Weirdhouse Cinema: Viy (1967)

In this episode of Weirdhouse Cinema, Rob and Joe discuss the 1967 Soviet folk horror film "Viy," based on the story by Nikolai Gogol.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:02):
Welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind, a production of iHeartRadio.

Speaker 2 (00:13):
Hey you welcome to Weird House Cinema.

Speaker 3 (00:15):
This is Rob Lamb and this is Joe McCormick. And
today on Weird House Cinema, we're going to be talking
about the nineteen sixty seven Soviet folk horror film V,
a story about a ne'er do well seminary student who
bumbles his way into a blood curdling confrontation with witchcraft,
living death, and the armies of Hell via some absolutely

(00:39):
amazing nineteen sixty special effects. V was based on an
eighteen thirty five novella by the author Nikolai Gogel, and
it gets its title from the name of a monstrous
creature that the protagonist is brought face to face with
at the climax of the story. So in the author's

(00:59):
note of the top of the novella, Gogol describes the
V as the king of the gnomes, whose eyelashes reached
to the ground. Do you get much of a gnome
feeling when we finally see the V in this thing.

Speaker 2 (01:12):
In a well, in a sense, cinematically, it reminds me,
It reminds me of the was it a Nome King
and returned to oz.

Speaker 3 (01:19):
Oh. Yes, he's called the Nome King without a g
it's just me.

Speaker 2 (01:23):
Yeah, So it did remind me of that. I was
digging into this a little bit. And the story is
supposedly derived in large part from Ukrainian folklore. Gogel was
himself Ukrainian born, and we can think of this as
as very much Ukrainian story that we're discussing here. But

(01:43):
apparently there's some discussion as to whether nomes actually factor
into Ukrainian folklore. So it's very possible that the entity
V is the element in the story that is pretty
much a creation.

Speaker 3 (01:55):
Of the author.

Speaker 2 (01:56):
Here.

Speaker 3 (01:57):
This is Gogel's.

Speaker 2 (01:58):
Creation, and we can look to various things he might
have drawn upon from other cultures, like it has again
like what I eyelids or eyebrows that cover eyes that
cast a deadly ray. This reminds us a little bit
of in Irish mythology, the King of the Fomorians, whose

(02:19):
lids are like that. I think his brow hangs down
over a terrifying gaze. And if you raise that brow,
if others raise it for him, then he can decimate
the enemy.

Speaker 3 (02:29):
I don't know what exact word go Gol would have
used that these authors translate as Gnome in that note,
but yeah, the king of the gnomes at least in
that English rendering.

Speaker 2 (02:38):
Well, I love the way it comes together, and we'll
be talking about this a lot, because, yeah, everything comes
to a head in this movie when V actually takes
the stage and there's just it's just such a weird entity.
The presentation is so strange and does feel, you know, certainly,
you know, to my eyes, and I think to maybe
like international viewers at least, but also perhaps viewers of

(03:00):
the film as well, like there's just an otherworldly weirdness
to it. And that's exactly what you should feel when, like,
you know, unknown darkness is boiling up and overcoming of
all of the things that you thought were going to
protect you from their ravaging power.

Speaker 3 (03:16):
Though I do think it's interesting that the title of
this movie and of the novella that it's based on,
is taken from the name of a creature which does
not appear until the very last few minutes of the film,
and unless I missed something, is never mentioned before that.
It's not like, oh, you're going to have to meet

(03:36):
V soon. I don't think VE ever comes up until
right before he summoned.

Speaker 2 (03:41):
Oh no, he's just he's the culmination of the film.
But he's not a culmination and anyone's really prepared for.

Speaker 3 (03:48):
But well, I mean that's sort of a great metaphor
for what the movie is overall. This this film is
quite famous for storing up its demonic payload for a
sudden and overwhelming deployment in the final few minutes. And Rob,
you and I had discussed before, you know, should we

(04:09):
do this movie. It had come up, but I think
we had both read people saying on the internet, like
it's kind of slow for most of the runtime, though
the last few minutes are amazing. I'm going to stick
up for the rest of the runtime. I think this
is a pretty great movie end to end. Though it's
hard to deny that it really saves it really saves
the bang for the very end.

Speaker 2 (04:30):
That is true, absolutely. I mean, we've discussed other films
that do this as well. I mean the last fifteen
minutes of the film, the least ten minutes of the film,
or even just the last act, Like that's the time
when you have your monster go on a full rampage
and it's fully visible to the audience. That's the time
also when key bad guys might melt or explode. So

(04:53):
it makes sense that you would save your special effects
fiasco for that portion of a film. But I agree
with you. I think that I think that the rest
of the film absolutely holds up and lays the groundwork
and builds up to that moment in a wonderful way.
But yeah, it is It is still definitely the case
that most of the clips you might have been exposed

(05:14):
to concerning this film, the images you might have been
exposed to, and certainly some of the poster are you know,
the main selling point it is from the final like
ten minutes or so of the movie. And so on
one hand, like all of that is the thing that
you absolutely use to pull someone in, and if you're
telling somebody about v you're going to say, hey, make
sure you watch those last ten minutes. But you almost

(05:36):
do it a disservice because it kind of can lead
to this idea that it might be lopsided and it's
maybe a slog to get there. But yeah, there's still
plenty of weirdness, there's humor, beautifully sought shot sets and locations,
so the journey is worth it.

Speaker 3 (05:51):
As well. Yeah, I totally agree. The special effects centerpiece
is the climax of the film, but there's a lot
to love before we get to that. Like you say,
it is very funny throughout and even beyond that, the
ending is not the only thing where there's something really
beautiful and interesting to look at. Like throughout the movie,

(06:13):
there are there's some beautiful cinematography. There's some great locations.
I love the chapel where the climax takes place. We
get there early on and get to survey all the
different little nooks and crannies of it. In earlier scenes.
There are some beautiful uses of actual outdoor locations, some
really cool indoor for outdoor sets that highlight these these

(06:35):
blue slavic atmospherics that just make the world feel like
it's humming with witchcraft. Yeah, I loved it. I thought
this is a great film. Yeah.

Speaker 2 (06:44):
Plus, not all the special effects are saved for encounters
with the unseen world. We also get a great scene
where our lead character just gets terribly drunk with some Cossacks,
and so we get some great like spinning room sequences
like triple vision, you know, and it has nothing to do
with magic. It's just that he's really, really drunk.

Speaker 3 (07:05):
The Cossack Boss appears coming out of three different doors
at the same time. Yes, it's pretty great that vodka
will get you.

Speaker 2 (07:14):
Yeah, there's a lot of vodka drinking in this so
so yeah.

Speaker 3 (07:17):
There.

Speaker 2 (07:17):
On one hand, there's a lot of unknowable folk magic
in this film. And our our our lead character is
fresh out of seminary, and so he is.

Speaker 3 (07:27):
He is a man of the cloth, but he's often
described I think as a philosopher. Philoh.

Speaker 2 (07:33):
They're always calling him that. They're saying, hey, philosopher, come
over here.

Speaker 3 (07:36):
That may be a kind of mocking title, and I'm
not entirely sure how that's intended. But yes, he's a
he's a seminary student. He is studying with the clergy.
I don't know if his plan is to become a
member of the clergy, but he's he's he knows how
to say prayers and read books. Yeah.

Speaker 2 (07:52):
But the interesting thing, and we'll come back to this
a number of times, I think, is for this seminary.
And his faith is not enough, like the power. I
don't know if the power of God is even enough,
but at least his his faith in the power of
God is not enough to save him in the end,
and he has marginal success with like a magic circle,
which doesn't feel expressly Christian. And of course the main action,

(08:14):
like the most terrifying things in the picture, take place
within this kind of gloomy, creepy chapel that's decorated with
night gallery worthy paintings of Christ and saints. And so, yeah,
we see him in the midst of these trials. We
see him appeal to race and nationalism as often as
he appeals to God. And you know, he's reminding himself

(08:36):
of his own faith and his resolve and the power
of Christ. But none of this is sufficient to stave
off the forces of darkness.

Speaker 3 (08:44):
Yeah, he does try to find recourse with a cossack
as afraid of nothing, but yeah, yeah he is afraid.
I like that you pointed out the creepiness of the
paintings in the church, and this is before the church
transforms into monster mode. It does go through a transformation
where all of the paintings turn into paintings of devils
and stuff, and we can revisit that later, but even

(09:07):
in its daytime form, this church has images of the
face of Jesus Christ that are so morbid and horrible.
It has this green, frowning Christ is just looking on
you with absolute contempt. Yeah.

