Summoning The Dead, And Crazy Gentlemen With Scalpals: Russian Horror (part 2)

The Russian horror films I looked at in Part 1 were fun and big, but true horror fans might prefer this second list. It includes the artsier and more underground variety of horror films, some of which are so extreme and gruesome they might even give Tarantino nightmares. 

I’m not sure how to describe them, though. When I looked at French horror last time, I found the existence of an aesthetic that actually had a name. But I knew right off the bat that I wouldn’t be able to say the same for Russian horror because it would take less time to watch every Russian horror film that has ever been made than it would to watch the last season of American Horror Story.

Some of the movies on this list have things in common, and they are the things that are distinctly Russian. But what to call them?

They’re not Constructivist, because artifacts of modernity (cars, cameras, bomb shelters, etc) are usually regarded as sources of horror in these films, not praise. Constructivism also, being a Soviet propagandist aesthetic, favors order over chaos, and it lacks appeals to emotion. If anything these films are anti-Constructivist.

The emphasis on time and movement in films like the original Viy and in the films of Alexander Sokurov are somewhat Impressionistic. But guys like Sokurov would probably argue that, because the films exist for their own sake (he’s even gone so far as to say that the audience is irrelevant), they are probably counter to what Impressionism is about. 

Impressionism wants you to be aware at every moment that you are watching a movie, whereas these Russian films, if they want anything, it’s that you get lost in them. And this tradition of transcendent cinema in Russia is pretty well-suited for horror, if you think about it.

What I actually think these films recreate is old school Surrealism viewed through the lens of Russia’s existing legacy of Russian Symbolism. And as with any Symbolist movement, the truth is buried in metaphor and cannot be unearthed except through constant and close observation. It’s not cryptic, it’s just indirect. 

Russian Symbolism in particular really likes the color blue because of its connection to the heavens, so you see it everywhere. It’s as if the piece of art exists in another, transcendent plane of existence. It’s not sensual or emotional, it’s interested in your soul. And it’s deep as hell. 

When you combine that with Surrealism, an artistic style whose latency has to do with subconscious projections of our innermost desires and fears, it makes sense. I won’t go too much into all of that, but it’s definitely there, and it’s pretty bizarre.

At this point, I can think of at least one old college professor or two that might have already thrown a book at me by now were he reading this. But Surrealism is the closest analogue to what I know. I am a disciple of Lynch, after all.

But enough of me butchering art theory, onto the movies.

Viy (1967)

Subgenres: Fantasy, Folk Tale, Comedy, Religious

Availability: Youtube

Mosfilm was able to produce the first horror film in Russia by calling it a “folk tale,” which was permissible in the Soviet Union because folk tales were considered a part of Russian heritage (sorta), even if some censors disagreed.

This film was so much fun to watch, and I’m pretty sure it’s a comedy. It took me a while to figure the film out, and I think I can safely say that it is literally one big joke. The story is structured like a joke, with an actual punch-line at the end. Throughout the movie, one drunk seminarian is compelled to pray for a witch for three nights to save her soul. No one’s even really sure if he can do it, and a lot of the comedy comes from this.

The film has the comic feel of Evil Dead, the cartoonish farce of Monty Python, and what I believe to be a very cryptic Russian in-joke involving animals who are somehow onto us humans. But one thing is certain, the final ten minutes is worth the price of admission. (If you wanna cheat, you can go watch it on Youtube, but I won’t give you the link. No sir!)

But the old-school special effects were totally up my alley. I didn’t expect it, first of all, but it was also terrifying in that way only good horror movies are. Frankly, I’m amazed this film was even made. After all, it’s not just kinda sorta horror. It’s horror. 

So, um, we were trying to make a good entrance, but we kinda got a little stuck.

This is fantasy horror, and were it not for making the whole film feel like a joke based on an already-unbelievable folk story (from a Russian perspective, anyway), the Soviet film code might have prevented us from having this wonderful gem in the vaults. This film was also remade as Evil (2006), and recently as Viy (2014), which I review in Part 1.

Agony (1975)

Subgenres: Historical, Psychological

Availability: Youtube (Part 1 and Part 2)

It’s probably not surprising that one of the first horror films in Russia also happened to be a biopic about Rasputin. It took director Elem Klimov 9 years and several rewrites to finish the film, and another 10 years before the Soviet censors allowed the film to be shown in Russia for the first time in 1985. It was not the only film that put him in the cross-hairs of the censors. 

Though the film portrays him as a lunatic, which is in keeping with Communist ideology, the Communist authorities banned the film because it portrayed the Czar as merely weak and somewhat sympathetic (as opposed to downright evil). It also suggests that the Bolsheviks were not a big part of the Imperial family’s demise. This is actually true, they didn’t have that much of an impact, having in reality only become really active a year after the events of the film. But you know how it is with government censors and history.

