Striped Trip

Watch Striped Trip (1961) online on iFILM — a slapstick Soviet comedy directed by Vladimir Fetin. A cruise ship called the Evgeny Onegin is hauling caged tigers and lions across the sea for a Soviet zoo. Then the monkey the crew kept as a mascot unlocks every cage at once.

The big cats have the run of the deck. The captain is the first to vanish. The only person who keeps her nerve is Marianna, the quiet canteen worker with a way with animals — which, it turns out, is not an accident. Margarita Nazarova, who plays her, was a professional tiger trainer in the Soviet circus. Every stunt on screen is real.

Yevgeny Leonov plays the hapless sailor Shuleika in one of his early film roles. The picture topped the Soviet box office charts in 1961. Stream Striped Trip in good quality on iFILM.