Viy (Konstantin Yershov, Georgi Kropachyov, 1967)

A comedy of horrors

Not that Viy (Konstantin Yershov, Georgi Kropachyov, 1967) is the first-ever Soviet horror film (There's A Spectre Haunts Europe (1923)) or even the first adaptation of the Nikolai Gogol story (the first was 1909, considered lost)-- but it's the rare Soviet horror film so visually striking and tonally bizarre it's at least worth a look.

Why horror is rare in Soviet cinema is a question no one's definitively answered either, far as I know-- a few online responses note that the Soviets considered the genre 'capitalist' and 'obscene'-- the first of which is true enough, the second true nominally, at least by their standards (think Veronica Carlson, Ingrid Pitt, Caroline Munroe among others); this one seems to have been approved on the grounds that it was based on 'folklore' turned literature by a great Russian writer (most of the other examples-- The Case of Tariel Mklavadze, The Marriage of the Bear, Mister Designer, Spider (1992), The Queen of Spades-- are also adaptations). Might have helped that much of the film plays like comedy-- the hero Khoma Brutus (Leonid Kuravlyov) is a feckless buffoon, the townsfolk carousing drunks; at one point Khoma stares bleary-eyed as the same husky villager emerges from three separate doorways, beckoning him to come over. "The master will never know," the villager cheerfully promises.

What is the villager proposing and why shouldn't the master know? Surprisingly the Soviet Republic decriminalized homosexuality in 1917-- mainly I suspect as a gesture of defiance to Tsarist sexual mores-- but in practice government attitude was inconsistent at best intolerant at worst, with Stalin finally condemning homosexuality as a mental disorder in the late 20s and refusing to look back since (which is more in line with what I've heard)-- in this case the proposal is treated as surreal punchline to an inebriated Khoma's wild night, and must have been passed by the censors as such. 

Poor Khoma has every right to take to drink: sent home from the seminary for vacation, he and two friends end up sleeping in a barn where an old woman tries to seduce him. Khoma resists but the crone (played by a man, Nikolai Kutuzov, which continues the film's queer subtext) somehow compels him to lie on the barn floor while she mounts and forces him to carry her into the fields. As he runs trees and shrubs and grass whirl about (if you look close the greenery is on a turntable) and they take to the air; the old woman is a witch. He demands that she put him down and when they do he grabs a stick and beats her; she falls and turns into a beautiful young woman (Natalya Varley). 

Khoma runs back to the seminary and immediately upon return is ordered by his Rector to visit a farm-- apparently the farm's rich Sotnik owner has a daughter who had been brutally beaten and is dying and has asked for Khoma by name. The daughter dies before Khoma arrives, and to Khoma's horror he recognizes the young woman he left in the fields some nights before. The Sotnik promises a handsome reward if he would pray for her for the next three nights, a punishment if Khoma refuses (subtext: the Sotnik suspects Khoma-- who denies even knowing her-- and is using her last wishes as pretext to try catch the young man out).

That's it, that's the clever premise complete with twists Gogol sets up with his story. The film is reportedly faithful but in execution the directors (Yershov died in 1984 while Kropachyov enjoyed a long career as production designer (his final credit was Hard to Be a God (2013) where he evokes medieval Russia mud blood shit and all on a distant planet)-- this is reportedly their most memorable directing work) have pulled off a tour de farce of brilliant direction, imaginative practical effects, nightmare tomfoolery. Khoma looks down on Pannochka's face and a tear on her cheek turns to blood; he sneezes on a pinch of snuff and her eyes snap open and she pivots right out of her coffin like a cardboard pop-up from the pages of a children's book. The simplest effects-- many drawn from theater and stage magic-- are deftly timed to keep you off-balance, with Karen Khachaturian's alarming music egging you (and Khoma) closer and closer to fullblown panic as he cowers behind his hastily drawn protective chalk circle.

It helps that Kuravlyov gives a gem of a performance as the sadsack Khoma-- you laugh at him at first with his soupbowl cut his horseshoe mustache his big spaniel eyes, but you also feel for his predicament: none of this should really be his fault, the man said no and the witch would not accept that answer-- or did she? Was everything as he remembered? Or was his mind insisting on a version that could exonerate him for sexually assaulting and killing a girl? He saw what he saw and we saw it with him but everything unfolded in such a dreamlike manner you can't help but wonder-- and, unhelpfully, wonder how anyone else might respond when you tell them what you think happened. 

That mixture of terror, uncertain guilt, dawning acceptance and despair; the detailing of it, the elegantly arcing emotional trajectory-- few performances I know show that kind of sustained intensity. One thinks of John Lithgow's John Valentine in George Miller's "Nightmare at 20,000 Feet" segment of Twilight Zone: The Movie, or Michael Redgrave's stage performer in Alberto Cavalcanti's "The Ventriloquist's Dummy" segment of Dead of Night-- but those are episodes in an omnibus film, this a full length feature (barely so; running time is an hour and sixteen minutes).

With each night we have an escalating series of special effects, from simple pantomime to flying wirework to (in the final night) full-body costumes, trick perspectives, rear projection complete with deliriously spinning camera a la Vertigo. We see that turntable landscape one more time when Khoma tries to flee the farm, and again the trees and branches spinning around him suggest a man running desperately for his life getting nowhere fast. 

Above all this looms the Sotnik, who nominally mourns his daughter but I suspect enables her preying on peasants after dark while Khoma does the dirty work of praying for her immortal soul. Meantime the Sotnik sleeps in his (presumably) goosefeather mattress only to wake up in the morning to promise either punishment or profit to the poor student-- so it goes, and so I suspect goes the filmmakers' official message, as a sop to government censors. 

The Viy's eventual appearance (Skip this paragraph if you haven't seen the film)-- nicely heralded by the vampires and werewolves and demons' collective gasp of horror-- may appear disappointingly cartoonish (the Viy looks like a wider chubbier Golem) but I submit the film can only do so much escalating horror and instead pivots to grotesque slapstick. When the Viy has his eyes pried open and can finally see Khoma all comedy stops; a flood of green mouldering flesh engulfs the seminarian as all the forces of darkness cross his flimsy chalk circle. 

What else to say? This I suspect is where Francis Coppola drew inspiration for his Bram Stoker's Dracula, not to mention Sam Raimi for his Evil Dead 2 (credit to Raimi tho for pulling it off at a fraction of the budget). Great horror film that's also a lot of fun-- not bad for a Soviet production.