In any case, Agony is a wonderful psychological horror film about one of the most terrifying personages of the twenty-first century. His influence over the Czar’s military strategy and over the Czarina’s home could be described as hypnotic or, as one could still interpret with ease after the credits roll, as being supernatural in origin. 

One scene in particular lets us in on the hypnosis, and a key ingredient is fear. In real life, everyone will stand and watch a lunatic hurt people, and they will do nothing if they are afraid of him. 

But his influence over these apathetic followers is very creepy, and you just want someone to stop him, or at least say something. This makes his notoriously drawn-out assassination all the more intriguing (even though his real life death was far more elaborate and painful than the one in the film). 

As a film, it could have benefited from better pacing. But the sets and music are wonderful, and the performance of Rasputin is truly terrifying. Western filmmakers might have taken his madness and cruelty further, but I enjoyed this version. It was just on this side of believable, and that makes it even scarier.

The Green Elephant (1999)

Subgenres: Z movie, Trash cinema, Extreme

Availability: Youtube

This underground Russian trash film is without a doubt the most disturbing film I’ve ever seen. It’s not for everybody, but then again I’m not sure if it’s for anybody. I'm reviewing it, though, in the off chance you're into this sort of thing.

It seems pretty clear that it’s about the tendency of war (or any situation that exposes people to extended periods of torture and cruelty) to turn people into monsters, and we see the monstrosity in all its detail. Anytime you’ve ever had a conversation about the evil things that men are capable of, imagination is all you need. 

But this film shows us how a person will regress into an infantile form of madness, and the performances depicting the most beastly, animalistic behaviors in men feel all too terrifyingly real.

Two Soviet Army soldiers are locked in a cell and begin to go mad in diverging ways: the one becoming a self-depricating and submissive infant, and the other a melting pot of pure rage. The film goes for the gross-out by showing us things like defacation, cannibalism and everything in between, all as if to say, “Cruelty begets insanity, which begets more cruelty.” The final twenty minutes takes this to its extreme conclusion.

And did I mention, this film was made by a woman?

Visions of Suffering

Subgenres: Experimental, Surreal, Supernatural, Psychological
Availability: Torrent only

This film is one of a few powerful horror movies from diamond-in-the-rough spookster Audrey Iskanov. Clear on the other side of the continent, there is a city on the Northeastern border of China nearly 4,000 miles from Moscow called Khabarovsk where he’s making some of the craziest horror movies you'll ever see in your life.

It is not surprising that a brilliant filmmaker would get a jumpstart on telling truly horrifying stories so far away from Moscow. Audrey Iskanov is Russia’s Cronenberg. His films are best described as ruthlessly inventive. They are difficult to watch, and he sometimes ventures so far out from convention that they become tedious in places, and most of this is due to undisciplined editing. 

But I would be lying if I didn’t think Iskanov wasn’t one of the most talented and original horror filmmakers living today, and he is only getting better with each film.

I had to do quite a bit of searching to find Visions of Suffering, but thank God I found a torrent of it. It’s one of the most original horror movies I’ve seen, and one that gives David Lynch a run for his money.

Hi.

The movie is the story of a guy who has nightmares while studying death (not so surprising), and some very bizarre happenings surrounding him and the disreputable dudes at a nightclub that his girlfriend hangs out with for some reason. The main guy has horrible dreams, but his reality is not much of a departure – his whole life is a nightmare.

That all doesn’t sound very original, but the execution is what make this film work. At first, I didn’t think I was going to like it at all. For ten minutes, all I imagined I would experience for the next two hours was some direct-to-video dreck that some pretentious film school drop out thought was impressive. How wrong I was.

Maybe that’s overstating it. Here: try this sample. If you like that, you’ll love this movie. 

Parts of this movie are truly terrifying, I’m not gonna lie. It’s like a really bad drug trip, with sequences of psychedelia in the vein of that famous sequence from 2001. 

But the film is not just original because of its camera techniques and use of multi-layered, asynchronous sounds (and a prog rock soundtrack a la Dario Argento films), but in the fluidity of the amorphous other. Whatever your favorite monster is, it’s here.

I’ve never seen a movie that utilized so many different kinds of monsters (and some that may not even exist, to be honest). There’s vampires (the old-school, Nosferatu kind, that is), zombies, aliens, incubi and succubi, parasites, machines, demons, bugs, scarecrows, and even just plain old rapey-lookin’ dudes in berets. The probably-alien, tick-looking things alone will give me nightmares, as will the flying, metal, weaponized gizmos that blow holes in your head Phantasm-style. 

