Two men of principle face each other. One is backed by a whole, however poor village, the other by the law. It is a conflict that reaches it's climax in the closing shoot-out. Instead of the Wild West, the gunshots go off on the Slovak-Polish border. Michal Docolomansky as the horse smuggler and Radoslav Brzobohaty as the customs officer from Prague meet in Holly's Night Riders in a western-like confrontation set in the insecure years of the newly founded Czechoslovak Republic.
Martin, a poor student, volunteers to go on a quest to find a cure for the princess Adriana, who is stricken with a strange illness. Unknown to Martin or anyone else, the princess is actually under the spell of the powerful magician Andlobrandini, who is preparing a rejuvenating elixir made from the blood of nine men's hearts.
This three-part ballad, which often uses music to stand in for dialogue, remains the most perfect embodiment of Nemec’s vision of a film world independent of reality. Mounting a defense of timid, inhibited, clumsy, and unsuccessful individuals, the three protagonists are a complete antithesis of the industrious heroes of socialist aesthetics. Martyrs of Love cemented Nemec’s reputation as the kind of unrestrained nonconformist the Communist establishment considered the most dangerous to their ideology.
