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Viy (1967) Run time: 77 minutes Directed by Konstantin Yershov and Georgi Kropachyov Written by Aleksandr Ptushko, Konstantin Yershov, and Georgi Kropachyov Available on Shudder and a special screening on Lurdiak's Scream Stream “Viy is a colossal creation of the imagination of simple folk. The tale itself is a purely popular legend. And I tell it without change, in all its simplicity, exactly as I heard it told to me.” - Nikolai Gogol. Originally a short story written by Nikolai Gogol, and previously adapted very loosely by Mario Bava in 1960’s Black Sunday, Viy is a Russian/Ukranian folk story about a Cossack seminary student named Khoma Brutus, portrayed by Leonid Kuravlyov, who is forced into performing ritual burial rights for a beautiful young woman Pannochka, played by Natalya Varley, who happens to be a witch. Bava’s movie, which a lot of horror fans are familiar with, is a very loose adaptation compared to this one. His movie pretty much borrorwed the Ukranian setting and the witch, but nothing else. This movie hews a lot closer to Nikolai Gogol’s folk tale and features a final act filled with fun and interesting creature designs. What makes this movie especially interesting is that it is the first horror movie produced during the Soviet Union era, and only able to get around many of the restrictions on filmmaking there by calling itself a folk story. It was co-written and produced by Aleksandr Ptushko who was known as the Soviet’s Walt Disney and specialized in effects driven storytelling. His career largely focused on puppetry and stop animation in his films and he vastly preferred fantastical stories compared to realistic tales. The movie moves very quickly through the story. Wasting little time showing us the hypocrisy of the church as the student’s rush out into the world and instead of behaving as good Christians, they harass the local villagers and cause mischief wherever they go. We get a funny scene of the students stealing bread and ducks from the villagers, then they begin to trail off towards their homes, with some nice landscape shots for us to look at.  Soon after the movie dwindles down to just 3 of the students who stumble upon an old farm house in the middle of the night. They talk an elderly woman into letting them stay the night there, setting us up for the main plot to get moving. During the night Khoma is woken up by the old woman and after a brief scene of her refusing to leave him alone it’s revealed she’s a witch. The scene features some my favorite old fashioned effects in the movie, as the witch rides Khoma like a horse before taking flight.   Khoma eventually frees himself and kills the witch then flees out of terror over what he’s done and what he discovers. He tries to hide out at his monastery, only for the deacon to inform Khoma that his services are required by a local rich merchant. He refuses, but the deacon loves that tithing income and forces Khoma to participate. Khoma tries several times to get out of his duties, but the locals he’s travelling with prevent his escape, and after a bit of drinking they all express a bit of affection and admiration for Khoma, even though he doesn’t really deserve it. There’s some fun shots of Khoma drunk as a skunk showing off some more early special effects.   Once they arrive at the small village Khoma’s informed he will have to spend 3 nights in the old church in order for the deceased’s soul to be saved and ascend to heaven. Khoma does his best to get out of doing this, but once he’s promised all the gold he can carry he’s somewhat more willing. The church set is beautiful in my opinion. It looks great and sells being a spooky old church quite well.  There’s tons of little details and paintings all throughout the church that I find amazing.  I don’t really want to go into too much more of the story from here, but obviously being a folk horror story, his three nights don’t go very well. Personally, I found the film very engrossing and very easy to watch. As Khoma’s time in the church goes on, there’s a very Evil Dead 2 quality to both the story and the filmmaking. The camera becomes much more manic along with Leonid Kuravlyov’s performance of Khoma and culminates with a creature filled ending along with special effects pushing the limitations of the time. This is definitely a must watch this October, whether you’re a spooky film fan, or just a movie fan in general.  SPOILERS: I put together a small album of stuff I clipped from the movie (many of them posted in the thread already) that you can look at here: https://imgur.com/a/Q69y2VU I purposely didn’t clip a few things since they are available with google searches. The shot with the hands, the demons out of the walls, and the spooky shadows are some of my favorites.
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Sep 30, 2019 18:08
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Wow, I just watched this today! It's so so good, definitely one of the best movies I've seen on Shudder in the past few years. I just love the whole aesthetic and I could see rewatching it often because the atmosphere is thick.