The film brings together so many different elements into an experimental, Lynchian dreamscape, and to me most of it works. If you can get past some of the more low-budget moments and appreciate some of the things this film tries, I hope you’ll give it a whirl. I would watch this film again, though I probably won’t until I forget about the tick-looking things. Spoon doesn’t like ticks.

Philosophy of a Knife

Subgenres: Shockumentary, Mondo, Experimental, Extreme
Availability: Youtube (only Part 2, and it's not subtitled), or Torrent

Even though Iskanov’s next movie demonstrates more artistic vision and greater filmmaking mastery than the last, it is still even harder to watch than Visions of Suffering. Using an interview with a real-life WWII Vet, the film re-enacts science experiments that were performed on people at the infamous Unit 731.

The interview subject tells us story after story of what he knew about the infamous Japanese internment camp, where Japanese soldiers experimented on Russian soldiers. Though he didn’t witness any of the experiments first hand, he is our guide, and the only relief we get between scenes of torture.

This sort of thing doesn’t sound like fun to watch, and it’s not. But as a lover of cinema and all it’s capable of, I have to say I found some parts fascinating. The scenes tend to start out based in realism, but then they become something else. Other objects take on symbolic significance, and then it will completely let go and become surreal. In one scene, a particularly brutal experiment takes place in juxtaposition with a nurse cleaning the skin and flesh off of a human head. 

There... all better.

We see each and every gory step in the process, and its cross-cutting with the experiment made me immediately think of the French horror classic Eyes Without A Face. That film is also a surreal film about the loss of identity created by the trauma of war. 

There is a diary narration by a nurse at the facility, but the real story within the story is a soldier that begins to empathize for some of the prisoners. It becomes particularly heart-wrenching when the unit is forced to close and, not wanting to dehumanize her further, the soldier struggles with whether to let a prisoner go free. It’s one of the most powerful scenes in the movie. 

There are deep questions being raised in this film, if you can sit through it. I should also mention it is four hours long, too. And because I’m a glutton for punishment, I watched it all. I strongly feel that this film could have been much shorter, because the human element comes too little too late in the film. I think if you watch the first hour and the last hour, you probably won’t miss much. 

Faust (2008)

Subgenre: Fantasy, Surreal, Religious
Availability: Youtube, Netflix

Finally, this movie is probably the most accessible Russian art horror film. It is entirely in German, and it won the Golden Lion award, which is the highest award given at the Venice Film Festival (the oldest film festival in the world). This version of the German folk tale was made by Alexander Sokurov, best know for his impressive film Russian Ark. 

Russian Ark is a 90-minute movie filmed in one single take, and includes nearly 900 extras all wearing period garb. It’s the kind of thing that’s so impressive, it makes you re-evaluate your life decisions. I mention that film, because it sheds light on why his version of Faust is so interesting. 

Using time in such a unique way is not an accident for someone like Sokurov. He was Tarkovsky’s protege, and many regard Sokurov as being his spiritual heir. 

Tarkovsky, for those not familiar, is probably the most famous and accomplished Russian filmmaker, second perhaps only to Eisenstein. Ingmar Bergman believed Tarkovsky was the greatest filmmaker in the world in his day, and believed that he had figured out the language of film like no one else.

Film communicates with two things: time and movement. Those are two things that no other medium has. The closest would be music, and Werner Herzog has even said that film has more in common with music than any other medium, including photography.

Like Russian Ark, the story never stops. It has a stream-of-consciousness structure which doesn’t change its pace in any major way. It just continues, as the title character spirals outward into insanity. Sokurov doesn’t really seem to be interested in the metaphysical questions going on in the original myth, but looks at Faust more as a symbol for the great anti-hero. The devil doesn't really corrupt Faust so much as awaken a pre-existing ambition for evil.

If he set out to ask what led to the sort of madness that drives despots like Hitler to do what they do, he seems to be suggesting that the origin lies in our endless quest for rationality. Our questioning nature and curiosity gave way to the modern age, and what started out innocent enough ended in the loss of our soul. 

In fact, the first image of the film is of Faust cutting the man open to find his “soul.” Whether Sokurov is saying that the quest to find the soul is pointless because spirituality doesn’t exist, or if he is just saying that looking for it in the physical world leads one to maddening ends, I don’t now. 

But that's literally just one theme in this storyThere's so much to love in the film. For my money, the creepiest scene in the movie appears towards the end, and involves some walking dead people, a naked woman, some cats, and lots of uncomfortable silence. 

This is a puzzle film, and it’s a joy to figure out. The film goes by pretty quickly, and the character’s descent into lunacy is very well conceived and executed. I found the ending very satisfying, too, even if I don’t entirely understand everything that happened. The acting is wonderful, as are the music and set pieces. This is by far my favorite Russian horror film.