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Skeleton on Horseback (Czech). This last picture made by the Czechs from one of the last plays of their late great playwright, Karel Capek (R. U. R.), is reported to have been smuggled out of Czechoslovakia shortly after the German invasion. It is a lurid appeal for pacifism. Dr. Galen (Hugo Haas) has discovered a secret cure for a leprous epidemic which is slowly killing off the human race. Dr. Galen lives in an unnamed dictatorship. When its dictator (Zdanek Stepanek) and his munitions manufacturer (Vaclav Vydra) contract the disease, Dr. Galen refuses to cure them unless they stop making wars. The manufacturer kills himself. A patriotic mob kills the doctor. Off goes the now incurable dictator to lead his troops--the leprous skeleton on horseback.

Though Fannie Hurst, who wrote the English titles, considers it a "film destined to change the history of civilization," so far it has changed only the addresses of its cast. One of the first acts of the Nazi invaders was to arrest most of the actors in Skeleton on Horseback. Actor Hugo Haas escaped to France. Actress Karla Olicova, a niece of ex-President Benes, is missing. The dictator of the picture, Zdanek Stepanek, is in an unknown concentration camp.

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