Short Film: Strigoi

This was a 2021 short film, directed by Florin Anghel and coming in at just under 14 minutes.

It starts with the sound of laboured breathing, and we see that a poorly man struggles for breath. His wife brings him food, but he knocks the plate out of her hand and threatens her. Telling her she won’t get away from him so easily and he will return as a strigoï and haunt her.

A young woman is at work, a bouquet of flowers is brought in for her. Her phone rings and it is her mother – her father has died from cirrhosis. They are the couple from the opening. Her mother asks her to come and says she is afraid at night. The daughter exits onto a balcony (for a cigarette) when she returns to her office the flowers are withered.

the daughter

Not a lot more is said about this – the sender of the flowers drives her to her old village, and she suggests they arrived withered, we saw them fine and then withered. Could it indicate her father’s influence. Maybe she is (unknowingly, perhaps) a strigoï vii? Also on the drive her companion questions her atheism (though she does wear a cross) and asks what happens to evil doers after death if there is nothing else.

equine vampire detection

The funeral arrangements were interesting, he lay open casket but with his hands bound and holding a candle and the open casket continued at graveside. A man with a horse comes by but the horse is skittish by the grave (this is a stripped-down version of the traditional vampire detection method, as the horse carries no naked virgin, boy or girl). He is returning to mother and daughter (we see a shadowy figure as he visits the daughter) and so the grave is opened. The corpse has talonlike fingernails, his heart is cut out as a ritual (which names him both strigoï and moroi) is spoken. It is suggested that the heart be cut into 9 pieces and scattered to be fed on by nine dogs.

strigoï's nails

What is interesting about this is that the filmmakers based it on the real case of Toma Petre – a Romanian vampire killing that happened in the 2000s, the film suggests between 2005-2007. As well as outlining the event, the film contains a snippet of an an interview with Mircea Mitrica who was one of those involved in the real life exhumation – I assume it is the actual gentleman and not a reconstruction, the credits do not say.

The imdb page is here.

Domnisoara Christina (2013) – review

Director: Alexandru Maftei

Release date: 2013

Contains spoilers

I recently discovered the existence of Mircea Eliade’s novella ‘Miss Christina’ (1936) and my post on the previous film version of it contains details of how I discovered this story of strigoï in Romania. Like the previous film, this is apparently fairly novella accurate and there is a version (at time of writing) on YouTube with hardcoded English subtitles – noting that the subtitles translate strigoï as “zombie” for some reason.

Like the 1992 release, the filmmakers have aimed for an uncanny feel rather than full on horror. However, there are some distinct differences between the versions. The character Simina (Ioana Sandu) reverts back to being a child rather than a teen. The sexualised scene (involving a kiss and some dominance language) involving her, from the novella, is done in such a way that it feels sinister but not exploitative. There is also a much wider view of the impact of the strigoï on the locality, rather than just the family.

The film starts at the Moscu manor in winter, and as the camera enters the house we see it is wrecked by the fire that will rage through it at the climax of the film. In the broken house is a man, with a small campfire from which he retrieves charcoal and looks to continue the drawing on the wall of the portrait he is trying to render. There are cracks in the wall and an empty frame propped against it and we can assume this is Egor Paschievici (Tudor Istodor) trying to redraw, from memory, the portrait of Miss Christina (Dumitrescu Anastasia), he destroyed.

on the train

The film jumps back to the main timeline of the narrative and Egor is on a train travelling with Sanda (Ioana Anastasia Anton). They are going to her family estate for a visit. Once there they meet another guest, Professor Nazarie (Ovidiu Ghinita), and Sanda’s mother Mrs Moscu (Maia Morgenstern). Before they sit for dinner, we see that Mrs Moscu feels weak, staggering a little at one point, and Sanda’s young sister Simina, demands the seat next to her mother that Nazarie was going to take, and he allows it. During the meal we witness Mrs Moscu’s obsessional eating habits.