Speaker 2 (09:22):
Creepiest chapels since a Lucarde.

Speaker 3 (09:25):
Yeah here, but I agree with what you were saying here.
I was actually going to say myself that in this film,
it feels almost like Christianity is treated as simply an
alternate form of witchcraft. It's like the good witchcraft. I
think a lot of horror movies that have this type

(09:46):
of conflict, that throw a priest or a member of
the clergy into conflict with witchcraft or the devil, have
a framework that you could call magic versus religion, highlighting
the different in form and structure of magic versus religion.
So in these types of stories, magic can be viewed
as a chaotic, transactional system of power in which witches

(10:11):
and sorcerers get strength by recruiting the help of these
dangerous supernatural beings. And then you contrast that with religion,
which is viewed as orderly, maybe inherently good, maybe a
fully integrated thing in the lives of the practitioners, unlike magic,
which is simply for sourcing power, and that the power

(10:35):
from the religion comes from a predictable God and his
earthly authorities. But in the Coma's Christianity does not feel
like an orderly system that is integrated and meaningful throughout
his whole life. Did you get that feeling at all?

Speaker 2 (10:51):
Right? Right, he is in a very shaky place with it.
And I guess there's a lot of commentary that seems
to be going on here, some some criticism of religion
as a whole, and you know, pretty much all of
the religious figures in the in the movie are portrayed
as being well drunks in many cases, as being letcherus.

(11:13):
Like the movie opens with them like what breaking, Like
the seminary is breaking for the summer or something, and
they let the students loose and they're like already like ones,
like trying to get a goat to read the Bible.
They head out, they start drinking, they're like chasing women
across the fields, like they're just these do not feel
like men of God that have been or even future

(11:35):
men of God that have been released. So there's there's
always this sense of hypocrisy with the way the people
of Christ are portrayed in this film.

Speaker 3 (11:43):
Yes, the seminary students as a whole at the beginning
are portrayed as an almost malevolent, chaotic force, like so
you said the opening scene, the rector comes out of
the seminary and lets them loose for vacation, and as
soon as they're released, yet they're just they swarm over
the town, looting and pillaging. So and I do want

(12:04):
to emphasize that it's not just like a little harmless mischief.
They are like an attacking army that is sacking a city.
So they run to the market and they steal everything
that's not tied down in the market. They are shown
kidnapping women from the fields doing their laundry. It's just mayhem.

Speaker 2 (12:21):
Yeah, though with all of this with an intended comedic flare,
that needs to be sure.

Speaker 3 (12:27):
And you know, we're used to seeing stories where the
clergy are depicted ironically, maybe highlighting vices.

Speaker 2 (12:34):
Or yet like the drug friar is a common trope.

Speaker 3 (12:37):
For exactly yeah, totally ways that the clergy might fail
to live up to what they preach. But I think
this is significantly over that line. It's it's it is
still played for comedy, but it's more than just some
light ribbing of the priesthood. These these seminary students are
like locusts.

Speaker 2 (12:55):
Yeah yeah, and I think in some of this we
can detect a bit of that so yet era atheism
in its portrayal of organized religion here as lazy, hypocritical,
and ineffective. And it's interesting to potentially see that here
because we've definitely looked at plenty of examples of cinema
from different countries under different regimes and different standards and practices,

(13:20):
which you know, interfere with not portraying like, say, you know,
the Christian faith or some sort of some sort of
set of morals as being superior to the forces of darkness,
or as being like some sort of backbone you can
depend upon.

Speaker 3 (13:35):
Yeah, so here you might be getting a counterposed type
of anti clerical piety. But yeah, so anyway, I just
to come back and finish the thought I started a
minute minute ago about the Christianity and the movie feeling
not really like a religion, but feeling like an alternate
form of witchcraft. I think when you actually get into

(13:56):
the exorcism or prayer scenes, you know, we're used to
seeing these exorcism scenes in movies like The Exorcist. We've
done exorcism movies on weird House before, where there's a
spiritual battle, often of words going on, a ritual, rituals
fighting back and forth, or ritual versus a kind of
projection of profanity by the demonic forces. A lot of

(14:18):
times those scenes emphasize the confidence and the rectitude of
the orderly forces representing the whole apparatus of religion. This
movie doesn't feel like that at all. Instead, it feels
like Coma is trying to hold up the Christian rights
and prayers as this tenuous system of apotropaic magic. It's like,

(14:42):
these are the charms and hexes he knows that can, hopefully,
with a bit of luck, keep the devils from killing him.
And it doesn't work. Yeah.

Speaker 2 (14:53):
In a way, you could almost imagine him expecting Satan
to make an appearance at the end, but there's no Satan.
There's the He might be like, who the heck is
the you know, I wasn't prepared for this at all,
and the creatures of the night would just tell him, yeah,
you were not.

Speaker 3 (15:09):
There is no day, only the yeah. Yeah.

Speaker 2 (15:12):
Now it's worth addressing that this is a then Soviet
Union film produced by Moss Film, based on the work
of a Russian author of Ukrainian origin, set and filmed
for outdoor scenes at least in what is now Ukraine,
and featuring a mix of Soviet actors and filmmakers, some
of whom had Ukrainian origins, So it has a distinctive

(15:34):
Ukrainian flair. But again, film during the nineteen sixties when
Ukraine was part of the USSR, and set during the
eighteenth century when this part of Ukraine was ruled by
the Cossack Hetmanate. So at any rate, referring to the
film and the work of Gogel, it is highly accurate
to call this a work of Ukrainian full.

Speaker 3 (15:51):
Car Yeah, very much Ukrainian in setting and feeling. But
I think it'd be also worth addressing the second half
of what you said, they're Ukrainian full corror? Is this
full corror? I encountered this movie actually because it came

(16:11):
with a box set that I recently ordered, Rob. I
think maybe you were going to bring this up anyway.
I ordered the Severin Films collection called All the Haunts
Be Hours, a compendium of full corr Volume one, Rob,
Have you check this out?

Speaker 2 (16:26):
I have looked at it longingly, because you know, it
looks amazing. It has what fifteen discs in it. It's
films from different eras, different countries, all kind of loosely
under the umbrella of full car.

Speaker 3 (16:38):
I haven't watched all the movies in it yet, but
I think you could argue that this film selection is
very much curated. It's not just one of these collections
where what movies could we get, let's throw them together,
And the films feel very carefully selected to kind of
tell a story about what full core is and could be.
And in that sense, it is accompanied by a there's

(17:01):
a documentary called A Woodland's Dark and Days Bewitched. This
is a documentary about the history of full corror as
a genre. Especially interesting because full corror, though it's a
term we use now all the time, when a lot
of the movies within the genre of full carr were made,
there wasn't. This wasn't really a concept people were referring to.

(17:23):
A lot of the people didn't think I'm making a
full corror movie. It's like a more recently applied term.

Speaker 2 (17:28):
Usually, yeah, yeah, you would be more I think likely
to have a film like this described. It might be
described as horror, but probably more likely to be described
as fantasy or a fairy tale.

Speaker 3 (17:39):
Yes, exactly. It is the folk tale framing or the
fairy tale or folk tale framing that I think probably
would have come first to mind of the filmmakers in
this case, and in a lot of the earlier films
that are now thought of as full core. But there's
like in this documentary about what full core is and
where it comes from there, or all these descriptive phrases

(18:01):
people are coming up with to to try to describe
the genre. And I thought that part was very interesting,
just in how a full car is one of these
things that I had never thought to try and define before,
but I totally know it when I see it, but
I couldn't come up with a comprehensive definition of what fits.
It has very fuzzy edges, but those edges overlap somehow

(18:25):
with witchcraft, paganism, anything pre Christian resurfacing in the Christian context,
and also is very much about like buried layers of
previous culture or the past being sort of unearthed and

(18:45):
brought up into a more modern context. And putting all
these things together, I was starting to wonder, wait a minute,
is the actually full car? It feels like full car
it feels like it fits. Maybe it's just that it's
one thing about the clash between Christianity and witchcraft, like
that alone is enough to get you there. Yeah.