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Sep 30, 2019 18:12
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Basebf555 posted:Wow, I just watched this today! It's so so good, definitely one of the best movies I've seen on Shudder in the past few years. I just love the whole aesthetic and I could see rewatching it often because the atmosphere is thick. I really enjoyed how quick paced it was, it wasted no time setting up the characters and settings to get to the fun folk tale stuff. I laughed so hard at one of the students stealing a duck when they're first released from the monastery. E: one of the reasons I posted my thread a day early was you posting that you watched it and a few other goons on discord mentioning watching it soon.
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Sep 30, 2019 18:15
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As a Russian speaker, I was stoked to see this pop up on Shudder! Gonna watch it this weekend probably.
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Sep 30, 2019 18:34
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One of the rep theatres in Toronto is showing this on the big screen and I have never been so mad I have Thanksgiving family obligations.
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Oct 1, 2019 00:30
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Great rec for the Halloween season. I don't have a set watch list, yet, but this is definitely going to the top.
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Oct 1, 2019 03:43
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Basebf555 posted:SUPER SAMHAIN CHALLENGE #1: The Best Month
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Oct 1, 2019 16:51
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COOL CORN posted:As a Russian speaker, I was stoked to see this pop up on Shudder! Gonna watch it this weekend probably. It's an English dub, just so you know. Still a fun movie and worth watching.
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Oct 1, 2019 17:01
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Butch Cassidy posted:It's an English dub, just so you know. Still a fun movie and worth watching. Mosfilm does have it for free in Russian on their YouTube, but there aren’t any subtitles. Provided you’re willing to hunt down some subtitles online, that’s also a viable option if you want to see it in its original state. The dub is hammy and really worth watching in its own right.
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Oct 1, 2019 17:39
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I don’t have much to add other than that I really like this movie. It’s also great to just have on while you’re doing housework because there’s so much fun imagery in it.
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Oct 1, 2019 19:41
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T3hRen3gade posted:
I think reading this thread answered my question. She was just a straight up witch all along then?
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Oct 2, 2019 07:29
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Super Samhain Challenge #1: The Best Month
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T3hRen3gade posted:I think reading this thread answered my question. She was just a straight up witch all along then? Yea, he encounters the witch early in the film, then he beats her and leaves her for dead, then later when he's tasked with praying over the dead young woman he doesn't realize that it's the witch basically setting a trap for him. That was my read anyway.
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Oct 2, 2019 15:02
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Yeah the girl was the witch. Khoma realizes who she is when he sees her body at the merchant's home before they take her to the church, he just doesn't expect her to rise from the coffin during the ritual at first. I'm not sure if the dub carried it over, but I also got the sense that the villagers suspected she was a witch as well, but not her dad.
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Oct 2, 2019 15:32
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I thought it was interesting that the witch is played by a man, Nikolay Kutuzov. Do you think if Khoma had given her the Cossack cock instead of insulting her, she would have spared him? They could have been great together, stealing ducks while drunk dancing in the moonlight. Somebody find this fanfic I'm sure it exists somewhere  e: Also what was up with the crazy rush of pillagers in the opening? It's like they were let go for a religious holiday and all of a sudden they start snatching women and animals like a bunch of frat boys in Cancun. e 2: I've actually been listening to some podcasts that dive into this thing, and on The Sectarian Review one of the hosts makes an off-hand joke they laugh about but is a really interesting point. They're talking about how the powers of good vs. evil come off on a cultural level. They discuss how Khoma begins the first night drinking and snuffing (his sneeze is what first wakes her up), and on the second night is so freaked out that he comes in even more drunk, but by the third night he almost seems like a real "fire and brimstone preacher" and tries to use his faith to combat evil, to which the witch counters him with an overwhelming force that overtakes him fairly easily without any sort of intervention from his own God. "It's almost like the Soviet Union believed in hell but couldn't fathom any idea of heaven at all." I'm trying to wrap my head around how a movie like this could be made in Soviet Russia in a time like that, and I found that interesting. T3hRen3gade fucked around with this message at 00:58 on Oct 3, 2019 |
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Oct 2, 2019 22:53
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T3hRen3gade posted:e: Also what was up with the crazy rush of pillagers in the opening? It's like they were let go for a religious holiday and all of a sudden they start snatching women and animals like a bunch of frat boys in Cancun. I definitely took this as a critique on the religious institutions of the time. The monastery was supposedly producing men of faith, worthy of the expensive tithing that the surrounding areas paid to have preachers, philosophers, etc. Instead many of the students are there not by choice (Khoma is an orphan raised by the monastery) and aren't very devout. They see the chance for escape and fun, exerting their position over the neighboring village in acts of mischief and petty theft. While the movie's antics are pretty light, possibly due to censor restrictions, there's a real sense that these soon to be preachers care more about the material gain over their faith. The ending scene where Khomas two friends say that Khoma would have lived if he had not been afraid is a pretty joke in that sense. The other two wouldn't stand a chance either and work solely from a position of a hindsight while safe in the monastery. Being braver wouldn't have saved Khoma, being a better person in general would have is the moral I took away. Your second edit is pretty cool. I'll have to listen to that discussion when I get a chance.