Ioana Sandu as Simina

Nazarie visits Egor in his room before retiring and mentions a drought in the village (despite a proximity to the Danube). The next day, a romantic moment between Sanda and Egor is broken when she sees Simina walking near by and it starts an underlying theme of the younger sister somehow being a danger to the older. At a meal thereafter, Simina says she dreamed of Aunt Christina and this introduces the strigoï to the story – who was Mrs Moscu’s murdered older sister. As she describes the dream she suggests Christina has lamented the fact that Sanda has begun to forgot her. I won’t particularly go blow by blow through the plot as it is pretty darn close to the previous film but there are some motifs to draw out.

the portrait

When they are taken to see Christina’s portrait it is mentioned as a Mairea (I assume referencing George Demetrescu Mirea) and Egor is dismissive of his work until he sees it. However, having complemented it – due to the subject – we see a mist swirl within a perfume bottle. I took this as indicative of the presence of the strigoï in an immaterial form. He is then told about her history, through the Professor, but as well as her cruelty and murder at the hand of her lover, jealous after she consented to be raped (as much of an oxymoron as that sounds) by peasants during the 1907 peasant uprising, he also mentions that her body was never found and the villagers believe her to be strigoï and responsible for the death of animals and sickness in local children.

the bullet hole

This is followed by his first dream of her – after a warning within the dream – it is interesting that she tells him not to believe the terrible things Nazarie has told him (though much later he manages to run his finger over the still bleeding bullet hole in her back). It is also telling that she removes a glove and when he awakens it is there (although that is shown as waking from a dream into another dream) and then when he actually awakens, Nazarie enters the room and he asks about the smell – there is the scent of violets, her signature scent (and we can assume the perfume bottle earlier was violets), proving she had been there.

the three ladies

In the previous review I mentioned that, in a non-fiction volume, Mircea Eliade had split strigoï into living and dead categories (commonly referred to as strigoï vii and strigoï mort). There is indication that, as well as the three female characters being connected to the strigoï mort (Miss Christina), they may also be strigoï vii. This seems true of Mrs Moscu, who obsessively eats, is unnecessarily cruel (we see her casually snap the neck of a bird) and has a psychic connection to her sister (which I’ll come back to) and Simina who can be read as being connected to her aunt and strigoï herself, and/or possessed by her aunt at times. Fairly early into the narrative, as Sanda becomes ill, Egor calls Simina a witch and warns her from hurting her sister. He grabs her arm and she pulls herself away, at which point Egor collapses in considerable pain (presumably magically inflicted). Also, when Simina seems to dominate and kiss Egor later, the kiss is clearly a bite drawing blood.

Egor's stake

This version of the story shows a greater connection between Sanda and her aunt, though her age, as mentioned by Simina, and perhaps her time in Bucharest has weakened the connection. She seems to be feeding her aunt (and is diagnosed as anaemic) but we see her stood awaiting Christina until her mother (connected to the strigoï mort) tells her Christina will not visit that night. One thing that felt a little more apparent in this was that when Egor returns to the house, having been bitten by Simina, he has lost time and the doctor (Ioan Ionescu) attending Sanda says he saw him taking a moonlit walk with a woman (which he can’t recall and was likely Christina). Interestingly the film draws a direct line between the fate of the strigoï mort (who must be killed by metal stake through the heart – though Egor does assault the portrait also) and the two living sisters.

Dumitrescu Anastasia as Miss Christina

It is hard to judge the two films against each other. Both aim for the unheimlich and both have a languid pace. I thought this showed more of the supernatural and I liked the way it reached further, into the impact on the village, at least in reportage. One telling difference was in the performance of Egor, Tudor Istodor played him as a rather detached character (be that through his arrogance at times or through supernatural influence at others) and that worked but not as well as the smouldering and intense performance by Adrian Pintea in the previous version. The wider communication of the supernatural gives this the edge for me. 6.5 out of 10.

The imdb page is here.

Domnisoara Christina – review

Director: Viorel Sergovici

Release date: 1992

Contains spoilers

A little background, if I may, of how I came to know this film existed. On occasion I am known to attend the excellent online lectures arranged by Romancing the Gothic - favouring, of course, the vampire related. I spotted one by Maria Cohut entitled Revenants as Abject Feminine in Romanian Gothic Horror: Mircea Eliade’s ‘Miss Christina’ (1936). The word revenant got me… then as I looked into the book I noted it used the term strigoï. More excited now I looked to track the book and discovered that there were two Romanian films based on it. This being the first and so I managed to track it down and watch this the day before the lecture. Note this is not easily come by, it is a VHS quality rip from Romanian TV and, I suspect, fan-subbed. There was also a 2013 version that I will also look at.

