Viy was the subset film we needed after some of the others didn't turn out so well. Brilliantly strange blend of paranoia and irony forcing a seminary student through night after night of increasingly strange torment and the ending is really visually great. It's surreal enough to not be clear what is real and when the curse truly started from the beginning seeming like the guy is already condemned and the ending suggesting that it was really only his own fear he had to worry about. It's engaging but vague enough to leave one wondering what exactly you just saw.

I remember importing this DVD from Russia years ago. It's so amazing to see it available on streaming. Love this movie. I'm looking forward to watching it again.

A fascinating take on the vampire mythos. If you have the blu ray i recommend the Richard Stanley interview.

8/10

I really liked this one for a couple of reasons. I liked the film on its own. The scenes in the crypt were all great. I liked the relatively slow build until the furies were unleashed at the end. But another thing I like about this one is getting a look at how another culture views horror. It's interesting to see the similarities and the differences - not just in the tale but in the appearances of those creatures. That's one of the reasons why I appreciated Baskin a few years back. That one, too, seemed to be expressing some horror ideas from within that culture. Being from outside those cultures, maybe not all of those ideas fully resonate with me, but I appreciate being exposed to them.

I had never even heard of this film before I watched it today, so I had no expectations going into it and didn't even know what it was about... it's not what I expected on a vampire-themed day for sure as vampires aren't really an important part of the story. However, a priest and a witch having a battle of faith is something I'm surprised I don't see very much in films. This reminded me of some of the literature I used to read in college, stuff like Young Goodman Brown where faith is the main focus of the story with the horror being more about imagery and ideas. What's real? What's imaginary? I can see different people watching this and coming away with different ideas on what they watched. The scenes in the crypt at night were awesome. This was quite a good movie and one of the biggest surprises of the challenge for me, especially for me I was unaware even existed. I actually wouldn't mind there being a remake of this. The only negative is the effects at the end. The demon wasn't very impressive, but it was 1967, so that gets a pass. All in all, I'll probably try to find an official purchase of this down the line.

There's two recent remakes. I haven't seen them yet. But the trailers are full of awful CGI effects.

Forbidden Kingdom (2014) - aka Forbidden Empire and Viy
https://www.imdb.com/title/tt1224378/

Gogol. Viy (2018)
https://www.imdb.com/title/tt7910444/

Forbidden Kingdom looks promising, but Gogol, I was bored just watching the trailer. Neither were particularly what I had in mind, though, with what I envisioned. Still, I might check Forbidden Kingdom down the line.

Granny is my Ride or Fly.

I knew this would be a hard sell, but damn. It's only 77 minutes.

I've always been fascinated that Bava's Black Sunday is adapted (very loosely) from the same Gogol novella, and it makes for an interesting double feature. If I had one complaint it's that the church/crypt scenes run a bit short. I was left wanting more.

It's great, I just wish they got him for a full blown commentary. Or anybody for that matter.

I enjoyed it. Even with older effects the scene of the coffin flying about was pretty cool.

Not a hard sell at all. Russian horror from the 60s. What's not cool about that?

I would be curious what kind of party-line ideology this followed? It seems to have a critical eye toward the clergy, but what else?

I have that old DVD set of animated Russian propaganda films. It's pretty fascinating stuff to look at currently.

Second or third favorite of the month, but then, the foreign choices always are it seems.