Viy. Dir. Konstantin Ershov and Georgiy Kropachyov. Perf. Leonid Kuravlyov, Natalya Varley, Aleksey Glazyrin. Mosfilm Studios, 1967. Youtube. Web. 12 Nov. 2015. .
Viy is a Russian film directed by both Konstantin Ershov and Georgi Kropachyov in 1967 which has a mix of comedy, horror, and fantasy undertones throughout the movie. This film adaptation was taken from Nikolai Gogol’s 1835 original story Viy and was found and watched on Youtube and the story itself was found and read online to compare the two adaptations for this review. It is in full color and has many visual effects which were considered advanced at the time of its making. Gogol is a “Ukrainian-born Russian humorist, dramatist, and novelist” (Lavrin) whose popular novel and short story (Dead Souls, The Overcoat) “are considered the foundations of the great 19th-century tradition of Russian realism” (Lavrin). He is also very popular among Russian history because he is “deemed by many as the Father of Russia's Golden Age of Realism” (Merriman) and is known to have influence Dostoevsky himself (Merriman).
Viy starts off with a scene where young religious scholars are seen being let out from church for their “break” where they all run out and cause chaos throughout the market place. This scene has a comical sense to it which was carried out throughout the rest of the film where we see Khoma (a young religious scholar in training and one of the main characters played by Leonid Kuravlyov) being an aloof and somewhat alcoholic character who’s luck turns for the worst. The movie heavily implies Christian religious views which were popular through all of Russia at the time and is somewhat taboo because it mixed paganism with Christianity.
The film then leads into the catalytic scene where Khoma and his two friends try to make it home in the dark but are stranded in a field until they come upon a little house. Attemp...