The latest announcement from Eureka Entertainment includes the welcome news of a debut UK release for Viy (1967), the Russian horror film directed by Konstantin Yershov and Georgi Kropachyov. To celebrate this, here’s Esteban Maroto’s gorgeous version of the witchy folk tale as it appeared in Warren’s Dracula magazine in 1972. There’s more Maroto in the collected edition of Dracula which, like all the Warren publications, is now out-of-copyright. I don’t think there was ever a book 2 in the US but here in Britain we were lucky to get the entire run of Dracula in a single volume.
Previously on { feuilleton }
• More Esteban Maroto
• The Dracula Annual
Viy is in my top 10 horror films…or perhaps art-house horror? It’s up there with Hausu and Susperia.
Years back I saw a trippy montage of this film set to dance music at a bear nightclub in Paris. I asked if anyone knew what this was from, but uninterested Parisian stares greeted me. Google searches of “flying coffin” or “witch riding man” did nothing. I resigned to thinking it had simply been made for that video…when suddenly one day it appeared on my screen.
Severin films released an amazing Blu-ray version in 2018. If you can get a copy, I highly recommend it. Nothing truly beats flying coffins and magic circles.
Haha, it really does seem very French that a bear club would be screening an obscure arty Russian horror film. I’ve known about Viy for some time but held off grabbing a bootleg because I was sure someone would do a decent reissue eventually. Anything that gets classed with Hausu and Suspiria is of maximum interest. I’ll be happy to wait until March for the Eureka release which also includes another feature as a bonus, A Holy Place, based on the same Gogol story.
I’ll need to get the Eureka edition. I like their quality, and the extra content is always worth it.