Christina murdered

So Eliade’s story surrounded strigoï and, from within the lecture I ascertained that in his non-fiction work he recognised both the strigoï vii as living witch-like persons and strigoï mort as more vampiric and fluctuating from spectral to corporeal. This film, I understand, follows the book pretty darn closely. It starts with Miss Christina (which is the English title) the sound of a crack of gunfire and she falls dead. This places the event in the historical peasant’s revolt of 1907. Later, however, we get to hear that Christina was deemed as wicked anyway (beyond being a landowner). The film shows us a portrait of her.

Adrian Pintea as Egor

Moving to the 1930s and the painter Egor Paschievici (Adrian Pintea) has visited Sanda (Raluca Penu), with whom he has a romantic entanglement. As they walk through the hall of her family house he tries to pull her to him but she pulls away and says they have a new guest. They enter the dinning room and her mother, Mrs Moscu (Irina Petrescu), introduces Professor Nazarie (Dragos Pîslaru). They sit to eat but Sanda’s younger sister, Simina (Medeea Marinescu), insists she have the chair near her mother to which the Professor acquiesces. A note about Simina, the dialogue referring to her describes her as young – indeed in the novel she is nine – but Medeea Marinescu was eighteen and the character looks teen. I suspect this is because of sexual connotations later.

the portrait

One thing of note is Mrs Moscu eating obsessively, shovelling fork after fork of food into her mouth. Egor has also noted that she seems to lose strength as the sun sets, sometimes falling into lethargy. The next day Simina reports having dreamt about Aunt Christina – Mrs Moscu’s older sister – and the men are taken to a locked room that contains the portrait of Christina. Egor suggests he would like to paint it in his own style and Sanda tells him that it is rare that her mother lets anyone in the room. The Professor has heard stories about Christina being the bailiff’s mistress and forcing him to thrash peasants for her pleasure. During the uprising, it is said that she invited peasant men two at a time into her room and allowed them to rape her (a note from Maria Cohut’s lecture is that this paints her as the abject feminine, that rape and consent are mutually exclusive, and that the tale is told from a male perspective) and the bailiff shot her out of jealousy. Children in the village, he suggests, still fear her.

Simina and Nazarie

As the story progresses Egor, having had warning dreams at first, starts seeing Miss Christina in his dreams as she attempts to seduce him. Sanda becomes deathly ill – and is said to have anaemia by the doctor (George Constantin) who is called for. Though we don’t see it, Sanda seems to be being fed upon by Christina, whose powers grow and who seems to become more corporeal. Equally Simina starts acting in a way inappropriate for a child (notwithstanding the age she presents in the film), knowing things about Christina, cleaning her Aunt’s prized carriage, acting sexually dominant to Egor at a point and a cut on his lip may have occurred when she kisses him. This can be read two ways, that she is being possessed at times by her aunt or, as posited by Maria Cohut, that she is actually strigoï vii. The mother seems to have a sympathetic connection to Christina, with her prized portrait and obsessive eating habits and perhaps lending her strength to the strigoï mort at night. It is interesting that in the climax, when villagers reach the house, her first reaction is to say, “You’ve come for land” referencing the 1907 revolt again.

Sanda weakens

The way to deal with a strigoï in this is to push a rod of iron through the heart (in the grave) but the film also connects the portrait in to the ending – with portraits being a firm favourite within the Gothic. I enjoyed this but it is rather languid in its pace, the slow march rather than a rush of thrills and it also aims more for the uncanny than it does horror. The world feels off kilter. It is an interesting take on the feminine; it is a household of females, the negative stories about Christina are delivered by men and the three women of the household could be fit into the maiden (Simina), mother (Sanda – though she is not a mother she is the object of Egor’s sexual desire) and crone (Mrs Moscu), with Miss Christina a unifying force. One thing that did strike me was a feel of la Morte Amoureuse - though Clarimonde only demanded a drop of blood from her lover, and Christina seemed to be sucking the life out of Sanda as she pursued Egor. 6 out of 10.

The imdb page is here.

