Give the Devil His Due

Give the Devil His Due (1985) is a Czechoslovak family fantasy you can watch online on iFILM. Director Hynek Bočan delivers a classic pohádka — the Czech fairy-tale genre — built around a greedy widow, a wronged young miller, and a devil who turns out to be more trouble than he's worth.

Dorota marries the miller for the mill, drives him into an early grave, and throws his son Peter out on the road. Lucifer, deciding her sins have piled up long enough, sends devil Janek down to drag her to hell. Janek can't manage it. She's worse than anything he's dealt with below. He flees to the army, stumbles into Peter, and together the two of them come up with a plan that even Lucifer didn't anticipate.

Czech fairy tales of this era have a particular texture: cheerful on the surface, quietly firm on right and wrong underneath. Peter ends up with a magic cloak and the prince's attention; Dorota ends up exactly where she belongs. Stream Give the Devil His Due (1985) online on iFILM.