Speaker 2 (19:06):
Yeah, I mean it's it's one of those things it's
hard to nail down, you know. We can there's certain
things we can we can look at and we can
be like, oh, yeah, of course blood on Satan's clause
it's full Car or you know, or the wicker Man.
But then you you can also bring up a movie
like Texas Chainsaw Massacre, which I think you can make
a case for there being some strong Full Car elements
there without it being like so clearly full Car that

(19:28):
you you know that you would you would never miss it.

Speaker 3 (19:31):
That's sort of yeah. Well, it's interesting because a lot
of the key elements of Full Care are are also
very common in movies that people don't think of as
Full Car. For example, one of the key things, like
one of the most common plot structures of Full Car
people critics identified this a lot is a naive city

(19:51):
dwelling outsider or scholar goes into a rural place and
discovers a pagan conspiracy or some kind of some kind
of ancient or superstitious horror taking place there. Yeah, now
that you know, that's kind of the wicker Man that's
in a lot of these full Correr movies of the

(20:11):
past and the craft, yeah, and of the present. But
it's also just like you start thinking about it, Oh,
that's so much horror. That's things we don't think of
full car at all. Lots of slasher movies or about
like a naive city dweller who goes out into a
rural place and stumbles upon some kind of conspiracy. I
guess in some of those cases where where we have
these slasher movies that have that structure but don't feel

(20:33):
like full cor I was trying to think, why don't
they feel like full core. Maybe it's just because there
are no real elements of like displaced ancient culture or
rituals or paganism. Maybe you need that kind of element
to cement the full core connection.

Speaker 2 (20:49):
Yeah, yeah, I think so. And so like with Texas
Chainsaw Masacre, you get some slight hints of that with
some of like the the little dabbles that they decorate
the trees with, you know it, but it's not really
dwelled upon. It's kind of faint. And then there are
some other bells and whistles in that film that kind
of make you look in different directions, like astrological data

(21:11):
and so forth.

Speaker 3 (21:13):
This movie, actually, now that I think about it, it
does have that structure too, doesn't it. Because Coma is
from the city. He's a he's a student, a scholar
from Kiev who goes out into the country and stumbles
across some witchcraft. So I didn't even think about that
when I started describing this, but that is right. That
is basically the structure of the plot.

Speaker 2 (21:33):
Yeah, the locals are making him do something. He tries
to run away from his responsibilities. They catch him and
they lock him back in and they make him do
his job.

Speaker 3 (21:41):
Yeah, yeah, you could.

Speaker 2 (21:43):
You could easily imagine like a Southern exploitation treatment of
this exact same plot.

Speaker 3 (21:50):
So that's interesting. Yeah, student wanders off campus from Liberty
University and has like Southern Baptist student is out there,
runs into some country witchcraft. Yeah I love it.

Speaker 2 (22:05):
Yeah, somebody do it all right, So if you would
like to watch v for yourself or rewatch it as
the case may be, As Joe mentioned, that excellent box
set All the Haunts Be Hours, a compendium of Folk
Are Volume one. I believe there are two volumes out now,
it might be three. There might be three, Okay, well,
Volume one's the one you want to pick up if

(22:26):
you want to watch this film. This episode came together
rather quickly, so I ended up watching it via the
Eternal Family streaming service, which I also highly recommend a
great source for weird housey selections from around the world.

(22:49):
All right, shall we get into the people behind this film?

Speaker 3 (22:52):
Yes? Please? All right?

Speaker 2 (22:53):
So I believe there may be more to this story.
But essentially we have two credited directors, co directors, co writers.
We have Konstantine Ershov who lived nineteen thirty five through
nineteen eighty four, and then we have Gyorghi Kropatschev, who
lived nineteen thirty through twenty sixteen. Both Russian born. Kropatschev
would go on to make his mark in production design,

(23:15):
mostly active through around twenty thirteen, and Ershov continue to
act right and direct into the nineteen eighties. But the
various materials I've been looking at point to a third,
more experienced man being the primary creative force behind this film.
In fact, you'll see his name listed as a third
director if you look at the IMDb listings for the film.

(23:38):
I don't know that every database listed this way, but
this individual is Alexander Patushko. He is credited as a writer,
as a creative advisor, and the special effects supervisor on
the film. He lived nineteen hundred through nineteen seventy three.

Speaker 3 (23:55):
I would kind of say that even if all he
did were the special effects, he should probably get a
co director's credit this movie. Yes, that's how important the
special effects are.

Speaker 2 (24:07):
Yeah. Yeah, he's a big deal Potushko. I don't think
we've mentioned him on the show before, but we have
at least referenced some of the films that he's done,
or one in particular that will be known to certainly
known to international audiences and known to Mystery Science Theater
three thousand fans. So Patushko was a Ukrainian born filmmaker

(24:28):
internationally recognized for a cinematic vision and for his contributions
to animation. This was obviously towards the very end of
his life and career, so he'd only write and direct
one more project, the nineteen seventy two fantasy epic Russwin
and Ludmila. But his prior work goes back to nineteen
twenty eight, and features such fantasy classics as nineteen thirty

(24:49):
nine's The Golden Key, which I'm to understand is kind
of a Russian Pinocchio. Nineteen forty six is The Stone Flower,
nineteen fifty six is The Sword and the Dragon, nineteen
fifty nine's The Day the Earth Froze. These last two
titles again should be familiar to MSD three K fans,
as they were featured on that program.

Speaker 3 (25:09):
I remember those titles, but I don't know if I've
seen those episodes.

Speaker 2 (25:13):
Oh they're pretty great, like there were films that I've
never had the chance to see either of them in
refined quality. I believe, at least The Sword and the Dragon. No, no,
I believe The Day the Earth Froze as well. I
think believe both of these films are available now on
disc in beautiful restored quality, and I really need to

(25:36):
see them. But I remember even watching them in kind
of grimy quality on MSD three K, and certainly enjoying them.
Through the riffing. You could tell like, Wow, this is
like really an amazing fantasy vision that we have here.
So yeah, I really need to go back and give
them a second look. Because potishco is and was largely

(25:57):
regarded as a master, often compared to Walt Disney and
Mario Bava for different reasons. He's largely credited with transforming
this film into the form that makes it so memorable,
including its amazing effects. He was behind its wire stunts
which hold up just exceedingly well, and it's overall horror pacing.

(26:19):
Film historian Tim Lucas has written about this. I did
not have a chance to read it myself, but I
understand he wrote an essay about this and about Potushcode
that was included in the printed material that came with
like a European or a British release of the film V.

Speaker 3 (26:36):
This is a film where I would say that the
special effects in themselves feel like an art form. I
don't know. Maybe actually that comes off as just denigrating
special effects in general, which I don't mean to do.
But sometimes I feel like special effects are there is
certainly art to them in that the director presents a

(26:56):
vision and the special effects tried to help the director
achieve that vision, looking more or less realistic in camera somehow,
And that's not really what we get here. This is
a movie where I feel a strong sense of style
and sort of personal charisma of the artist in the
special effects, if that makes any sense.

Speaker 2 (27:17):
Yeah, yeah, absolutely, yeah. The special effects of this film
are just are essentially kind of its heart in a
very authentic way. Not in a sense like the rest
of the movie is forgettable, but the effects are great.
Like the effects feel like the beating heart of the picture.

Speaker 3 (27:34):
Yeah, all right.

Speaker 2 (27:36):
So again, both co directors and Putushco have writing credits
on this but again it is based on this original
novella by Nikolai Gogel, who lived eighteen oh nine through
eighteen fifty two, Russian writer of Ukrainian origin, best known
both within Russian and Ukrainian literature as well as internationally
for his works on political corruption, notably the eighteen forty

(27:58):
two novels Dead Soles and The Government Inspector. But he's
also highly regarded for his short fiction, including eighteen thirty
five's Diary of a Madman, which some of you are familiar.
This is about a character named Ozzy who turns into
a werewolf. I think, yeah, yeah, no actual connection I
think to the nineteen eighty one Ozzy Osbourne album. But

(28:19):
he was on a bark at the moon seiking a
bark at the moon. Yeah, I was bark at the
moon on Diary of a Mad Man. Or is that
that's what I was asking? I don't, oh, I don't remember.
Some of the Azzie albums kind of bleed together in
my memory. But Gogel was also influenced, especially in his
early works, by Ukrainian folklore and in general relished in
the grotesque. V is a novella included in a volume

(28:43):
two of his collected tales titled Mirgorod. Gogel died before
the advent of the cinematic age, but his work has
been adapted many many times. V especially has been adapted
like I couldn't even really put together a full list
because like it begins as early as nineteen oh nine
and then as recently as twenty fourteen, there was a

(29:04):
Russian Ukrainian film known internationally as Forbidden Empire for some reason,
but it had an international cast. It has spawned two sequels.
There's like V two, where they go to China, and
then V three I think is coming in which they
go to India. There's no reason for there to be
that much international travel in a V film, it seems

(29:25):
to me.

