Prince of Darkness (1987)

Prince of Darkness is a 1987 movie written and directed by John Carpenter that could be described as a return to the supernatural horror of The Fog but with some important differences.

Donald Pleasence is a very worried Catholic priest. An older priest has just died. That priest had belonged to an order called the Brotherhood of Sleep. For two thousand years a priest from that order has acted as a guardian of a terrible secret. Something that must remain confined. But it appears to be breaking out of its confinement.

Odd things are happening. Insects are behaving strangely. Homeless people are behaving very strangely indeed, as if they had some mysterious common purpose. The sky looks a bit funny. Everything just seems a tiny bit wrong somehow.

There’s also the old deceased priest’s diary, and a very ancient manuscript.

The priest begs Professor Howard Birack (Victor Wong) for help. Birack believes in science not religion but he works on the frontiers of theoretical physics so he’s rather open-minded about ideas that sound crazy. Birack recruits a team of graduate students. They are going to investigate this matter scientifically.

What they have to investigate is a very ancient cylinder in a 500-year-old church crypt. They’ll need someone with experience in translating ancient religious texts as well. That manuscript may contain vital clues. In fact it contains things you would not expect in an ancient religious manuscript.

Donald Pleasence knows something of the history of the Brotherhood of Sleep. It’s very disturbing. It casts doubt not just on the accepted version of Christianity but on accepted scientific principles as well. There is a very ancient evil which is not the evil in which everyone has always believed. That evil is now awakening.

Or investigators do not even know what they’re dealing with much less what to do about it. And that evil may be intent on picking them off one by one. Maybe not killing them. Maybe something much worse.

This is a kind of variant on the classic haunted house story in which a group of people are stuck in a house in which ghostly manifestations are happening. The differences being that this is a haunted church and while the manifestations might be supernatural they are not ghostly as such.

Of course it could be debated whether this is a supernatural horror movie or a science fiction horror movie.

The ideas here are very cool and very frightening. The enigmatic nature of the evil makes it more scary. Carpenter builds the tension very effectively.

The special effects are generally impressive. This was 1987 and for commercial reasons there were going to have to be gross-out gore scenes. I always find such scenes to be cheesy even when they’re done well. Gore is just something that doesn’t impress me. I think that the ideas here are clever enough and creepy enough to make the gore unnecessary. I am of course in the minority on this issue and in strictly commercial terms Carpenter knew what he was doing.

I rarely notice film music but Carpenter’s music for this movie (which he composed himself) is memorable and very disturbing.

Donald Pleasence is of course very good, and Victor Wong is marvellous as the eccentric but brilliant and determined Professor Birack. The other cast members are all very solid. Look out for Alice Cooper in a memorable appearance as a terrifying homeless person.

Prince of Darkness has some affinities with Carpenter’s 1982 The Thing in that both movies deal with possession, of sorts. It also has definite affinities with The Legend of Hell House (1973) with its scientific investigation of a haunted house.

Prince of Darkness is a fine creepy horror film. John Carpenter really was on fire in the 80. Highly recommended.

I had previously only seen this movie in a terrible pan-and-scanned VHS release so seeing it on Studiocanal’s Blu-Ray release was a revelation. This release is packed to the gills with extras.

The Haunting (1963)

The Haunting, released in 1963, has the reputation of being one of the best ghost movies ever made. There was a remake in 1999 which I haven’t seen and don’t intend to see. It is the original 1963 version with which we are concerned here.

This was from the start a personal project for Robert Wise. He had read Shirley Jackson’s novel The Haunting of Hill House and knew he just had to make it into a movie. The movie retains the novel’s New England setting but was shot in Britain. MGM’s British branch offered Wise the budget he needed.

Anthropologist Dr John Markway (Richard Johnson) is obsessed by the idea of scientifically proving the existence of the supernatural. For this he needs a haunted house. The notorious Hill House is ideal - it has a particularly sinister reputation. He will also need witnesses. He needs people who have had some previous encounter with the supernatural. Eleanor Lance (Julie Harris) and Theodora (Claire Bloom) seem suitable. The two women along with Dr Markway and Luke Sannerson (Russ Tamblyn), the nephew of the house’s current owner, will spend several days at Hill House.

Spooky things start to happen early on. Lots of disturbing noises. Cold spots. All clear signs (to Markway) of ghostly presences.

