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).
Sveto mesto has the same structure as Viy, in fact the early parts of the film are extremely similar in both scenes and dialogue, but I don’t think it had the budget of the Russian film so there are no monsters here. Instead director Djordje Kadijevic injects some nudity and adult themes with the witch (Branka Pujic) given a backstory of sadism, lesbianism and incest, dirty boy!
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