boil, and bubble

I’m not alone

The Best from Famous Monsters of Filmland

Son of Famous Monsters of Filmland

Famous Monsters of Filmland Strike Back!

Black Sunday 1960 / Viy 1967 / Sveto mesto 1990

Fun fact: Black Sunday, Viy, and Sveto Mesto (A Holy Place) are all based on the same novella Viy by Nikolai Gogol.

Mario Bava enjoyed telling the story to his children at bedtime and was keen to adapt it when he got the chance to make his first film. Although Gogol gets a credit in the titles Bava’s is a very loose adaptation pretty much just keeping the “a dead witch comes back to life” part of the story, but it’s a wonderfully macabre gothic horror.

Konstantin Ershov and Georgi Kropachyov’s Viy is more of a spooky comedy than a horror film but it’s my favourite of the three. Great practical special effects are used to depict the young priest Khoma (Leonid Kuravlyov) beseiged by all manner of demons, goblins, skeletons, bats, cats, and of course features the most beautiful witch ever (Natalya Varley).

Death strangling a victim of the Black Death plague

From the codex called the Clementinum Collection of Tracts