The story of the movie is the gradual disintegration of Eleanor. She provides voiceover narration so this is very much her story. Eleanor is pretty crazy to begin with. She has wasted her youth caring for her invalid mother. She is guilt-ridden over her mother’s death. She feels she doesn’t belong anywhere. It’s also a fair assumption that she is both sexually and emotionally frustrated. She is timid and mousy. We can be quite certain that she is a virgin.

We can be quite certain that Theodora is no virgin. She’s Eleanor’s polar opposite - sophisticated, worldly, confident, comfortable with being a woman, outgoing and sexy.

There is immediate tension between these two women.

Apart from the noises nothing obviously supernatural happens. The four people in the house cannot be certain at first that there is anything inexplicable going on. Odd noises in old houses are not unusual. Dr Markway believes the sounds are evidence of the supernatural, but that’s what he wants to believe. Eleanor becomes convinced that the house wants her in some way. She becomes increasingly distraught and unstable.

The spiral staircase scene is terrifying but again there’s no certainty that anything supernatural is occurring. It’s a decaying old house and such houses are full of perfectly natural dangers. Of course eventually someone is going to crack and try to escape, but will the house let anyone leave?

Wise, cinematographer Davis Boulton and and production designer Elliot Scott create the right gothic atmosphere without resorting to the obvious. There are no cobwebs. No crypts. No mysteriously empty coffins. No mysterious figures glimpsed on the battlements. Wise and Boulton do employ plenty of camera tricks. Exterior shots of the house were shot using infra-red film. Wide-angle lenses were used. Things look distorted, but in a fairly subtle way which adds to the creepiness. Eleanor thinks the house is watching her and that’s the impression the audience gets as well.

There are so many ways this movie can be interpreted. We do eventually have fairly clear signs that something outside the range of the normal laws of nature is occurring but what it is remains obscure, and Wise wants it to be obscure. These people are isolated and highly suggestible.

Does the evil come from the man who built the house ninety years earlier, wicked old Hugh Crain? Does it come from his daughter Abigail, or from the nurse who allowed Hugh Crain’s wife to die? Does it come from some demonic entity? Does the evil come from the house itself? Or does it come from Eleanor? Is there in fact anything supernatural going on or is it just Eleanor’s madness? You will have to decide for yourself. Wise has no intention of spoon-feeding the viewer with a glib explanation. What I do like is that neither a supernatural nor a non-supernatural explanation can simply be dismissed out of hand.

The lesbian sub-text between Theo and Eleanor feels a bit tacked on but it does serve the purpose of increasing Eleanor’s feelings of isolation. Her normal instinct would be to turn to another woman for emotional support but she does not want to turn to Theo. And it certainly adds extra tension.

This is also a movie about a woman falling apart, and Eleanor has been falling apart for a very long time. She sees Hill House not so much as a threat but more as her last chance to find herself.

This would make a great double bill with Kubrick’s The Shining - there are some striking similarities in the way these two films approach the haunted house movie.

The Haunting is an object lesson in how to do horror that is very subtle indeed, and very frightening indeed. Highly recommended.

Blood: The Last Vampire (2000)

Blood: The Last Vampire is a fascinating anime film that, with its running time of 48 minutes, is not quite a feature film.

It was shot in a mixture of Japanese and English. The Japanese characters speak Japanese and sometimes English, the American characters speak English. There’s also a mixture of traditional animation techniques and CG and you’ll either like that blending or you won’t depending on personal taste. Overall I found the visuals to be effective and atmospheric.

It starts in a wonderfully enigmatic fashion. It is Japan in the 1960s. A young Japanese girl (we will later learn that her name is Saya) slaughters a passenger on a train with a samurai sword. Then she is joined by a couple of American guys. David might be Saya’s boss. He might work for the Japanese Government or the US Government or for some shady outfit like the CIA or he might work for some private organisation. Whoever or whatever he is he is in the same line of work as Saya - killing chiropterans. We don’t yet know what chiropterans are.

There’s some tension between Saya and David but there’s obviously some trust as well. Maybe they’re uneasy allies but they’re definitely allies.

Then Saya goes undercover as a student at the school for the children of American military personnel at a U.S. Air Force base in Japan. For some reason she wears a Japanese schoolgirl uniform although it’s an American school. Saya looks rather weird dressed that way - she doesn’t look like a cute teenager, she looks like a stone-cold killer.

