VIY (1967) Blu-ray
Director: Georgi Kropachyov
Severin Films

Severin Films takes on Russian horror with their Blu-ray of the 1960s fantasy VIY.

Vacation has come for the residents of a Russian seminary in the countryside and time for mischief. On their way home on foot, Khayalava the Theologian (Vadim Zakharchenko), Gorobets the Orator (Vladimir Salnikov), and Khoma the Philosopher (Leonid Kuravlyov) get lost in the fog and beg shelter at a farm belonging to an old crone who insists that they sleep in three separate places on the farm. When she appears to Khoma in the barn, he at first believes that she is making advances to him but she jumps onto his back and rides him around the woods like a horse. When his feet leave the ground, he realizes that she is a witch and implores to God to free him. When they fall to the ground, he starts beating the witch with a stick but is horrified when she turns into a beautiful young woman and flees back to the monastery. No sooner does he return than the Rector (Pyotr Vesklyarov) announces that a wealthy local landowner (Aleksey Glazyrin) has summoned Khoma specifically to pray for the soul of his young daughter is dying after having been found brutally beaten. Although Khoma refuses to go, the Rector orders him and the landowners servants prevent him from trying to escape. The girl dies before Khoma arrives and her father interrogates Khoma as to why she specifically requested him and offers to reward him handsomely if he prays over her body for three nights. Khoma and the girl's coffin are locked in an old wooden church for the night, and his prayers seem to go unheard when the girl sits up in her coffin. Khoma draws a magic circle around himself and his lectern that renders him invisible to the supernatural even as she sails around him in her coffin trying to penetrate the invisible barrier and turns his hair white on the second night. Although he believes that the girl was clearly in league with the devil ("a thousand gold pieces or a thousand lashes"), the promise of riches brings him back the third night; whereupon the girl summons all the ghouls, werewolves, vampires, and finally the elder god Viy who can see through the barrier once his heavy, iron eyelids are opened.

Based on the novella by Nikolai Gogol that also served as the basis for Mario Bava's BLACK SUNDAY – and son Lamberto Bava's somewhat more faithful MASK OF SATAN – VIY was directed by actor Konstantin Ershov and production designer Georgiy Kropachyov (HARD TO BE A GOD), but its visuals and effects were designed by Aleksandr Ptushko who had been a specialist in big cinematic adaptations of Russian fantasy in the fifties including the Sovscope, four-track stereo ILYA MUROMETS and SAMPO which made it stateside in compromised form as THE SWORD AND THE DRAGON and THE DAY THE EARTH FROZE, SADKO which Roger Corman's Filmgroup recut and redubbed as THE MAGIC VOYAGE OF SINBAD while his bigger later films RUSLAN AND LUDMILA and THE TALE OF TSAR SALTAN did not make it over here until the Russian Cinema Council remastered them for DVD. Althouh there are some parallels between the two films, the tone is actually rather lighter than the liberal Bava adaptation, finding comic value in Khoma's fearfulness while the young witch is barely a character. Although the state-supported budget is richly reflected in the studio sets which include a revolving soundstage used for some insert shots of the monks walking through the countryside and the supernatural movements of the witch and other monsters, the in-camera effects are not as polished as what Bava achieved on a fraction of the budget. The visualizations of the monsters through stop motion, overcranking, undercranking, and reverse motion is effective and the highlight of the film, but it remains more of a fairy tale than a horror film with Khoma seemingly visited retribution by an old witch (dancing around the suggestion that the monk raped and killed a young woman as put forth elsewhere on the disc). Gogol's story would be adapted again in Yugoslavia as SVETO MESTO, updated as EVIL in Russia in 2006, and as the big-budget VIY in 2014 in 3D.

Although exported to other countries at the time of its release, VIY remained unreleased in the United States and was only accessible via a Japanese-subtitled laserdisc from Toho Video until a Russian Cinema Council DVD distributed by Image Entertainment stateside. Severin's 1080p24 MPEG-4 AVC 1.33:1 pillarboxed fullscreen Blu-ray looks a bit bluer than the earlier, paler SD PAL transfer but it enhances the supernatural aspect by making the young witch's pallor seem less lifelike without effecting the human characters while the image is shaper and slightly darker. Audio options include Russian mono and a vintage-sounding English dub, both in lossless DTS-HD Master Audio 2.0 along with English subtitles for the Russian track and SDH subtitles for the English track.

Extras start off with “Viy the Vampire” (22:57), an interview with filmmaker Richard Stanley (DUST DEVIL) in which he discusses his familiarity with the original story, tracing the Eastern European vampire legends, and being inspired from an early age to do an adaptation of it. He still finds the adaptations lacking in their visualizations of Viy, and touches upon his own aborted version set in Bosnia in the nineties (and his own interpretation of the degree of guilt of the protagonist). “The Woods to the Cosmos" (34:26) is a survey on the history of Soviet fantasy and sci-fi film by John Leman Riley touching upon the various trends in the genres during different periods, with horror and mythology ripe for exploitation during early cinema's experimentation with camera trickery, the move towards science fiction and space exploration (and the exporting of films whose nationality was either disguised during the Cold War in the United States or whose effects footage was recycled for new films), Soviet authors of note and the influence of certain authors like Ray Bradbury – citing an intriguing feature adaptation of "The Veldt" which was later adapted for television stateside for THE RAY BRADBURY THEATER.

The disc also includes a trio of short silent films upscaled from standard definition and lacking titles or restoration. SATAN EXULTANT (19:29) is actually a surviving excerpt from a feature film dealing with the devil's influences on generations of a religious family. THE QUEEN OF SPADES (16:29) is a short adaptation of the story by Alexandr Pushkin about a young soldier who wants to learn the secret of the cards to win at gambling and offers to take upon himself the sins of an aged countess who had sold her soul for the secret (a feature-length version made in Britain in 1949 was recently released on Blu-ray by Kino Lorber). Lastly, there is THE PORTRAIT (7:53) about a man who buys a painting that has a life of its own. This slight piece actually manages to raise some genuine shivers briefly. The disc also includes the feature film's theatrical trailer (1:53). This is the standard edition of a release previously offered by Severin with an exclusive slipcover. (Eric Cotenas)

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