our Noble Hero & Protector: Lemonade Joe. Before sitting down to watch Lemonade Joe, you really have to be in the right frame of mind to fully appreciate this film in all of its eccentric quirkiness.
And, it would also help if you were something of a fan of Hollywood, B-Westerns from the 1940's, as well.Opening with one of the absolute, best, over-the-top, bar-room brawl scenes that I have ever seen in any Western, I found Lemonade Joe's cartoon-ish surrealism to be very entertaining, for the most part.This 1964 Western from Czechoslovakia was, of course, a total spoof of the genre.
And, from my point of view, it certainly hit its intended mark more often than it missed.Featuring some really outlandish stunts (worthy of The Three Stooges), lots of interesting camera-work, and a non-stop barrage of exaggerated characters (including a nasty villain named Hogofogo), Lemonade Joe (set in 1885 in the lawless town of Stetson, Arizona) was very competently directed by Czech film-maker, Oldrich Lipsky, who obviously must have watched a helluva lot of Hollywood B-Westerns in his youth..
Basically, these movies were westerns that took a swipe at the US.
One that I've previously seen is the East German movie "The Sons of Great Bear", featuring an Indian as the protagonist.Anyway, "Lemonade Joe" pokes fun at the old western musicals.
In the process, Joe woos a young woman while fighting a dastardly villain.I should note that the movie is basically a slapstick comedy.
They incorporate sound effects to add to the humor, and Joe occasionally breaks into song (sometimes in English!).
Lemonada Joe is in fact so bound to Czech culture that translation of it's subtle poetry to another culture is very hard.
Lemonada Joe is not satire "per se", it's not just slapstick fun and it's also not a simple critique of early capitalist society but rather cinematic pastiche or cinephile comedy with relativist look on morality (idealism is possible only in a silly movie).
I, like others Czechs, has grown up with movies like this.
In an original book the final end of Lemonada Joe is absurd and dark.
Enter lemonade joe.
The dialog is really cheesy and i think very badly translated from its original Czech( I am referring to the subtitles) The characters are ridiculously exaggerated and poorly written.
i think the only other time I saw filmmaking this bad was when I saw Troll 2.This movie is just so horrible I cant articulate it.
A parody movie about a soda mascot that always solves his problems with said product, this surely should be funny unless you decide to be "very experimental" and decide to saturate the vision of your audience with a single color.
Imagining it sounds funny, a way to parody the old western movies who only used black and white due to the time but now...it just is like that, the color changes with the staging or the emotions of the characters but honestly looks awful.
In case you get used to it and do not get a headache when the movie ends you still will feel a bit disappointing.That's because some jokes really do not give grace and the ones who give grace are random you know the ones who do not make the characters in question but how the characters interact with the enviroment, but hey I have a good reason for it, they have only one characteristic to show and so one joke from some of them at least the ones who are random enough.
Due to what I said that the story is turned into something predictable and I did not witness any effort to improve it, yes we have some jokes through the whole movie with some that I found very funny like I admitted but it does not help at all when the whole story is about bad boy does bad thing and ruins good boy but then good guy comes back and reestablishes the status quo a certain number of times through all the movie.The other aspect that I liked besides some few jokes were the music that really is not so good but compared to the bad pop music made by four producers of today I can say that it was good especially the one that the protagonist sings recurely, is not a lot but I didn't want to be so negative.5/10 A movie with some terrible saturated colors that only hipsters will give it a masterpiece title, if you manage to don't let the colors bother you then it will give you some giggles just that and nothing more..
I'm pleasantly surprised there are so many reviews for "Lemonade Joe", considering that most reviewers on IMDb are American or West-European movie fans.
But films like this have some special meanings for people on the other side of Europe.While communism controlled every segment of life, it was natural that only regime-approved movies could be made, so they had to glorify socialism, Soviet Union (except in Yugoslavia and Albania), expectation of better future (due to Communist party), also they had to condemn capitalism, USA, religion (not in all countries equally).
That's why movie about USA (if not pure propaganda) could have been just a parody.
In the same time, ordinary people (even some members of Communist parties) envied West Europeans and Americans, secretly wishing capitalism to come to their countries, and especially USA was a Shangri-La and a liberator.
(Do I hear a big laugh from Stalin's grave?)Not only parodying westerns (mildly, gently, with a smile) and American consumers way of living (much more bitter), it shows people as a herd: the first one is followed by all the others.
If drinking whiskey is declared to be modern, everybody does it, when it's modern to drink Cola-Loca, they all change their attitudes and habits, and it doesn't matter if a black or white suit guy leads - people accept what is said to be "in" (they didn't have satellite TVs and talk-shows, but Joes and Horáces were enough).
I also thought it was a parody to European art-movies but this one seems to be older.
Photo and editing is western-like during action, but when music starts it changes to Vera Chytilova-style (though it's older than her well known works), so it can be a parody to modern art too.* A spoiler describing the end *Finally, resurrection in last scene connects past and today again (remember Jackson-McCartney "Say, Say, Say" music video, and all modern magic curatives).
Are we too spoiled by Mel Brooks' parodies?Just one more answer: the title song doesn't contain Czech words, but English and Spanish words were obviously intentionally used without a meaning - common c&w words put together like common characters and action in western movies.Wear a smile, take a cup of coffee, and read between the lines!.
Checking movies that a DVD seller, (who is a big Czech film fan) had tracked down,I remembered him praising what might be the only Czech Western ever made!,which led to me having a glass of lemonade with Joe.The plot:1885:Disguised at how drunk everyone is in the salons, evangelists Ezra Goodman and his daughter Winnifred decide to go round the salons and get the cowboys off hard drinks for their own, non-alcoholic drink Kolaloka.
and the fact that it is a western in czech language is an add to a joke.
the movie is also called the horse opera which is much better to call it like that then a western.
since i've seen this movie(10 years or so ago) every time i want to order a whiskey and coke in a bar i call a whis-kola even they, in the movie, don't mix whiskey with coke but thats how they call drink they make.
this one is a shining example of czech film industry, better said European film industry.