She has an uneasy encounter with the school nurse. The school nurse gets very disturbed when Saya whips out her sword and slices up another girl student in front of her. The nurse is horrified but she’s even more horrified when she gets a good look at her first chiropteran. They’re horrifying demon monsters.

We then get a rollercoaster ride of action and mayhem.

What I love most about this film is the thing that a lot of people dislike. It gives us nothing but tantalising hints at the backstory. You expect a Van Helsing-like character or a scientist to pop up to explain what is going on. But that doesn’t happen. We have to figure things out for ourselves.

We find out a few things about Saya but they raise more questions than they answer. The very short running time means there’s no time for detailed explanations. We are plunged straight into very strange and frightening events and we really don’t know much more than the unfortunate school teacher caught in the middle.

Which makes things much scarier. We don’t know the full extent or the exact nature of the threat. We don’t know how heavily the odds are stacked against Saya.

This is a very stripped-down very minimalist story. There are no subplots. Virtually no exposition. It hits the ground running and the pace remains frenetic. I like that. I’m told there was a later live-action version with double the running time that ruined the story by adding the backstory that was very deliberately and wisely left out of the original.

Right at the end we find out something very important about Saya but once again we don’t get a full explanation. It answers some of our questions but it adds further puzzles.

There was clearly a reason for choosing the mid-60s as the time setting and for including Vietnam War footage. Presumably the point was that we humans are every bit as bloodthirsty as the chiropterans. Fortunately this stuff isn’t intrusive and it does add to the atmosphere of paranoia.

Saya reappears as a character in the 2011 TV series Blood-C.

Hiroyuki Kitakubo directed. Blood: The Last Vampire was made by Production I.G. and originated in a study group set up by Mamoru Oshii (director of Ghost in the Shell) to explore ideas for future films. Kenji Kamiyama wrote the screenplay. He went on to be director and chief writer for the excellent Ghost in the Shell Stand Alone Complex TV series.

Blood: The Last Vampire is very much about style. That style is very harsh, dark and brooding. This may be the least cutesy anime ever made. Very entertaining movie. Highly recommended.

The Manga DVD (they’ve now released in on Blu-Ray as well) looks very good and includes a “making of” featurette which is interesting for the insights it offers into the aesthetic choices that were made.

Hardware (1990)

Hardware is a 1990 post-apocalyptic science fiction-action-horror movie that borrows heavily from other movies in these genres. There’s nothing original about the ideas but the execution is interesting if a bit pretentious at times.

It’s the usual post-apocalyptic setup. The United States is now mostly a radioactive scrap heap. The government is vicious and tyrannical but perhaps not very efficient.

One way to survive in this world is by scavenging. There’s a lot of discarded tech stuff around if you’re prepared take a few risks to find it. Some is just junk. Some is worth money.

A strange wandering dude finds a couple of interesting items in the desert. A mechanical hand and a robot head. He sells them to a scrap dealer, who sells them on to Mo Baxter (Dylan McDermott). Mo gives them to his girlfriend Jill (Stacey Travis). Jill is a crazy artist who makes weird sculptures out of scrap metal, discarded tech and plastic dolls.

Mo is a kind of Space Marine but he’s not particularly motivated. It pays well and he needs the money.

Jill is paranoid, which is a sensible thing for a girl to be in this world. Her apartment has ultra-sophisticated security.

The relationship between Mo and Jill is uneasy. They’re in love but relationships are difficult in this world. Mo’s job takes him away a lot of the time, which Jill resents.

The robot head is not mere junk. Unfortunately it still functions although nobody has realised that yet. It’s part of a military android. The world is in ruins but the government can still find the money to finance horrific killing machines for the military. The Mark 13 combat android is very nasty indeed. It is of course only supposed to kill the enemies of the state which would be fine if it were functioning properly, which it isn’t. It sees everyone as an enemy.

And it’s now sitting in Jill’s living room. This is not going to end well. Of course we know it will go on a killing rampage.

Jill also doesn’t know that she is being watched by a very creepy Peeping Tom in a neighbouring apartment. His name is Lincoln and he’ll play a part in this story.

Mo’s good-natured spaced-out buddy Shades will play a part as well.

There are several rock stars in this movie which is appropriate since it plays a bit like an ultra-violent MTV video. Iggy Pop’s voice is heard for about 90 seconds in total (as a DJ) but he got prominent billing and a pay cheque so I guess he wasn’t complaining. Lemmy contributes a cameo as a water-cab driver.