Speaker 3 (29:26):
Which is the one you showed me that did it
have Jackie Chan and Arnold Schwarzenegger and Charles Dance.

Speaker 2 (29:33):
Yes, yes, that's the second one, the V film that
takes place in China, and I can't remember what its
international release title is, but they remove V from it. Yeah. Yeah,
there's not only is there are there contemporary V films
series in Russian cinema. There there are also a couple
of films in which Gogel himself his position is like

(29:55):
a crime solving figure, which I found kind of interesting.

Speaker 3 (29:58):
Like Abraham Lincoln Vampire.

Speaker 2 (30:00):
Yeah, yeah, I mean, like, yeah, not to say that
it's it's I mean, it's exactly the same thing that
US cinema has done and will continue to do. But
you know it's interesting to see that same energy but
with like different literary and historical figures.

Speaker 3 (30:16):
Yeah.

Speaker 2 (30:17):
So the story by gogle here V or the V
was also apparently the inspiration or a partial inspiration for
Mario Baba's nineteen sixty film Black Sunday, and as Anne
Bilson points out in an article for Sid and Sound
from April of twenty twenty one, this film the sixty
seven can be seen as quote a patriotic correction to

(30:40):
Mario Baba's Black Sunday, based only very loosely on the
same Gogle story and seen in the USSR as a
Hollywood travesty of the source material, probably because the version
distributed there was the American Duboe.

Speaker 3 (30:54):
We just did Black Sunday last October on the show
for a Weird House Cinema. That's the one where Barber
Steel makes the most demonic face a person has ever made.

Speaker 2 (31:04):
Yeah, and so I mean, you can you can see
where Bob was at least partially inspired by this tale,
by this novella, but the the final form of Black Sunday,
and certainly that the structure of the thing is rather
different from these Yeah, but you can also you can
understand where where some people might take offensive they thought

(31:26):
that source material was being mistreated in some fashion.

Speaker 3 (31:29):
It almost feels like a spiritual adaptation. I'm trying to
think what elements of the plot are actually poured it over.
It doesn't feel like much. Creepy lady, Yeah, there's a
creepy lady.

Speaker 2 (31:40):
Okay, Yeah, all right, let's get into the cast a
little bit here. We've been talking about Coma already. He
is the seminarian he's our main character. He is going
to be our our unwitting and unprepared soldier of light,
standing up against the darkness, rocking a hell of a
bowl cut, Yes, an amazing bowl cut. And he is

(32:02):
played by Leonid Karavolyyov. He lived nineteen thirty six through
twenty twenty two Russian and Soviet actor, best known internationally
for this film, but his other films include the seventy
three comedy Ivan Vasselevich Changes his profession, and also an
adaptation of Robinson Crusoe from the same year, in which

(32:22):
he plays Robin Zona Cruso. So I'm very much the
Russian treatment of the tale. He was highly regarded in
Russian Soviet cinema, active in film from fifty nine through
twenty sixteen. He did tons of films, but only a
few genre titles, and this being the only thing you
could even classify as horror. Of note, I was just

(32:45):
looking at some of the less well known films that
he did, some of the later day films that he did.
He played dead Moro's father, Frost, in a nineteen ninety
seven film called New Year's Story, which somehow involves secret
alien fighting government operatives and a Santa figure hiding in
playing sight at a Gorky Studios annual Christmas event. Okay,

(33:09):
so yeah, that sounds interesting.

Speaker 3 (33:12):
Merry Christmas.

Speaker 2 (33:13):
But at any rate, as far as this film goes,
I can't keep enough braves in his performance. I think
coma is he's very sympathetic, but obviously he's riddled with dow.
He's seeking momentarily momentary bursts of bravery through faith, through
ethnic heritage, through strong drink, and none of this is
enough to protect him, you know. And and yet again

(33:35):
he's sympathetic, and he hits just the right comedic beats
to keep everything from feeling too doomy, even though our
trajectory is very much one of doom. But that you know,
it's there are enough comedic slip ups along the way
that it doesn't feel I don't know, it doesn't feel bad.
It feels it feels like a commentary on human nature.

Speaker 3 (33:55):
Yeah, I think partially because it has the folk tale
structure and because it's leavened with all this comedy. Even
though the ending is very dark, it doesn't leave you
feeling bad. I agree. Yeah, I walked away from this
movie with a song in my heart, even though Koma
dies spoiler. Yeah, it just it just felt all right.

Speaker 2 (34:16):
Yeah, I mean afterwards, you just drink a little vodka,
you eat a few raw onions, and you're you good
to go.

Speaker 3 (34:22):
The man that was great, who is that? Which character
is that? He's got the green onions in his hand.
He's just munching on one.

Speaker 2 (34:27):
It's one of the two old friends from the seminary
and they're like, yeah, yeah, he really got screwed on
that one. And then they're supposed to be like painting
something and doing some repairs, but they're just setting around
drinking vodka and one of them is eating like raw
green onions that he's picked or something.

Speaker 3 (34:42):
The rector goes by, he's like, are y' all working?
And they're like, yeah, we're working, but they're just sitting
there drinking with their onions. All right.

Speaker 2 (34:50):
So we have mentioned the creepy woman in this. Yeah,
we'll get into the reasoning, but you know, she is
a witch, but she's also like an undead body. She
is dead, a beautiful woman who has died and doesn't
seem to want to stay dead. We'll get into the
details of this, but the younger version of this character

(35:11):
were given a name for her it's Panachka I Believe,
and she is played by Natalia Varley born nineteen forty
seven as of this recording, still with Romanian born Russian
and Soviet film and theater actress active in film from
nineteen sixty two through twenty twenty two. This was only

(35:32):
her third feature length film credit, following her role in
a popular nineteen sixty four comedy titled Kidnapping a Caucasian Style,
which launched her career. So it's interesting that both of
our leads here, either beforehand or afterwards, would definitely make
their mark in comedy in Russian comedy as well as

(35:52):
this notable entry in what you could call full car.

Speaker 3 (35:56):
Well, she has an almost clownish press in many of
her scenes, actually the horror scenes, like with just a
little tweak in tone, you could see a lot of
her behavior going from scary to funny. I'm thinking about
the way that in the haunting scenes she is often

(36:17):
kind of jittering up and down and kind of jittering
and chattering. It's it's a fantastically physical performance that you
could see working well for like comedy, miming almost.

Speaker 2 (36:31):
Yeah yeah, And she does really feel like a live wire.
She is animated by strange energy. Yeah, that we can't
quite understand, and even her designs are are kind of unknown.
We'll get into that when we start talking about the
Three Nights, the diseased Queen of the May Yeah, let's

(36:51):
see others. The other characters of note playing her father,
the Satnik a centurion, is this act Alexei Glazurin who
lived nineteen twenty two through nineteen seventy one, Soviet actor
who credits include mostly supporting roles in various war dramas
throughout the fifties, sixties, and seventies. But coming back to

(37:13):
what you were talking about, the line between comedy and
horror in acting, we also have this old witch that
shows up early in the picture and she is played
by Nikolay Kutuzov who lived eighteen ninety seven through nineteen
eighty one. So we've seen this before in Russian cinema.
Thinking back to Jack Frost, which we previously covered on

(37:35):
Weird House, the casting of a male actor as a
female witch, And I haven't read anything about this in
Russian cinema, but I'm assuming this was just kind of
standard practice at the time, which would seem to run
kind of counter to what we're used to in other
cinematic traditions, where you absolutely give older witch and crone

(37:55):
roles to female performers, because I mean it's part of
the classic Hollywood type casting for older actresses, right.

Speaker 3 (38:03):
Yeah.

