L&S informed me that our StatCounter numbers have been slipping as of late, so she's been yelling at me to "FIND MORE ACTION FLIX, LIKE 'MY DINNER WITH ANDRE'!!!!"
So I asked myself "what would a Russian 'bro do in this situation?" Then a heavily accented voice whispered in my ear "post Вий." So I did.
From Kelly Vance at East Bay Express:
The fantastic aspects of Alexander Ptushko, Konstantin Ershov, and Giorgi Kropachyov's 1967 fantasy Viy, are front and center, and thoroughly Russian.
No one does ghost stories like the Russians. And director-animator Ptushko's fanciful adventures of heroes, witches, Swiftian kingdoms, and sorcerers--now receiving a long-awaited mini-retrospective at the Pacific Film Archive, through June 8--are among the most amazing the former Soviet Union has to offer. Viy (1967) has been one of the most elusive of Ptushko's films for US audiences, and is just now receiving its stateside premiere at the PFA. Typical of Ptushko's work, it mixes gothic horror (from a short story by Nikolai Gogol) and grotesque animated effects in a proletarian automatic blender. And what it lacks in production values it makes up for in its lingering sense of dread.
A brawny, fun-loving seminarian named Khoma Brutus (played by Russian movie star Leonid Kuravlyov) is turned loose along with several dozen of his classmates for spring vacation, sometime in the 19th century. The seminarians immediately create chaos and havoc in the nearby town, exactly like 20th-century students, but eventually Khoma and two of his buddies find themselves lost in the country with nightfall approaching. They knock at a farmhouse gate begging for a place to sleep, and are welcomed by an old woman who seemingly takes a fancy to Khoma. Sure enough, she's a witch. After Khoma spurns her amorous advances in a haystack, the old woman casts a spell, rides him around the courtyard like a horse, and flies him through the air. The resourceful Khoma wakes up in midair, forces a rough landing, and escapes. But the witch isn't finished with him.
Khoma's travels then take him to a village where a local landowner is calling for a priest to administer to his recently deceased daughter. He goes to the estate and is offered this proposition: he must pray over the dead young woman's body for three nights; if he succeeds in placing her soul at rest, he'll be rewarded; if he tries to run, the landlord's cossacks will kill him. Inside a spooky wooden chapel hung with Eastern Orthodox icons, the deceased rests in her coffin. She is played by actress Natalya Varley, who bears a startling resemblance to Winona Ryder. Khoma begins to recite his prayers, and from then on the action goes from the subtly gothic to the baldly fantastic to the gleefully absurd, with brief stopovers in the languidly grim. The corpse refuses to lie still. In a Ukrainian minute the dead girl, evidently possessed by the aforementioned witch, opens her eyes and begins a successful campaign to blow poor Khoma's mind--by commanding furniture, surfing through the air in her coffin, summoning up an army of claymation demons, etc.
In the manner of Sergei Paradzhanov and other Soviet-era filmmakers working the antirealistic side of the street, the prolific Ukrainian Ptushko (1900-1973) grasps the cinematic essence of unnerving fantasy: oddly formed human faces combined with erratic movement. The witch's sexuality--in both her guises--is the key to the film, a major source of bewilderment for the seminarian. The color is magnificent, and Armen Hachaturyan's music is also especially thrilling with its vertiginous string crescendos. Viy, which plays one night only--next Thursday, June 7--at the PFA, comes highly recommended, as do all the Ptushko films.
Technical Information:
Title: Вий/Viy/Spirit of Evil
Year: 1967
Country: USSR
Director: Georgi Kropachyov, Konstantin Yershov, Alexander Ptushko
Source: Retail DVD9
DVD Format: NTSC
Container: .iso + mds
Size: 7.73 GB
Length: 1:11:52
Programs used: ImgBurn
Resolution: 720x480
Aspect Ratio: 4:3
Video: MPEG2 @~ 7300 kb/s
Frame Rate: 29.97 kb/s
Audio Channel 1: Русский/Russian- Dolby AC3 @ 448 kb/s
Audio Channel 2: English- Dolby AC3 @ 448 kb/s
Audio Channel 3: Français- Dolby AC3 @ 448 kb/s
Subtitles: English, Русский, Français, Deutsch, Español, Italiano, Português, Nederlands, Svenska, 日本語/Japanese
Menu: Yes
Video: Untouched
DVD Extras: Trailer
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