Viy (2014) – review

Director: Oleg Stepchenko

Release date: 2014

Contains spoilers

I am a fan of the story Viy. The original short by Gogol has been filmed several times. Black Sunday is allegedly based on the story but the connection is very loose indeed. That said the film is definitely a vampire movie. The 1967 adaptation, Viy, eschews much of the vampiric aspect from the story but does include hagriding – a traditional form of psychic vampirism. It also has the central witch animate after death reminiscent of the Strigoï vii and mort. It would be remise not to mention Sveto Mesto, a fine adaptation in its own right.

fairytale feel

This version was actually slated for release in 2009 (along with another adaptation that seems to have been lost at the moment) to celebrate the 200th anniversary of Gogol’s birth. It unfortunately seemed to vanish itself but I kept a weather eye out for it. Recently I discovered it had been released on Russian DVD – but without other language subtitles. Then I discovered it had also been released in Thailand. The Thai DVD has either English or Thai audio and subs – the English audio being partially dubbed as the film was produced in Russian and English.

caught in bed

Why partly in English? Because the film adds much to Gogol’s basic story and the film starts in England in 1701, where the Lord Dadli (Charles Dance, Underworld Awakening & Dracula Untold) is storming through his house accompanied by a group of servants. He approaches a certain room with stealth, so as to not to alert the occupants – his daughter (Anna Churina) who is in bed with Jonathan Green (Jason Flemyng, the League of Extraordinary Gentlemen). Green makes a run for it whilst professing his love. He is a cartographer and will make his fortune, he suggests. He gets to his coach – a steampunk like coach drawn by horses but controlled from inside the cab and complete with road measuring wheel at the back.

sitting vigil

Cutting across Europe, we hear a voiceover tell us about the eyes of Viy, an eternal God. In a beautifully realised fairytale landscape we see maidens put wreaths with lighted candles into a lake, Tradition says if a man picks up a wreath he and the girl are destined to be together. Nastusya (Agnia Ditkovskite) walks from the lake calling for her friend Pannochka (Olga Zaytseva). Pannochka is lying deathlike in the water when she grabs her friend who falls in herself. Nastusya is saved by some half unseen beast like shape with seven horns. Pannochka’s father, Sotnik (Yuriy Tsurilo), comes to his daughter who dies in his arms but first says that a seminary student, Khoma (Aleksey Petrukhin), must read the three nights of prayer above her.

after the third night

Khoma is brought to Sotnik who offers him 1000 gold coins to perform the vigil. We see him taken to the church and become locked in but the next scene is actually the third night of vigil. He is singing prayers when he notices the coffin is empty. Flowers seem to fly and he draws a chalk circle around himself. The flowers seem to be caught in a vortex, flying around the circle and around the great crucifix. A spectral creature lunges towards Khoma. The scene is over in a flash and then we see the village priest, Otets Paisiy (Andrey Smolyakov), given Khoma’s fee to deliver. We see him above Khoma’s body, having dropped the coins, crying that the church is cursed. He has two Cossack brothers board the church up (though they steal the coins first) and one loses an eye after a fall from the roof when he tries to board-up a hole.

the seminary students

At this point I was a tad disappointed. Khoma’s story seemed to have been greatly curtailed – don’t worry though, his encounter with the hag and the first two nights of vigil are relayed later on in flashback. As Jonathan makes his way over Europe, sending letters back to his love, he has no idea she is pregnant. I was unsure about these cut scenes to his lover – they added little to the film. With supplies low, Jonathan picks up two seminary students, Gorobets (Anatoliy Gushchin) and Khalyava (Ivan Mokhovikov). They tell him how they and Khoma stayed at the watermill of the village and Khoma vanished.

hagridden

This leads us to them being allowed to stay by the old woman who lives in the mill and her sexual overtones towards Khoma. We actually see that her silhouette is that of a young woman… with a tail. She jumps on Khoma’s back and rides him through the night sky – in a reflection he sees that her face is that of Pannochka. This hadridding is the only overtly vampiric aspect to the film, the blood drinking that comes into the original story is lost and the Strigoï vii and mort like aspect is deliberately blurred (in a way that is too spoiler heavy to explain). It is telling that the stories round the hagridding and the first two nights are third hand, as Khoma is dead (or missing, according to his friends) - could they possibly be true?