Speaker 2 (38:04):
But while in sixty five's Jack Frost in Morosco, Bobby
Yaga is played by a male actor for largely comedic reasons,
and it is it is a great performance here the
old Witch is played mostly straight and menacing by this
male performer. You know he's there. There is a little

(38:25):
humor in the way this Witch is presented early on,
but for the most part, this is this is an
ominous figure. This is not someone that's there just for
a bunch of like silly gags or anything.

Speaker 3 (38:38):
Yes, the Witch is presented ambiguously at first. I mean,
she's not overtly frightening when we first see her. As
there's a scene where she has she takes in these
lost seminary students into her house and she's like you
have to sleep in different rooms and they're like okay.
And then she appears Tacoma the student in the middle
of the night and he's like, I don't know what

(38:59):
what do you want what's going on? And then he
thinks she's trying to seduce him, But she's not trying
to seduce him. She's about to turn him into a
broomstick and ride him through the skies.

Speaker 2 (39:08):
Yeah, that's the thing. Yeah, that's a great point about
the ambiguity of it. Yeah, because it's not clear. It's like,
is she she trying to seduce them? Does he want
just she wants to drink his blood? No, it's something
that makes even less sense to us mortals. She wants
to ride him like a horse. She wants to jump
on his shoulders and ride him through the sky. So,

(39:28):
and we can't possibly understand the reasons for this.

Speaker 3 (39:31):
And she's not you know, she's kind of smiling when
she comes to him. So I don't know that this character.
There's this very creepy sense of like, I don't know
what's going on here. I don't know what to make
of this. Yeah, and she becomes much more frightening actually
after having transformed into into her young form, which I
guess I have questions here about what was the Witch's

(39:54):
true form. Maybe we can revisit that at the ending,
because do you remember how but at the end. After
after the cock crows and all of the evil magic collapses,
we see Panachka, we see the girl. She falls back
into her coffin, and the coffin kind of explodes and
she's transformed into the old witch form again. And I

(40:16):
thought that the young form was her true form, because
that's the form recognized by her father. But if she
transforms back into the witch form, is that the true
her was the young form some kind of mask. I
don't know.

Speaker 2 (40:29):
It doesn't completely make sense, but it feels like there's
some sort of underlying sense to it, and I think
that's that's why it works so well. But but yeah,
it's like we can't quite understand what the connection here is. Yeah,
all right, we mentioned that our main character gets drunk
with a bunch of Cossacks that he travels with them.
The Cossacks here are played by an ensemble of Ukrainian actors.

(40:50):
The main one Dorosh. He's the big guy with this
signature Ukrainian haircut, the oscelidet. I may be saying that wrong.
Please please forgive my non Slavic tongue here, as I
struggle with some of these words. But this guy was
apparently a pretty big deal in Ukrainian theater. His name
was Petro Veklyirov, who lived nineteen eleven through nineteen ninety four.

(41:16):
I think he also plays one of the characters of
the seminary. I think he might have had another role
in the picture as well, but his other credits include
sixty one Song of the Forest. This is another cinematic
adaptation of Ukrainian folk tales or fairy tales, but a
very big guy, stern faced. He's definitely one of the

(41:36):
ones that's there too.

Speaker 3 (41:38):
He's the guy.

Speaker 2 (41:38):
This is the one who comes out of the three
doors when Coma is drunk. And he's also one of
the primary characters who intercepts Koma when he tries to
run away from his responsibilities.

Speaker 3 (41:51):
Like this guy, very solid, good drinking buddy apparently.

Speaker 2 (41:56):
And finally the music here. The composition is by Kiaran
Kotschaturan lived nineteen twenty one through twenty eleven, Russian composer
of Armenian descent, active from nineteen fifty through two thousand.
His work in film also included a number of animated shorts.
But I thought the score was quite good here, really
effective in some of those creepy tension building sequences.

Speaker 3 (42:19):
There were certain points where it sounded like the strings
in Night on Bald Mountains. Yes, yeah, absolutely, yeah, but
before the main theme comes in, just kind of in
that perpetual, like hovering high strings mode. Yeah, it's a
very good music.

Speaker 4 (42:36):
I thought, Okay, are you ready to talk about the plot.

Speaker 2 (42:49):
Yeah, let's jump into it.

Speaker 3 (42:50):
So for this movie, I'm not going to do a
close scene by scene narration like we do for some films. Instead,
I think we should do a quick summary of the
plot as a whole, and then come back and look
at some notable scenes and choices, especially the hauntings later on.
But to do the summary, the story begins at a

(43:10):
seminary in Kiev when all of the students are being
sent home for vacation, and we fall in with three
students in particular Koliava Gora, Bets and Coma. And while
making the journey home, the three of these students become
lost at night, and they take shelter at a cottage
belonging to an old woman who allows them to come

(43:33):
inside but forces them to sleep each in separate parts
of the house. Koma is sent to sleep in the barn,
but at night he is awakened by the old woman,
who seems at first maybe to be trying to seduce him.
He doesn't really know what she wants. And then Koma
tries to escape, but he finds himself hypnotized or entranced,

(43:54):
and then, to his horror, the old woman climbs up
on his back, takes hold of a broom and begins
to ride Coma like an animal, first out into the
meadows beyond the house, and then finally up into the sky,
and they fly around in the moonlight while the witch
is squatting on his shoulders.

Speaker 2 (44:15):
It's a wonderful sequence. And again this is just an
example of how this film gets gets plenty weird rather quickly,
so don't believe that this is a movie with only
like ten minutes of weirdness capping the end of things.

Speaker 3 (44:28):
While all of this is happening, of course, Coma is
terrified and he finally manages to get out from under
the witch. Does he say some magic words or something?
Does he hold up across I don't remember what he does.
He somehow squirms his way out.

Speaker 2 (44:41):
Yeah, I mean I was kind of mesmerized by the
whole sequence. It was one of these we see enough
weird films. It's beautiful when you have this moment, we're like,
I can't believe I'm watching this? What am I watching?
And then and then it so the read I kind
of got on. It is like she almost kind of
like rides him until he's exhausted, Like she's like not
in a physical sense perhaps, but in like a spiritual sense,

(45:04):
you know. And they both kind of collapse into a
field somewhere she has used.

Speaker 3 (45:08):
Up all of his magic broom fuel, and they come
down on the ground. And then when he gets out
from under her, he suddenly takes hold of a stick
and then beats her. He beats the witch until she
cries for mercy and says that he is killing her.
And to his astonishment, he looks down and the old
crone now seems to have transformed into a beautiful young woman.

(45:33):
And Cooma doesn't know what to make of this, but
he runs away terrified. He makes his way back to
the seminary, where when he arrives, the rector tells him
that a rich Sutnik, which again a type of a
Cossack chief or leader. The Sutnik has sent his men
to recruit Coma. Apparently this man's daughter is dying and

(45:57):
she has asked for Coma Buying to come pray for
her in her final hours. Cooma does not want to go,
but he has no choice. The satniks men compel him,
and by the time he arrives, unfortunately, the girl has
already died, and her father promises Coma a huge reward,
many many gold coins if he will stay with her

(46:20):
body in the chapel and pray over her for three nights.
It was her final wish. But when Koma sees the
girl's body lying in her coffin, he realizes, oh no,
it's her. It is the witch that rode him through
the sky, but not in her crone form, the young,
beautiful form that she transformed into after his beating. And

(46:44):
now he realizes, oh no, it is probably his beating
that killed her.

Speaker 2 (46:49):
Yeah, and this is why she called for him.

Speaker 3 (46:52):
Yeah. And he's trying to pretend to the father like, oh,
I've never seen her before, I know what this is about.
So the structure sure of the rest of the story
is we follow Cooma for the three nights of the Bargain.
On the first night, he is locked in the chapel
with the witch's coffin, and in the middle of his prayers,
the witch wakes up. Cooma is deeply afraid, but he

(47:16):
is able to protect himself by drawing a magic circle
and reading the sacred words from his prayer book. But
each night is of course more devilish than the last,
and in the days in between these prayers, Koma tries
to escape or to negotiate his way out of going
back in the following night, but he always fails. On

(47:38):
the second night, the witch curses him and makes his
hair turn white. This is after some piloting the coffin
through the air like an airship and ramming his magic circle.

Speaker 2 (47:48):
Yeah, the second night certainly has a lot of spectacular
special effects. The first night the dead Walk, the second
night the dead.

