Honourable mentions: Viy (1996)

Regular readers will be aware of how much I like Viy, the story by Nikolai Gogol. Indeed it was the basis for two of my favourite vampire movies, Viy (1967) – which is fairly story accurate – and Black Sunday – which isn’t.

Hag ridden

Often – when the filmic versions of Viy are story accurate – they show the strigoï vii and strigoï mort, the living hag or witch psychic vampire and the dead (or undead) vampire. However the strigoï mort in the story does little vampiric, though the strigoï vii hag rides the ‘hero’ Khoma. I can’t recall the act of blood drinking, described in Gogol’s story, being enacted on the story accurate versions.

corpse rises

This is a 19 minute animation of the story, directed by A Grachova in 1996 and uses the bare bones of the story – as the film runs so short – but all the essential elements are there and it feels very much as though the animation was made with the ’67 film firmly in mind, as such you can look to that page for a general story run through. An unusual little offering and I thought it best to cover it as I continue to track down all things Viy related. At the time of the article there is no IMDB page.