Viy with eyelids lifted

The film plays with a theme of superstition and science but deliberately blurs the lines. The villagers are treated to a sign consisting of demonic visions but it is apparently the product of magic lantern technology (not too much is done with this, unfortunately). The English scientist is driven to the village when cadaverous wolves with glowing eyes that seem to be able to vanish into smoke chase him down. He uncovers a very earthly conspiracy but is driven to do so after visions where he sees Cossacks becme demons and then meets Viy himself. Viy is well done visually but the death that comes from his eyes (if his heavy, long eyelids are lifted) is reserved for the sinner and he is portrayed almost as a benevolent nature God who is pushing for justice.

groping blindly

The imagery through the film does work well. The first two nights of vigil are particularly well done. One has Pannochka blind, groping for Khoma as demonic roots and vines engulf the church interior. The second has a flying coffin that bleeds when struck with a hatchet. The story, however, is partially stifled by the new additions. I got the feeling of screenplay changes altering direction and leaving little reminders of previous drafts that were superfluous. That’s not to say that the story is bad (after all, the Gogol story is still central) and the changes that were made to the primary characters worked well enough – but it could have done with cleaning up.

flying

The dubbing was somewhat annoying – but unavoidable if I was going to see the film. Hopefully an original dialogue version with English subs will become available at some point. I liked the fact that the seminary students looked as though they had walked out of the 1967 version and I did enjoy the film (not as much as some other versions, but nevertheless). 6.5 out of 10.

The imdb page is here.

The Devouring: Kavachi’s Rise – review

Author: Mike Kearby

Release date: 2012

Contains spoilers

The Blurb: A Dark Secret. Thomas Morehart and his sister, Kara are vampyre, not the undead, but creatures evolved over hundreds of thousands of years to mimic their prey, man. Then - rescued from a Nazi Prison Camp, Thomas and Kara are brought to the U.S. and forced to work inside government-owned mortuaries. Now -betrayed by the government, Thomas and Kara are in a race against time to transform back to their feral states or risk Exsanguination by government sanctioned hit squads.

The review: I like unusual lore and Mike Kearby has certainly given us that. As you will have gathered from the blurb the vampyres in this are not the undead but separate species, apex predators above man. That is not to say that there isn’t a supernatural element to this (after all transformation from their natural state to human and back could be said to be supernatural – or perhaps preternatural) but it is a great little premise.

Essentially the vampyres were one of six races or families. The back history to our story is that they were tracked down and captured by Mengele during the Second World War. The race we are dealing with, the Shimulo or fanged ones, were thought by Mengele to be a pure form that he could exploit for the Nazi War Machine. In their natural form large feline creatures, with fangs that might be called sabre-like, they had developed the ability to take human form and walk amongst their prey (their large fangs being the giveaway, as they do not change when in human form, and the reason for them being known as the fanged ones).

The other races were destroyed by Mengele; the Upior from Poland (tongue feeders), the Blutsauger of Bavaria (Bloodsuckers), the Strigoi Morti of Romania (the Dead who Shriek), the Viesczy of Russia (those with stingers instead of fangs) and the Langsuir (the winged ones). To be honest I’d welcome Kearby exploring these other races at some point but for now we have the Shimulo.

They were rescued from the Death Camp and transported to the US as part of a black ops programme and lived peacefully in mortuaries (living off the blood of the dead). They were defanged and, because they didn’t hunt, the fangs never grew back – it was thought that it was the defanging that tempered their predator nature, domesticating them but, in fact, it was the fact that the blood they drank was not absolutely fresh. Their liaison, Nikolai, and a crack team of soldiers were granted extreme longevity because of infusion of very dilute Shimulo blood – fresh undiluted blood proved extremely corrosive to human flesh.

When Nikolai discovers that the Government are to pull the plug on the operation and destroy the Shimulo he breaks ranks and helps Thomas and Kara (a brother and sister) rediscover their predator nature. The book then flows into a fantastically violent adventure that was a welcome move away from all too human and romantic vampires and into a realm of predators and alpha behaviour.