This was a low-budget movie but the special effects are very impressive. It has a very strong and very effective cyberpunk vibe, but this is a grungy decaying post-apocalyptic cyberpunk world. There’s nothing wildly original about the aesthetic at work here but it’s executed very well. The killer android looks convincingly evil and menacing. The budget may have been small but the money that was spent is all up there on the screen.

The whole thing is hyperactive and gets a bit self-consciously clever at times. It tries very hard to be arty. Sometimes it succeeds. There’s a lot of gore.

The acting is barely adequate.

There is a steamy sex scene which apparently got the movie into trouble with the moral watchdogs.

What this movie does have is plenty of action and energy. It’s reminiscent of Alien in the sense that it’s about horrifying events taking place in a confined space. There’s nowhere to run to for either the monster or his potential victims, so it’s kill or be killed. And that works extremely well.

Hardware offers exciting mayhem done in a visually interesting way and it’s highly recommended.

Hardware looks great on Blu-Ray.

Gor (1987)

Gor is a 1987 American science fiction/fantasy adventure film from the Cannon Group. It was shot in South Africa. It is based on Tarnsman of Gor, the first of John Norman’s rather controversial Gor novels. Harry Alan Towers co-produced and co-wrote the script.

The initial setup follows the novel reasonably closely. It begins in the present day. Tarl Cabot (Urbano Barberini) is an American college professor who is obsessed by a rather wild theory. He believes that a Counter-Earth exists. It’s a planet within our solar system but due to the particular nature of its orbit it has remained undiscovered. It is a very Earth-like planet and its inhabitants are human (in the novel it is explained that the people of Gor came originally from Earth). Tarl has a ring given to him by his father. He believes it is the secret to reaching Gor. And indeed Tarl does find himself on Gor.

It is a planet at roughly the cultural level of the Bronze Age. There is no modern technology. Warriors use swords and bows. There are countless tiny city-states. And there’s a megalomaniac who wants to absorb all the city-states and create an empire. This villain is Sarm (Oliver Reed).

Tarl joins up with a small group of rebels. One of his motivations is the fact that one of the rebels is a very attractive young woman warrior, Talena (Rebecca Ferratti). Sarm has sacked their city and stolen their home-stone (which has immense religious significance to them). Tarl has to learn how to become a warrior. The ultimate objective is to reach a forbidden mountain range where Sarm has his stronghold, destroy Sarm, retrieve the home-stone and free the city-states that he had conquered.

This small band has lots of misadventures along the way. There’s plenty of action, including a girl-fight between Talena and a slave-girl. It all builds to a reasonably OK action finale.

Not surprisingly Oliver Reed is by far the best thing in this movie. Oliver Reed as a sinister, cruel, power-crazed, sexually depraved super-villain - what’s not to love?

Urbano Barberini is an adequate but rather colourless hero. Rebecca Ferratti is OK and she certainly looks great in skimpy warrior-woman outfits.

Don’t get too excited about Jack Palance’s name in the credits. He gets about two minutes of screen time. His brief appearance is a teaser for the second movie (Gor 2: Outlaw of Gor) in which he plays a major role.

The first problem with this movie is that the low budget made it impossible to include one of the coolest features of the novel, the tarns. These are gigantic birds of prey which warriors ride into battle. Dropping them from the story was a wise idea - in 1987 you would have needed a fairly substantial budget to do them convincingly.

With his Gor novels John Norman was certainly trying to write popular entertaining adventure tales but he was trying to do a whole lot more than that. Norman is a philosopher by profession. He used the Gor novels to engage in all kinds of philosophical, political, social and cultural speculations. This meant that the world-building was a lot more important than the action-adventure plots. Norman created a fictional human society radically different from our own in all sorts of ways. The society of Gor is alien, shocking and totally fascinating. None of that makes it into the movie. The movie is a stock-standard barbarian warrior adventure tale.

A major problem is that this movie is ludicrously tame. There’s one mildly shocking scene (a slave-girl being branded) but overall the violence is very subdued. There’s zero sex. There’s zero nudity. There’s zero sexiness. Even the cat-fight between Talena and the slave-girl is very very tame. This is a movie based on a novel with BDSM overtones set in a society in which female slavery is a central component of that society and it’s clear that the producers were terrified of such subject matter and decided to ignore it.