Speaker 3 (47:55):
Fly, the pilot. Yeah, the second night the greatest pilot
in the gall and then the third night. We reached
the climax of the story when the witch is just
filled with venom and hate for Coma and she calls
forth all of the vampires the werewolves. She actually uses
the word verdilac, like we've talked about on the show before.

(48:18):
The verdilachs calls out all the creeps and the monsters
of Hell to slither out into the chapel and vomit
forth her vengeance onto this young student. And then finally
at the end, the king of all the monsters the
v is brought out and his great heavy eyelids are
lifted and his gaze is fixed on Coma, and then
all of the monsters fall on him and he dies.

Speaker 2 (48:41):
Kind of reminded me of the part in the Simpsons
tree House of Horror Shinning episode where Moe has the
monsters go into the walk in freezer to drag over.

Speaker 3 (48:50):
Out and it's all Freddy and Jason and all the
other ghouls. Yeah. And then finally there's an epilogue where
the other students comas friends from the seminary. They talk
about what happened to him. They say, oh, he was
a good guy. It's a tragedy that happened to him.
And they have kind of different ideas about what it means,
like maybe the story's not really true. One of them

(49:10):
seems kind of doubtful. Another one says that all you
have to do to protect yourself from witchcraft is make
the sign of the Cross and spit It's easy. Also,
one of the guys is like, yeah, all the women
in the market in town are witches, and yeah, so
that's the story as a whole. But I thought we
should come back and focus on some specific things. We'll

(49:31):
definitely focus a lot on the Third Haunting, the Third Night.
But one thing I wanted to talk about in the
film throughout is the cinematic language of textures of decay,
of neglect and decay. The camera really lingers on cobwebs
and dust and things being spilled or overgrown, all these

(49:55):
visual signifiers of neglect and decay. And the credit it's
actually at the beginning of the movie, play over quiet
music and a static shot of cobwebs in a church corner,
just billowing in a slight breeze. There's all this dust,
these old candles. There's even one very small detailed that

(50:16):
I noticed that I loved. I wonder if you caught
the same thing. And there's a scene part of the
way through the movie when Coma is entering the chapel
with a candle in his hand. I think it might
be the scene when they're actually taking the girl's coffin
into the chapel, or maybe it's another time he's entering,
but he's holding a candle and his hand is actually

(50:38):
covered with this bumpy, spilled layer of dried drip wax.
It's like he's been holding the candle forever and just
letting the wax flow out onto his hand and solidify
there over and over for a long time.

Speaker 2 (50:53):
Yeah, there's some great details with the candle work in
this film. I love the scene where he's coming into
the chapel and he's like, chapel is not supposed to
be this dark and gloomy. It's supposed to be a
place of light, and he starts lighting all these candles
to lighten things up, and of course this just makes
the in in some ways, just makes the chapel look
even creepier, right.

Speaker 3 (51:13):
Yeah, totally. There's another thing I wanted to mention about
the look and feel of the movie, which is the
atmosphericx of the scene where the three students become lost
and they have to go to the witch's house. So
early in the film, I really think the landscape is
infused with this feeling of witchcraft. So there are some

(51:35):
scenes of real, actually beautiful outdoor vistas, but they are
kind of creepy. Like there's one shot of the students
who have left the seminary. They're camping up on a
hill overlooking a kind of misty swamp in the distance below,
and they're burning of fire and it looks beautiful and
a little creepy at the same time. Other scenes are

(51:56):
indoor for outdoor sets with this blue glowing sky with
a painted backdrop and the evil magic here, I got
the feeling that it comes out of the land and
out of the sky, creating this feeling of witchcraft as
a natural force or a natural law, something that kind

(52:16):
of creeps in like vines upon an unmaintained lawn, which
I thought was interesting because of these other things about
decay and neglect, like just things being kind of untended
in the witchcraft taking them over.

Speaker 2 (52:32):
There's also a great moment in this part of the
film where they realize their loss. They realize they are
not on a road anymore, and that in and of itself,
I think ties in nicely with this, because what is
a road but a road. It is the vein of civilization.
It takes you back and connects you to the place

(52:52):
of modernity and logic and reason that you hail from.
And now you realize you were no longer on that road.

Speaker 3 (53:00):
You are.

Speaker 2 (53:01):
You belong to this land. Now you don't belong to
that place back there.

Speaker 3 (53:05):
I think in that same sequence, there's the part where
one of the students is reaching around in the dark
trying to grab the other one, and he gets horrified
because he grabs something in his hand is full of rot.
And then he realizes, oh, that was just a dead log.
I thought I had grabbed your head. But there's another
theme that I wondered what you made of. It's the

(53:27):
theme of singing in the face of fear. When the
students first become lost in the beginning, they sing in
the dark to make themselves unafraid when they're wandering after
they've lost the road and they're wandering around in the
fields with the blue sky. And then later at multiple
times in the film, Coma sings songs to make himself unafraid.

(53:48):
He sings that song that has the lyrics of a
cossack has no fear, you know. There there's a kind
of lyrical content where he's trying to beef himself up
to face the ghosts. But there is all so just
a part at the end where in the final Haunting,
he starts by reading the prayers from the Prayer Book
and then starts getting louder and louder and singing them.

(54:09):
I wonder what you thought. Is there any significance on
this repeated theme about singing as an act that has
warding power? Maybe?

Speaker 2 (54:17):
Oh, I mean that's a deep topic we've touched on
a little bit before, like, for instance, wist well, whistling,
because on one hand, like whistling in the dark can
be seen as a way to sort of keep darkness away,
like how can you know what's going to attack me
when I'm singing, Like there's kind of like a singing
or whistling. But then at the same time, there are
all these traditions about whistling being the very sort of

(54:37):
thing that could invite creatures of darkness towards you. So
don't whistle in the dark? Ynd Yeah, so yeah, should
I whistle? Should I not whistle? I don't know, but
there is Yeah, you know, there's there's something deep in
the human psyche about like how should I behave as
if something unseen is watching me? And of course the

(54:58):
calculus there is different if you or considering you know,
real life people you know and and you know a
threat that is that is that is human, if you're
considering a threat that is animal, or if you're considering
a threat that you know is from the unseen world
it is ghosts or spirits or demons or whatnot. And
maybe in some cases like loudness is the defense. I mean,

(55:19):
loudness in one form or another is often tied to
exorcism and and and magical rights to drive away monsters
and horror.

Speaker 3 (55:29):
Yeah, I mean, I guess it depends on what is
your relationship to the thing you're afraid of. You know,
people talk about wandering in the wilderness. It often is
good to be loud, because then you're less likely to
accidentally stumble across some kind of you know, encounter with
the beast that you don't want to startle. You know,
they'll hear you coming if you make a lot of noise,

(55:49):
So that could be helpful in that sense if you
were actually thinking about a malevolent, predatory, supernatural creature. In
that case, you'd almost think, you don't it to know
where you are, so you shouldn't make any noise at all.
But maybe the effect of singing very loudly it's like
a way of convincing yourself that there is no danger,

(56:13):
because if there is danger, this would be really stupid
to do. So, you know, there better be no danger
because of how much attention I'm attracting with this loud singing. Yeah.

Speaker 2 (56:25):
I mean, there's so many ways to think of, like yeah,
I'm reminded of the bit from the rhyme of the
ancient marin or you know, like one that on a
lonesome road doth walk in fear and dread, and having
once turned round, walks on and turns no more his head, like, so,
don't look back at the thing that you know is
back there. But on the other hand, there's also the
value of like, yeah, like shout at the devil, yell
at the devil, curse the devil, throw things at the devil.

(56:48):
You need to go on the offense. That's the only
way to protect yourself, calm. I should have thought of
that here. He mainly is on defense. Yeah, relies a
lot on that chalk circle on the ground.

Speaker 3 (57:08):
So should we talk about the three nights? Anything in
particular you want to say about the first night where
she first wakes up. This one is the most low
key of the three.

Speaker 2 (57:16):
It's the most low key, but it's still plenty spooky again,
Like the set is amazing here, that dark, gloomy chapel,
full of decay, full of night gallery paintings and candle
light and cobwebs, like the gothic grotesque vibe here is
just so rich. And when she starts rising, it's very

(57:38):
much what you'd expect, you know, the slow rising of
the corpse. But it's highly effective, Like it would be
a highly effective theme, it would be a highly effective scene.
Rather if this were the only night we had in
the film.