Other traits the Shimulo have is the ability to echo-locate and they must be killed by exsanguination – difficult when they heal as rapidly as they do, but they have a weak point in their natural defences that can be exploited. There is a low level telepathy displayed, which becomes more powerful between a Shimulo and a human that has been given their diluted blood.

Really great fun, this was a rip-roaring yarn that was a well written adventure fantasy and something very unique. 8 out of 10.

Strigoi – review

Director: Faye Jackson

Release date: 2009

Contains spoilers

When I have written about the story Viy and, more so, the films thereof, I often mention the strigoï vii and strigoï mort. Though these two types of vampire are not mentioned in story and, indeed, hail from Romania rather than the Ukraine (the source of Viy), it was the easiest way to describe the vampiric principle.

The strigoï vii is a living vampire or vampiric witch, the strigoï mort is the undead (or, more properly, dead) variant. There are blessed few books and fewer films that actually feature traditional strigoï (and in those I’m classing the Viy variants). So this British funded, Romanian shot film with Romanian actors performing in English was already intriguing – it uses the strigoï mythology.

a kangaroo court

Its start is dark. The body of an old man, Florin, lies in a field. A couple – Constantin (Constantin Barbulescu) and Ileana (Roxana Guttmann) – are dragged from their beds and taken to a kangaroo court where the other villagers find them guilty of murdering Florin. They are taken out to the level crossing and forced to kneel. The mayor, Stefan (Zane Jarcu), and priest, Tudor (Dan Popa), are there supporting, encouraging even, the mob justice. A shotgun is raised and – fails to fire. The accused are brained with a shovel and, without ceremony, buried.

post execution party

Following this the locals ransack their mansion, stealing their items and doing a conga to Spirit in the Sky. Local woman Mara (Camelia Maxim) takes a blouse as well as lots of kitchen electrical goods. People dance, carpets are taken and drinks are consumed en masse. The mayor looks through papers. It is clear that Constantin was the rich man of the village; before he died he accused people of being willing to take his money (in bribes).

Rudi Rosenfeld as Nicolae

Vlad (Catalin Paraschiv) wakes and reaches for a cigarette – but the packet is empty. He stumbles into the living room and asks his grandfather, Nicolae (Rudi Rosenfeld), if he has any cigarettes. He has one, he says, but he is saving it. When Vlad looks in the tin jar it is empty. The gypsies stole it – his grandfather claims. He also claims that the communists stole his dog so that he it wouldn’t warn him when the gypsies came. Vlad goes outside, the dog has run away it seems, and sees Mara, who is his grandfather’s neighbour, laid upon her porch.

Catalin Paraschiv as Vlad

Concerned for her, he wakes her and her reaction shows us that he has just returned home. He was in Italy – where he ended up working in a chicken fast food outlet. As the film progresses we discover that his father, mother, brother and sister are all doctors. He graduated but is rather squeamish (we see why later, in flashbacks) and never interned or practised. Rather than see his immediate family he decided to stay with his grandfather.

the death-watch

He goes to the store but it is deserted. In the backroom he sees the men of the village sitting death-watch for Florin. They say he died in an accident but Vlad sees the bruising around his neck that indicates strangulation. Not able to get a straight answer from them he leaves and his friend Octav (Vlad Jipa), a policeman, shows up to ask some routine questions about Florin. Vlad discovers that his signature has been forged on the death certificate. He suggests to Octav that he speak to Constantin – not knowing that Constantin is dead. Meanwhile Mara’s food, prepared in the stolen electrical goods for the funeral, tastes off to her and her husband (Adrian Donea). She thinks it’s down to the stolen equipment and takes it all the stolen property back to the mansion (bar the blouse, which she can’t part with). She is leaving as Octav arrives and tells him she was returning borrowed things and no one is home.



Constantin Barbulescu as Constantin

Vlad can’t sleep and wanders to the mansion. He knocks and Ileana, eating a chicken leg and looking rather worse for wear, opens the door. He speaks to an equally ill looking Constantin who tells him that he is hungry and sets him on a path to uncover some shady land registry “errors” committed by the village elders. Meanwhile Ileana goes to Mara’s home and starts eating all the food.