In fact they ignored every single element that makes the novels fascinating and provocative. This movie has absolutely zero connection to the novels.

And unfortunately as a stock-standard barbarian warrior adventure tale it just doesn’t have enough sufficient pace and energy.

I admit I’ve only read the first three novels but they’re actually extremely interesting and deal with touchy subject matter in a complex and intelligent way. They’re provocative, but in a good way. Norman offers both titillation and food for thought. He’s challenging us to think about how societies work.

I can’t help thinking that this movie would have been a whole lot better with someone like Jess Franco directing, or even Joe D’Amato, or even perhaps Lucio Fulci.

Gor just doesn’t make the grade.

The German release offers both Gor movies on Blu-Ray and DVD, with both German and English language options.

I’ve reviewed the first three Gor novels and I recommend them - Tarnsman of Gor, Outlaw of Gor and Priest-Kings of Gor.

Ninja Scroll (1993)

Ninja Scroll is a 1993 anime film written and directed by one of the anime greats, Yoshiaki Kawajiri. It combines action, adventure, swordplay, fantasy and horror and it is very much an anime for grown-ups.

It is set during the time of the Tokugawa Shogunate (1603-1868). A Koga ninja team has been sent to investigate an epidemic that wiped out an entire village. This may not have been a natural occurrence. The Koga ninjas encounter of of the eight Kimon demons and are wiped out with just a single survivor - a young woman ninja named Kagero.

As a result of this disaster she encounters Jubei Kibagami who seems to be a wandering ronin who makes his living as a mercenary. He has had a colourful past which he has perhaps not quite come to terms with. And Jubei encounters a strange little man named Dakuan who is a lot more formidable than he looks. He is a government agent. He’s on a mission as well.

Kagero, Dakuan and Jubei don’t have much in common but they do have a common enemy. The nature of that enemy is not clear at first but the Shogun of the Dark is undoubtedly behind it. The Shogun of the Dark is a member of the Toyotomi clan who ruled Japan before the establishment of the Tokugawa Shogunate and he aims to restore his clan to power. That would unquestionably trigger a catastrophic civil war.

Jubei has little choice other than to help Dakuan. He has been poisoned. It is a slow poison but it will kill him eventually, and of course only Dakuan has the antidote. If Jubei carries out this mission for him Dakuan will give him the antidote and a hundred gold pieces. This is known as an offer one can’t refuse.

This ill-assorted trio will encounter more of the Kimon demons and each seems a bit more terrifying than the last one. One can produce huge swarms of killer wasps. Benisato is a female demon with several tricks up her sleeve. She can shed her skin in an emergency. She can also produce venomous snakes from her lady parts.

Jubei, Dakuan and Kagero have a few magic tricks of their own. They are after all trained ninja. One of Kagero’s tricks is that her whole body is poisonous. Any man who has sex with her will die. Kagero gives the impression that this doesn’t bother her but it does. She is a ninja but she is a woman also. And as much as she tries to deny it to herself she is strangely attracted to Jubei.

The chief henchman of the Shogun of the Dark is the sinister Gemma. Jubei and Gemma had clashed before, Jubei was certain he had killed Gemma. But Gemma is very much alive.

The key to the plans of the Shogun of the Dark is gold. A huge hoard of gold, enough to put the Toyotomi clan back in power.

There’s huge amounts of mayhem and plenty of gore and gushing blood. The violence gets quite extreme. There’s some nudity and sex and sex is certainly to some degree a motivating factor for several of the characters. This is a world in which sex can be rather dangerous, and sometimes nasty. Sensitive souls may find the violence and eroticism a bit confronting. This really is a story for grown-ups.

Ninja Scroll was one of the animes that at the time were pushing the edge of the envelope in terms of outrageous imagery. It still looks impressive.

The plot is a classic tale of power struggles and betrayals with both Jubei and Kagero being manipulated by both the bad guys and the good guys. They’d both be better off if they could learn to trust each other but trusting people does not come naturally to either of them. They’d also be better off if they could just accept that they’ve fallen in love but that’s not something they’re comfortable with either.

There is a certain amount of cynicism, or at least scepticism, towards authority. The Tokugawa Shogunate represents the good guys not because it’s especially virtuous but because it represents stability. It’s a whole lot better than the alternative which would be civil war.