Speaker 3 (57:52):
Yeah, And of course Coma is saved by the cock crowing,
so he draws the magic circle and she gets out
of the casket and she's trying to find him. She's
like feeling around on the outside of the magic circle,
almost like it's an invisible cylinder that goes up to
the ceiling. You see her feeling around on the on
the wall. Again. I mentioned earlier that she does things

(58:15):
physically that feel almost like mime work, like comedy mimework,
and this is one example, when she's feeling the unseen wall.

Speaker 2 (58:22):
Oh before she even rises. Though, there's a moment I
absolutely loved where we get a we essentially we get
a jump scare, but without you know, all the bells
and whistles of a modern jump scare that can feel
a bit get a bit more gimmicky in some cases.
But here we get, on one hand, something we're used
to have.

Speaker 3 (58:39):
What do you have?

Speaker 2 (58:39):
You have a black cat dart across the screen? Sure,
and maybe a musical note to sort of drive it home.
Here we get that, but we get not one black cat,
but four of them at once, with the chapel in
the chapel, which you know, it does make you logically like,
how many cats live in this church? How many are necessary?

(59:00):
It's like they're just feral cats everywhere. Maybe so, But
also I just love that as a modern viewer of
horror cinema, in any film that just wants to get
a jump out of you, we're used to the black
cat running across the screen. Here we get four of them,
and somehow it being four of them. Yeah, it just
works better, like it feels more like an omen like

(59:22):
there's numerical data there.

Speaker 3 (59:24):
You know, that's all right? I mean the cats usually
run together like that, I don't know, usually we're being herded.

Speaker 2 (59:31):
Yeah, I mean, cats will live together, but you know,
generally it's in films it's just one running across the screen,
jumping out of a closet, and we'll see more of
the cat antics and subsequent scenes totally.

Speaker 3 (59:43):
And this scene also is the first time we see
the ghost, or not the ghost, the body of the
witch doing that kind of rapid bouncing up and down, shivering,
jittering thing. Yeah, which is again looks almost funny, but
stays on the line of creepy. I think. So. The
second night is the night when she starts piloting her

(01:00:04):
coffin like a spaceship to ram into the sides of
this invisible cylinder.

Speaker 2 (01:00:09):
That's right. She awakens in the casket as before, but
then the casket takes to the air and we begin
to get these zooming, spinning sequences where she's flying in
the casket, eventually kind of almost surfing on the casket
like surfing ussr here, but again so beautifully executed, like

(01:00:29):
they're using wires here to create this effect.

Speaker 3 (01:00:33):
The room.

Speaker 2 (01:00:34):
They may be using a spinning room as well of
some sort. There's so much richness here to discuss here.
Even in the first night, when the cock crows, I
believe like she kind of glides back into the casket.
Do you remember a verse footage effect. Yeah, yeah, and
some sort of Dolly system was in play.

Speaker 3 (01:00:51):
I think.

Speaker 2 (01:00:52):
So this is just amazing, just terrifying, with the sense
that this is a spirit that is just growing more
powerful night by night, and he is barely able to
protect himself like that, this magic circle is barely holding.

Speaker 3 (01:01:08):
I wonder if the reverse footage backwards climb back into
the coffin in this movie inspired the similar effect that
is used in Francis Ford Coppola's Dracula. Where do you
remember when the vampire of Lucy? I think it is
she like reversed footages into her coffin.

Speaker 2 (01:01:25):
Oh, I would bet there's a very strong chance of that.

Speaker 3 (01:01:28):
Yeah, I be's I was gonna say scorsesey, that's not Scorsese.
I bet Copola is a fan of this movie.

Speaker 2 (01:01:33):
Probably, yeah, yeah, how could you not be?

Speaker 3 (01:01:36):
Okay? And then finally we get to the Third Night,
the third the Big Haunt, the Big Deal. This is
where everything, all hell breaks loose quite literally.

Speaker 2 (01:01:47):
Yeah, this sequence has it all like it is just
the gates of hell have opened, and we get all
manner of supposedly ghosts and wear wolves and vampires, but nothing.
I don't know. The creatures look more ghoul like to me.
You know, there are a lot of the maciated bald
creatures that are humanoid, some tall, some very short, dressed

(01:02:11):
in rags. They feel like they have very much climbed
out of the grave. They've climbed out of the walls.
They've come out of the floor. We get a dancing skeleton,
which is nice. We get giant ghost hands rising up
out of the.

Speaker 3 (01:02:26):
Floor, and then in many forms actually just oh yeah, we.

Speaker 2 (01:02:30):
Also just get hands coming out.

Speaker 3 (01:02:32):
Yeah, hands coming out of the walls and out of
the altar, I think, and then giant hands surrounding coma.

Speaker 2 (01:02:39):
There's some sort of a weird puppet at one point
that I'm not sure what it's supposed to be, but
it's it's like, I don't know, a muppet from hell
and you're just like job dropping.

Speaker 3 (01:02:49):
The skeletal giraffe with seven heads.

Speaker 2 (01:02:52):
Well there's that, Yes, I've forgot about that. But there's
some other kind of creature that nasty kitty cat. Yeah, yeah,
it kind of a spines on its spines on its head.
That So there's just sights and sounds well beyond anything
you've experienced before.

Speaker 3 (01:03:06):
Now you've seen monsters that have more eyes than a
human usually has, they've got extra eyes. You've seen monsters
with extra arms and legs. Have you ever seen monsters
with extra noses? We got that.

Speaker 2 (01:03:19):
Right, We get the guy that has kind of a
reminds me of various bat species where they have like
very extravagant nostrils. Yeah, we get that guy. Absolutely. The
makeup work here is amazing, the.

Speaker 3 (01:03:32):
Rows of nostrils with these naked, wretched revenants and gray zombies.
And meanwhile, we've just got the witch in the background.
She's there's so much hate in her voice. She's saying,
I summon vampires. I summoned were wolves. That's the translation
whatever it is she's saying in the original, And one
of the words is verdil ox. And I thought interesting

(01:03:56):
that the beasts of hell here are all very gray.
They are they seem like dust and cobwebs incarnate.

Speaker 2 (01:04:03):
Yeah, yeah, like this is not Yeah, this is not
like a fiery Christian hell that these creatures are emerging from.
It's some sort of a gray necropolis or something, you know,
some sort of a gray void deep in the earth.

Speaker 3 (01:04:20):
Yeah, a gloomy, gloomy pit. Yeah, and one thing I
brought this up earlier, the so the church's religious murals
and paintings of saints and things are now changed into
demons during the Yeah, and I was wondering, is this
an alteration or a revelation? Is the nighttime transformation changing

(01:04:43):
a normally holy place into an unholy place? Or is
it revealing something about this place? Is this an unholy
place that in the daytime is disguised.

Speaker 2 (01:04:54):
Hmmm, that's a great point. Yeah, what is the connection
between this supernatural world it is now descending on him
and the super natural world that is part of the
Christian faith during the daylight? Is it the same world?
And it's just depends on what the lights you're doing.
I don't know.

Speaker 3 (01:05:14):
I mean I asked that in part about whether this
there's something actually deeper that's wrong with this place because
of a few things that are hinted in parts we
haven't really talked about, like during the daytime when Koma
is here at this compound, at the Suttnix compound, he
for example, here's the people talking about stories of witchcraft,

(01:05:37):
like about the huntsman who lived here, who was ridden
like a horse by the witch, by the daughter and
then there's also a thing with remember the scene where
Coma goes to the girl's father and he's like, no,
I'm out. I don't care. You got to do whatever
you want. I'm just done. I'm not going back in there.
Your daughter is a witch, her soul is in hell.

(01:06:01):
And the guy doesn't react like, I don't know what
you're talking about. He reacts almost like like I know
she's in hell. You've got to save her. Like he
reacts as if he knows that there is already witchcraft
and evil infusing this place and it's not a surprise
to him.

