Viy

Viy (1967)

Вий

The Soviet Union’s first horror film!

A seminary student on monastery holiday kills an old witch in a remote village. The hag then transforms into a beautiful young woman whose dying wish is for him to watch over her wake for three nights. With terrors occurring and his faith waning, he reads prayers on the overnight watch and tries to survive the supernatural encounters.

Date of release
1967-11-27
TMDB
6.9 / 10 (298)
Runtime
1h 16m
Genres
Drama, Fantasy, Horror
Director
Georgi Kropachyov, Konstantin Ershov

Casting

Interesting facts

  • Based on: Viy

Viy is a 1967 Soviet Gothic dark fantasy folk horror film directed by Konstantin Yershov and Georgi Kropachyov. Based on the story of the same name by Nikolai Gogol, the film's screenplay was written by Yershov, Kropachyov and Aleksandr Ptushko. The film was distributed by Mosfilm.

Production

One of the filming locations was the village of Horoholyn lis in Ivano-Frankivsk Oblast, Ukraine. Shooting took place in a wooden church. It burned down in 2006 and was rebuilt.

Some of the "witch" scenes and the ending where Viy appears were toned down due to technological limitations as well as then current restrictions on Soviet film production. The directors were able to avoid the previous restrictions by using what was considered a "folk tale".

Read on Wikipedia · Text from Wikipedia, CC BY-SA 4.0. Data from Wikidata.

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