Ileana hungers for food

Later that evening the mayor tries to steal Constantin’s car and finds Octav, dead. They bury him. Octav then wakes Vlad, the policeman is back from the dead and, essentially, you have three strigoï mort wandering around. They all hunger for different things. Constantin wants the world to know of the village leaders’ corruption, Octav hungers for cigarettes (he had quit when alive) – which he steals from Vlad – and Ileana hungers for food. When the food runs out, so she cannot get any more, she attacks Mara for her blood but the woman is saved as the cock crows and Ileana leaves to go back to her grave.

strangling Constantin

We also have a strigoï vii (I won’t spoil who that is), who drinks blood when people are sleeping. Some of the lore is turned upside down. Ileana will eat food with garlic seasoning – something a strigoï should not be able to do. Constantin can enter the church (and is strangled by the priest but, of course, fails to die) and again strigoï should not be able to enter churches.

sat in his grave

Octav tells Vlad that strigoï can be identified as they sit in their graves, like Turks. In his case that is certainly true. There is also an indication that they are plague spreaders. Those in too much contact with the strigoï develop pustules or boils on their bodies. Vlad certainly does and does not seem to notice their presence, despite being covered eventually. Bite marks seem to change into boils also.

removing the heart

The way to destroy a strigoï is to cut out its heart and burn it. In a fantastic scene it becomes clear that removing a heart with a bread knife is not the easiest job in the world!

Octav and Vlad

I adored this film. It is a comedy, and the comedy is dark but at its heart it is driven by quirkiness and character. If I had to liken the tone of the comedy it would be to the film Local Hero (1983). The pace is uniquely quirky also, it has a rhythm that feels right, and feels rural. You become caught in some of the underlying stories and not everything is resolved, and yet an answer is, strangely, forthcoming in the last scene featuring the main villagers. Ultimately the film's ending offers a conclusion regarding Vlad and his underlying issues and not about the foibles (albeit criminal foibles) of village life.

The acting is superb throughout. Special mention to Catalin Paraschiv, Rudi Rosenfeld and Camelia Maxim – who all bring their characters to glorious, eccentric life. 8.5 out of 10.

At the time of review the film is only available on Swedish DVD but the imdb page is here.

Honourable mentions: Viy (1996)

Regular readers will be aware of how much I like Viy, the story by Nikolai Gogol. Indeed it was the basis for two of my favourite vampire movies, Viy (1967) – which is fairly story accurate – and Black Sunday – which isn’t.

Hag ridden

Often – when the filmic versions of Viy are story accurate – they show the strigoï vii and strigoï mort, the living hag or witch psychic vampire and the dead (or undead) vampire. However the strigoï mort in the story does little vampiric, though the strigoï vii hag rides the ‘hero’ Khoma. I can’t recall the act of blood drinking, described in Gogol’s story, being enacted on the story accurate versions.

corpse rises

This is a 19 minute animation of the story, directed by A Grachova in 1996 and uses the bare bones of the story – as the film runs so short – but all the essential elements are there and it feels very much as though the animation was made with the ’67 film firmly in mind, as such you can look to that page for a general story run through. An unusual little offering and I thought it best to cover it as I continue to track down all things Viy related. At the time of the article there is no IMDB page.

Sveto Mesto – review

Director: Djordje Kadijevic

Release Date: 1990

Contains spoilers

Sveto Mesto or a Holy Place is a flick I’ve had for a while but it was friend of the blog House of Karnstein who recently let me know that subtitles had appeared for the film. It is based on Gogol’s short story Viy and owes much, in some respects, to the wonderful 1967 film Viy.

For those who don’t know, the story had a definitive edge of vampirism to it. The films concentrate more on the witch aspects of the story. However we get psychic vampirism and what we see is the strigoï vii (or living witch/vampire) who becomes the strigoï mort (undead vampire) on death. I did a ‘Vamp or Not?’ on the 1967 film and all films based on the story – if accurate to that model – will be reviewed even if the vampirism is low key/well hidden. Note that this is going to be a spoiler heavy look at Sveto Mesto.

The film begins with three students walking down a road, looking for a cabin. They are lost and can hear wolves. As two forge ahead, Toma (Dragan Jovanovic), holds back. He sees a carriage coming down the road, apparently, at first, driverless he sees that there is a woman (Branka Pujic) inside. Toma chases after it and eventually meets his friends. He wonders how they were not killed by the hurtling carriage and they wonder what he has been drinking – they saw no carriage.

