Rumburak

Television series Arabela (Arabella, 1979) gave rise to the popular fairytale fiend Rumburak, who in 1984 was afforded his very own feature film. In this comedy fairytale – from the makers of the TV series, namely director Václav Vorlíček and writer Miloš Macourek – the malevolent and inept second-rate wizard finds himself stuck in our modern-day world. For he has forgotten the spell that would return him to his own fairytale land. The lead character’s cheerless half-life in the form of a crow (by night he attains human form) ends when Rumburak is offered a job as a night watchman in a research institute. There, our fairytale wizard gains access to a magical instrument of our age – a computer. Rumburak uses the device to try and generate the forgotten spell. But Rumburak has a competitor, the wicked engineer Zachariáš, who tries (like the wizard) to woo the kind-hearted figure-skater Helenka. In this story, Helenka serves as the new “princess” substituting the real Princess Arabela, whom Rumburak pursued in the television series. But expectations that the wizard will fall under the positive influence of Helenka, and henceforth only do good, turn out to be misguided: Vorlíček and Macourek restore the character’s malevolent nature as seen in the TV series Arabela, or more precisely in the 1993 follow-up television series Rumburak králem Říše pohádek (Rumburak, King of the World of Fairytales, 1993). The protagonist of this beloved series of children’s tales is one of actor Jiří Lábus’s most iconic roles, and enabled him to team up with long-serving comedic partner Oldřich Kaiser (who plays Zachariáš, the enemy of animals). Nimble ice-skater Helenka is played by Eva Jeníčková. Jiří Lábus also appeared in a different Vorlíček film mixing reality and the fairytale world, namely Saxána a Lexikon kouzel (Little Witch on a Broomstick, 2011), a loose sequel to the classic fantasy comedy Dívka na koštěti (The Girl on the Broom, 1971).