Speaker 2 (01:06:19):
Yeah, and that this this thing just has to be done,
like there's not really a sense that this will really
generate any kind of favorable outcome for anybody. But it's
like you you have you do what you are here for.
You have to complete your job. You have to make
it through the third night. And then on top of this,
he tells him like, yeah, if you do this, you'll

(01:06:39):
get a thousand gold coins, but if you don't, you'll
get a thousand lashes, And he goes into detail about
how good his guys are at lashing. He's like, I mean,
it's it's really really frightening because he's telling them like,
they're going to start lashing you, then they're going to
get drunk, and then they're going to keep lashing you. Yes,
and so like really he's presenting like the prisoning heaven

(01:07:01):
in hell here in a very secular sense. It's like,
you can either get beat to death or you can
go off with a nice fat pot of money. But
but you know those are your choices. And so he's
he is finally like dragged into the church. He's like,
I'm gonna be rich when I get out of here.
And of course I think we the viewers know at
that point he's never getting out of here.

Speaker 3 (01:07:23):
Yeah, he is doomed. But how in what form does
that doom come? Why? It is the entrance of V.

Speaker 2 (01:07:31):
Mmm.

Speaker 3 (01:07:32):
So finally, the witch in this last haunting calls out,
bring v She says, bring him here, bring V. So
in walks this creature, this again gray, the same color
palette as the rest of these beings of hell. Uh.
He is a thundering, lumbering, stomping gray mass that has

(01:07:53):
something of a rock elemental about him. He seems like
he's made of rock or earth. No arms, just hands
in the shoulders, eyes like mud or not eyes, eyelids
like mud flaps covering up his eyes, and then he
has to have these other zombies raise his eyelids for him.
It approaches and it says, you know, raise my eyelids,

(01:08:17):
and so the creatures bring up its eyelids and then
its eyes are like gems, sort of like emeralds or
like a textured green glass glowing, and the monsters descend
on Coma while the witch laughs. There's something about the
gaze of the v and then he points a finger
at Coma that enables the monsters to destroy Comas maybe

(01:08:40):
like maybe this overcomes the protection of his magic circle
or something like that.

Speaker 2 (01:08:45):
I'm not sure, yeah, yeah, And again this reminds me
of Baler, the King of the Fomorians and Irish myth
with the deathly gaze beneath the overhanging brow.

Speaker 3 (01:08:56):
But after Coma has been has been rent to death
by these creatures, the cock crows a second time. The
cock actually crows before he dies, but they ignore it
the first time. Second time, they can't withstand the break
of morning, so the monsters scamper back. But because they
ignored the first crow of the cock, they get caught

(01:09:18):
a little bit late getting back into hell, and so
they like, we see these monsters getting stuck in the walls. Actually, here,
if you don't mind, I'd like to read a passage
from the Go Gol story. This is from the translation
by Richard Pevier and Larissa Volokonski. They translate quote, A

(01:09:40):
cock crow rang out. This was already the second cock
crow the gnomes had missed the first. The frightened spirits
rushed pell Mell for the windows and doors in order
to fly out quickly, but nothing doing, and so they
stayed there, stuck in the doors and windows. When the
priest came in, he stopped at the sight of such
disc grace in God's sanctuary and did not dare serve

(01:10:03):
a pinakita in such a place. So the church remained
forever with monsters stuck in its doors and windows, overgrown
with forest roots, weeds, wild blackthorn, and no one now
can find the path to it. The movie does this too.
It actually catches the monsters frozen halfway going into the walls,

(01:10:25):
and we see them kind of collapse with their body
like a leg sticking out or the upper body just
hanging there in the wall, still there when the priests
come in in the morning, and I love that part.
In fact, there's one thing we didn't even mention. When
the monsters are first coming out, there's this marvelous special
effect that somehow makes it look like it's like an

(01:10:46):
optical illusion that makes it look like the monsters are
crawling out from the middles of the walls. What it
actually is is, I think that part of the wall
is sort of advanced ahead of the other part of
the wall, and there these gaps of depth so that
they can crawl out from in between these parts. But yeah,
it's it's very very cool.

Speaker 2 (01:11:08):
Yeah, it is just absolutely a special effects bonanza and
just highly effective, very creepy. If if you have any
knowledge of this film, again, you have probably seen clips
from this part of the movie, or you've you've just
seen images from it, because of course one of that
the central images is when V comes out. They bring

(01:11:29):
thee out, like you said, the unshielding of the eyes,
And yeah, V is marvelous, great mysterious monster. We want
to know more, but it's we were not meant to
know anything of him.

Speaker 3 (01:11:40):
In the Actually I can read the description of V
that is also in that translation of the story, because
I think this is kind of interesting. So the in
the story, the witch calls out, bring V, go get
the V, and then it says quote, And suddenly there
was silence in the church. The wolves howling could be

(01:12:00):
heard far away, and soon heavy footsteps rang out in
the church. With a sidelong glance, he saw them leading
in some squat hefty splay footed man. He was black
earth all over. His earth covered legs and arms stuck
out like strong, sinewy roots. Heavily he trod, stumbling all
the time. His long eyelids were lowered to the ground.

(01:12:24):
With horror, Coma noticed that the face on him was
made of iron. He was brought in under the arms
and put right by the place where Coma stood. Lift
my eyelids, I can't see, V said in a subterranean voice.
And the entire host rushed to lift his eyelids. And

(01:12:45):
I'll just finish this part. Don't look, some inner voice
whispered to the philosopher. He could not help himself, and
looked there he is. V cried and fixed an iron
finger on him, and all that were there fell upon
the philosopher. Breathless, he crashed to the ground, and straightway
the spirit flew out of him in terror.

Speaker 2 (01:13:05):
Oh wow, so v it really almost had you already
mentioned that he has like an elemental vibe, but in
the original text almost sounds a little bit like almost manufactured,
like like he is a like a the end product
of some sort of strange hurricane right where something or
somebody is transformed into the v.

Speaker 3 (01:13:26):
It describes his face and his finger as iron, and
it describes his arms and legs as like roots and
black soil.

Speaker 2 (01:13:36):
Yeah, pretty groovy, Pretty groovy, but not so for Coma
because com again is struck dead by this.

Speaker 3 (01:13:44):
Yeah uh yeah. So then, of course, as we said,
after this, we go back to the university and we
just check in with the other oaths, the other guys
there who are you know, we're his friends. They're probably
thinking about something they can steal later today, and they're
and they're doing their pain, and they're like, yeah, whatever
happened to Coma? Too bad about him. He was a
nice guy.

Speaker 2 (01:14:05):
It's interesting this little epilogue because it's certainly not a
send them home happy sort of tack on ending like
we see in some older horror films, though there is
perhaps a sense of, well, we can't end it on
such a dark note as well, you know, we have
to let that. I think another part of it might be, Okay,
we just had this amazing special effects sequence. Maybe the

(01:14:26):
audience needs to breathe a little bit, They need to
catch their breath before they can leave the theater. And
we just have these two seminarians setting around ignoring their duties,
drinking vodka and again eating what I assume to be
like green onions.

Speaker 3 (01:14:39):
Yeah, too bad for coma munch, munch, give me some ramps.

Speaker 2 (01:14:45):
Okay, then, but then the credits roll and the credits
are a little creepy again, we get some more cop.

Speaker 3 (01:14:49):
Webbed so yeah so I yeah, that does it for me.
Those are my thoughts on V.

Speaker 2 (01:14:58):
V is pretty great. Highly recommend it. If you haven't
seen it, go see it. And if you need to
revisit it, yeah go do so. We spelled all the
different ways you can go and see it these days.
I would love to hear from everyone out there if
you have thoughts on this film and also just its legacy,
and if you've seen any other cinematic adaptations of V

(01:15:21):
I would love to hear about you, hear your thoughts
on those because we just briefly touched on I think
a nineteen oh nine possibly lost film. I don't know
that it remains. A lot of those old silent films
did not make it. But then there are other productions
from throughout the decades. There's one that's completely at least
one that's completely animated. And then you have these more

(01:15:41):
recent like Blockbuster Russian Blockbuster treatments. Right in if you've
seen them, I think they've they've They've been streaming on
some major platforms before, so some of you may have
seen those, and you can write in and tell us
what's what's that flavor, like, how did that Blockbuster adaptation go?

Speaker 3 (01:15:59):
Huge thing? Access always to our excellent audio producer JJ Posway.
If you would like to get in touch with us
with feedback on this episode or any other, to suggest
a topic for the future, or just to say hello,
you can email us at contact at stuff to Blow
Yourmind dot com.

Speaker 1 (01:16:21):
Stuff to Blow Your Mind is production of iHeartRadio. For
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