If you love full-blooded action with lashing of slightly perverse eroticism there’s a great deal here to be enjoyed, and Ninja Scroll is highly recommended, and if you’re fascinated by the ninja thing then it’s pretty much a must-see movie.

Ninja Scroll belongs to the period from the mid-80s to the mid-90s when anime for grown-ups was gradually establishing a foothold in western markets. Vampire Hunter D (1985), Goku Midnight Eye (1989) and Wicked City (1987) were significant titles from this period and Yoshiaki Kawajiri was already becoming a major figure in adult-oriented anime.

The Australian Madman DVD (which is the edition I own) offers a very satisfactory transfer. There has also been a Blu-Ray release.

Viy (1967)

Viy is a 1967 Soviet gothic horror film. There was in fact a long tradition of Russian films about the supernatural. One thing I can say for certain, there has never been another movie quite like Viy.

It is based on an 1835 short novel by Nikolai Gogol. The movie has three credited directors, Konstantin Ershov, Georgiy Kropachyov and Aleksandr Ptushko and they are also credited as screenwriters.

I think it’s safe to say that the filmmakers had no interest in telling us anything profound about the human condition, or in giving us a serious story about the heroic struggles of the proletariat. This movie is pure entertainment. Insane entertainment, but still pure entertainment.

Brother Khoma (Leonid Kuravlyov) is a student at a seminary. He’s a decent enough chap, good-natured and totally lacking in malice, but he’s not exactly one of the seminary’s shining lights. He’s an indifferent scholar, he’s rather lazy and he lacks any really serious vocation.

On a brief holiday Khoma and two friends become lost. They eventually find an isolated farmhouse. An old woman grudgingly puts them up for the night. During the night the old woman takes him for a fly. She is of course a witch. Flying throigh the air with a witch on his back spooks Khoma quite a bit, and he’s even more spooked when the old witch turns into a beautiful young woman. Khoma however survives the experience.

Shortly afterwards a local boyar sends word to the seminary that his daughter is dying. She has asked for a seminarian to read prayers over her for three days. She asks for Khoma by name, which puzzles her father.

By the time Khoma arrives the girl has died but her father insists that Khoma read the prayers over her corpse for three nights. The corpse is lying in the local church. Khoma is not looking forward to this. He is not very brave. Luckily there are hundreds of candles in the church and once Khoma has all of them alight he feels better. He makes it through the night but he would have been a lot happier had the dead girl stayed in her coffin. Dead girls wandering about can be a bit disconcerting.

The next night is worse. Now it’s not just the dead girl who won’t stay put, the coffin won’t stay put either. And there’s still the third night to come.

Gogol claimed that this story was based on an authentic folk tale. The movie certainly tries to evoke the feel of a fairy tale or a folk legend. You could imagine travelling through the remoter parts of central Europe in the 19th century and being regaled with a story such as this in an inn. You would assume the story was part folk tale and part tall story. That’s the feel the film seems to be aiming for - to give its audience a few chills and a few laughs. There’s quite a bit of humour here. We’re expected to enjoy the story without taking it over-seriously.

This is not a movie that makes any effort to look realistic. There are obvious matte paintings and obvious process shots. On the other hand the special effects are impressive - they’re so wild and crazy and imaginative that you’re too flabbergasted to worry about whether they’re convincing or not. Honestly, how many other movies can you name that feature a dead girl surfing on a flying coffin?

The directors also come up with some very bold and ambitious camera moves. The rotating camera stuff is superbly done. That kind of thing is expensive because it’s time-consuming to set up. The same goes for some of the effects shots. The climax of the film, the third night in the church, involves some truly extraordinary special effects sequences. There was clearly some serious money spent on this film.

Viy does get described as a vampire film but this really is stretching it. Gogol’s novella was certainly tapping into the 19th century obsession with the supernatural and the occult but there’s nothing in it or the film that bears any real resemblance to a vampire. It would be more accurate to describe it as a movie about witches and demons.

Viy feels quite different to British, American and Italian gothic horror films of its era. It has its own distinct flavour with its mix of terror and offbeat whimsicality.

The acting is very good with Leonid Kuravlyov being the standout.

This is a wildly imaginative crazy movie that captures the feel of folk legends and fairy tales as effectively as any movie I can think of. It’s creepy and spooky and filled with inspired fantastic imagery. Highly recommended.

Severin’s Blu-Ray presentation is impressive. Extras include a superb mini-documentary on the history of Soviet science fiction and supernatural movies.