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Oct 3, 2019 15:37
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I think my favorite bit in the movie is when the demons start spilling out of the walls and the forced perspective makes it seem like they're literally squeezing themselves through the space between the wall slats. Of course, one slat was probably just pushed forward to allow them to fit through but the camera was placed in a spot where you can't see that.
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Oct 3, 2019 15:41
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Basebf555 posted:I think my favorite bit in the movie is when the demons start spilling out of the walls and the forced perspective makes it seem like they're literally squeezing themselves through the space between the wall slats. Of course, one slat was probably just pushed forward to allow them to fit through but the camera was placed in a spot where you can't see that. Yeah I loved that effect too! It's one of the gifs I made in the spoiler tagged album linked in my OP.
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Oct 3, 2019 15:57
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MacheteZombie posted:I definitely took this as a critique on the religious institutions of the time. The monastery was supposedly producing men of faith, worthy of the expensive tithing that the surrounding areas paid to have preachers, philosophers, etc. Instead many of the students are there not by choice (Khoma is an orphan raised by the monastery) and aren't very devout. They see the chance for escape and fun, exerting their position over the neighboring village in acts of mischief and petty theft. While the movie's antics are pretty light, possibly due to censor restrictions, there's a real sense that these soon to be preachers care more about the material gain over their faith. Even the bishops are implied to be lacking in any real faith. At the end the morning after Khoma dies they walk in on the scene and immediately flee in terror. I don't get the sense that anyone in the church would have done any better at dealing with the witch.
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Oct 3, 2019 18:31
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This had a lot more humor than I was expecting, as a bunch of lanky miscreant monks head towards summer break, and one of them encounters a witch. Monks: basically just rear end in a top hat frat boys. It's fun, and seems to be pretty heavily skewering religion, except for a little while at least his methods work. Here's the original short story, though I can't speak to how accurate the translation is. The movie is *very* faithful. Check out this sweet rear end wikipedia image (spoilers!) from an illustrated version from 1901.
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Oct 4, 2019 19:29
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Thanks for a link to that translation! It was a fun read.
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Oct 5, 2019 18:16
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Just watched tonight. What a wild film! Soviet/Russian films are always incredible fun to look at and I love how nuts it gets by the end. Kind of neat how it looks a lot like a Bava film, but still has that steely look.
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Oct 7, 2019 00:40
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Just tripped over a subtitled digital copy of Viy while checking on other stuff in that folder to possibly watch, this month. Totally gonna fire it up for a re-watch by Halloween!
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Oct 9, 2019 21:51
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I'm streaming this movie on tonight's Scream Stream. Check it out.
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Oct 11, 2019 17:48
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| # ? Apr 25, 2024 00:36 |
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Basebf555 posted:I think my favorite bit in the movie is when the demons start spilling out of the walls and the forced perspective makes it seem like they're literally squeezing themselves through the space between the wall slats. Of course, one slat was probably just pushed forward to allow them to fit through but the camera was placed in a spot where you can't see that. The ending segment reminded me of a few pivotal moments from The Gate (1987): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z8leMw24Nbc https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=25_Kvrl7agM Friends Are Evil posted:Mosfilm does have it for free in Russian on their YouTube, but there aren’t any subtitles. Provided you’re willing to hunt down some subtitles online, that’s also a viable option if you want to see it in its original state. The dub is hammy and really worth watching in its own right. Here is a subtitled copy: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Xmerc9r2BGQ
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Oct 19, 2019 04:55
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