Spoilers for Viy (1967). For this essay, we watched the high-definition remaster included in Severin Films’ All the Haunts Be Ours folk horror compendium.
This piece will be slightly different to many of the others that have appeared on What’s in a Scene? While the scenes we’re discussing in Konstantin Ershov and Georgiy Kropachyov’s 1967 folk horror film Viy are no doubt pivotal, instead of looking at how they impact the rest of the film, we’ll look at the incredible practical effects that allow this tale to feel so fresh more than 55 years since its release.
Viy is based on the 1835 novella of the same name by Nikolai Gogol and was the first Soviet-era horror film to be officially released. It starts with three seminary students, including Khoma Brutus (Leonid Kuravlyov), being sent home for the holidays. However, they get lost and seek shelter from an old woman (played by male actor Nikolai Kutuzov) at a farmstead.
The woman separates the three men, putting Khoma in the barn, where she approaches him later that night. It’s here we get the first instance of incredible, practical special effects work from co-writer Aleksandr Ptushko. After failing to seduce Khoma, the old woman casts a spell on him, forcing him to lie down, suspended a few feet in the air. She then climbs on his shoulders and rides him through the countryside like a horse.
Figuring out the ins and outs of the effect isn’t that difficult. It’s mainly wire work, but these practical effects show an ingenuity that can sometimes be missing from modern, CGI-heavy films. Such a simple effect still looks convincing over half a century later.
As Khoma picks up speed while under the witch’s spell, he takes off. With a moving background behind them, and shooting the character from the legs up, it’s a rudimentary but effective way of indicating their velocity. The colourful, painted backdrops are also in keeping with the tone of the film, giving it a fairytale feeling.
Upon landing, Khoma beats the witch with a large piece of wood and as she cries out, she morphs into a beautiful younger woman (Natalya Varley). Khoma flees, heading back to the seminary only to find out that he has been called upon to stand vigil over the body of a wealthy merchant’s daughter. When he arrives, he realises that the daughter is the young incarnation of the witch.
Khoma’s three-night vigil is a stunning showcase of effects. Using the simple conceit of a sacred circle, drawn with chalk, we can see the inventive ways that the creators build up the complexity and tension. When the witch first awakens, she is apparently blind and feels her way out of the coffin. Ptushko gives the circle a sense of reality by surrounding Khoma with a glass wall. It’s a clever method, adding weight when the witch bumps against the circle of protection.
It does have its issues. Much like in Raiders of the Lost Ark, some twenty years later, you can see the protagonist’s reflection in the glass occasionally. Yet, the benefits of this far outweigh a minor quibble on Khoma’s second night standing vigil.
In another stunning piece of wirework, the coffin levitates off the podium and flies around the room. Once again trying to get to Khoma, the coffin is bashed against the glass. Again, this is something that would be done with CGI today, but it likely wouldn’t have the weight that these practical effects do. There’s a jarring jolt when the coffin makes an impact, raising the tension until it feels like a real battle between good and evil – if a slightly dubious one as we already know that Khoma is only standing vigil for financial gain and has attempted to murder the witch.
This is not meant as an article criticising CGI. The special effects we can create today have helped to build worlds that would have been impossible only a few years before. Yet, even past the uncanny valley of dodgy face mapping, CGI occasionally lacks the bite and realism of practical effects.
It also ages a film far quicker than practical effects. Films from the early and mid-nineties, like Jurassic Park and Independence Day, which combined the two can still feel fresh and exciting. More computerised examples from ten years later – The Mummy Returns and its awful Scorpion King appearance – already feel outdated.
Viy’s effects certainly aren’t perfect compared to some modern-day features, but it has aged far better than many and is a stunning example of the power of practical creativity.
Directors: Konstantin Yershov, Georgi Kropachyov
Writers: Aleksandr Ptushko, Konstantin Yershov, Georgi Kropachyov. Based on the novella Viy by Nikolai Gogol
Starring: Leonid Kuravlyov, Natalya Varley, Alexei Glazyrin, Vadim Zakharchenko, Nikolai Kutuzov