They reach a dilapidated shack and ask for shelter, explaining that they are student priests. The old woman within eventually allows them to stay but splits them up – Toma gets a shed. After seeing the empty carriage nearby, he has led down for the night when the old lady comes in. He thinks that she is after sex, a notion he quickly refuses given her age, and indeed finds himself thinking that again when she leaps, screeching, onto him. Until, that is, she grabs his mouth and hag-rides him. To be hag-ridden, attacked by a witch who uses you a steed, was thought the source of nightmares, sleep paralysis and a form of psychic vampirism.

Toma starts reciting the Lord’s Prayer and the holy words break her hold on him. They fall to the floor and he starts violently beating the witch. Suddenly he stops; she has transformed into a young woman – the woman from the carriage. She kisses him tenderly and he kisses her back, his kisses becoming more passionate and then, suddenly she appears dead. He runs and, by the morning, he is back at the seminary.

He is called to the headmaster, and bumps into his friends who laugh at him suggesting that he slept with the granny and then ran off – but he must have been good as she made them breakfast in the morning. The headmaster tells him that he has been summoned by Master Zupanski (Aleksandar Bercek) as his daughter is dying and Toma is to pray for her. Zupanski is a patron of the church and school and thus Toma has no choice. He is handed to Doros (Danilo Lazovic) and Spira (Rados Bajic), who are to take him to Zupanski – despite his protests.

When they arrive Katarina, Zupanski’s daughter, has died and Toma recognises her as the girl the witch became. This of course means that he is her killer, though no-one else is aware of that. Toma is to sit in the church for three nights praying for the girl as that was her request – she asked for Toma by name. It is round here that the film takes a slightly different route (rather than direction) to the 1967 Viy and in some ways it is closer to the original story.

The first night sees Toma alone in the church. He approaches the coffin and is looking at the girl when her eyes open. Falling back he draws a circle into the thick dust of the floor and the girl leaves her coffin. She circles him, walking the perimeter but not crossing the invisible barrier he has created. In the morning she is back in her coffin.

During the day – over the next two days – the locals tell stories of Katerina, of how she broke the dog trainer, Nikita (Predrag Miletic) so that he is a shell of a man and they openly refer to her as a witch. They do not, however, relate a story like the one in the Gogol original, which had her drinking blood. There is a story, however, of a cat with glowing eyes going to the maid Lenka (Maja Sabljic) and her stabbing its paw with scissors – Katarina having a wounded hand the next day. This is a little lycanthropy-esque as well as witchy but also we must remember that Carmilla would transform into a cat and thus the cat has a definite place in vampire mythology also.

There is something odd with regards the family. Not only does Katarina faint as she approaches the church (in one of the stories about her) but the father has had a nude painting of her commissioned (now unfinished). This gives a hint of incest and, incest, traditionally, might be a trigger for vampirism. The mother is dead and we get some snippets – the portrait of her is deliberately lingered on by the camera and later it is blank and the father sees his dead wife stood nearby. The peasants suggest that the mother wanders the fields howling like a wolf. This is not elaborated on further, though we do hear a wolf howling at night as well as in association with the ciarrage.

The point where I became somewhat disappointed with the film was within the ending. In the story (and the ’67 flick) the strigoï mort calls down all sorts of spirits and monsters on the third night of vigil. Not so in this. The girl marches upon Toma who falls into her empty coffin and then she kicks the living Hell out of his man bits. He passes out and awakens, as the funeral party enter the church, in the coffin with her corpse draped over him. The father assumes necrophilia and he is pulled from the church and killed. It just seemed, whilst it worked, much too mundane.

However the film does not end there and there is an entire coda section that brought the film full circle and which I won’t spoil but can say I rather enjoyed.

The film’s photography is odd. I rather enjoyed the look and feel of the film, but there is a thickness to it that makes one feel like you are watching a 1970s production rather than 1990s. It is, overall, a good production of Viy (other than the mundane climax).

All in all I want to hold this, score wise, at 7.5 out of 10. Well worth tracking down and watching but it suffers when held next to the 1967 movie, which is much more magical.

The imdb page is here.