#leptirica

[dailyworldcinema]

LEPTIRICA 1973 | dir. Đorđe Kadijević

[femmefatalegoth]

1970s European Gothic Battle Royale! Choose the film with the ultimate Vibes

Reblog for sample size!

[szelkovicart]

pov your bride reveals that she's the vampire who's been terrorizing the village, and now she's about to kill you

Radojka from the first Serbian horror movie Leptirica, 1973.

[ghostnight]

Leptirica (1973)

[ninaslina]

Leptirica (1973)

The She-Butterfly (1973)

[movie--posters]

[wunschliste]

[sweetsubstitute]

[indigosepiacarmine]

Watched Leptirica on shudder a week ago and I have to say: what a delightful little fairy tale of a movie.

[find-love-forget]

Svako od nas neku svoju priču ima što u tami tišti, a puteve bira samo kad je hladno, kad umori zima, slutimo je tužni na krilu leptira.

[sloshed-cinema]

Leptirica (1973)

Apparently TV movies have parallels the world over: they run on shoestring budgets and rely mostly on padding to fill their runtime.  While bookended with more overtly horror- or folklore-related material, the vast majority of the film is concerned with the fraught courtship of Radojka and Strahinja.  Our generic prettyboy has eyes for the lovely shepherdess, but Radojka’s guardian Živan has other thoughts on the matter.  Fortunately, a squad of homeboys can help Strahinja elope.  What a terrible choice that proves to be.  

Kadijević’s take on vampirism leans into the sexual undertones of that entity.  Unattractive in early appearances, hairy and fanged, Sava Savanović is feared and hated by the villagers as he murders miller after miller.  A gang unearths the vampire’s grave and drive a stake through the casket.  Yet after this creature is revealed to be Radojka herself, things take on a decidedly erotic bent.  She rides her would-be groom out to her own grave and he discovers the almost vaginal wound inflicted by the stake.  As he pulls out the stake from the casket, Radojka writhes on the ground, moaning as if she were about to orgasm.  But she’s still a monster.  In a final climax, Strahinja impales the creature on his shaft once again.  In light of all this, perhaps Živan was trying to protect the village in his reticence to marry off Radojka.  What if he was just trying to control the damage?

Light on score, there are points with lovely, densely textured vocal passages, herding songs or hymns.  This, paired with the wedding garb and the awesome hat game decidedly place this production in Serbia of days gone by.

Kadijević does inject a fair amount of humor into his horror flick.  The group of villagers bumbling about in search of Sava Savanović pull pratfalls and physical gags, piling up against picket fences and horsing around drunkenly.  In the cold open, the drunken flour miller bellows at an annoyance that it’ll be dead by morning when we all know that he’ll be the one biting the dust.  It’s slight, all told, but a trifle that goes down easily enough.

THE RULES

SIP

Weird animal/bird calls.

Someone puts on their hat dramatically.

The priest becomes involved in roughhousing.

BIG DRINK

The millstone stops rotating.

Someone name-drops Sava Savanović.

[lale-i-knjige]

Svijeća spali leptira i time je stvar okončana, jer svak dobije ono što je zaslužio. Štetu od leptirove ljubavi sa svijećom trpi samo onaj koji je prejako žudio i nije se znao obuzdati.

Dževad Karahasan, Što pepeo priča

[captaincolossal]

As if Testament (1983) didn't fuck me up enough last night, this morning I read the original short story (The Last Testament, by Carol Amen) which I've been kind of similarly fucked up by today, so, highly recommend both of those. The film is a really good adaptation of the short story, which is entirely told through Carol's journal entries which were used in the voice overs. The story is only 11 pages (the film is under 90 minutes), it's really good, it'll fuck you up (it's really good, it'll fuck you up).

Uh, anyway, I kind of need to watch something that's not, you know, deeply existential and tragic. So, Serbo-Croatian folk horror.

Leptirica (1973)

Ooh, She-Butterfly, fancy.

Gah! And right in the flour, ugh.

[ghostnight]

Leptirica (1973)

[theharpermovieblog]

#HARPERSMOVIECOLLECTION

2023

www.tumblr.com/theharpermovieblog

I watched Leptirica (1973)

A film which caught my interest because of how little I'd ever heard of it.

A vampiric creature begins to feed upon the workers of a small mill.

Considered to be the first Yugoslavian horror film, Đorđe Kadijević's Leptirica was made for television. At the time there was a lot of censorship in the Yugoslav film industry, while the television industry was considered more lenient. Horror as a genre was heavily looked down upon by the Yugoslav film industry as well, seeing the genre as one of lower intelligence.

Leptirica is a folk horror film. A genre which has once again gained a following in America, with films like The Witch showing audiences there is still something terrifying in old folklore. This film proves that, not only can folk tales still be scary, but older films can still manage to creep us out.

What I found most effective in this film was the score and sound design. It unnerved me. The first attack could have been silly without it. The fake vampire teeth and glued-fur of the monster wouldn't be considered terribly frightening by today's standards. But, the strange noises and moans were enough to turn something dated into something timelessly creepy.

Clearly the film doesn't have that much money behind it, being that it's made for Yugoslavian television, but a good cast and solid writing can make any restrictions seem minimal. Here, Kadijevic uses what he has to make an effective and eerie hour long film. No time feels wasted as we watch a folktale play out with truly creepy moments, the occasional funny moment, and just an overall fantastic atmosphere. Sure the ending is predictable and it's a little dated, but that's the worst thing I can say about it.

I'd recommend this to anyone interested in folk horror on film, or fans of older foreign folk horror films like the Russian film VIY or some of the classic Spanish horror.

[spilladabalia]

Leptirica clips - including finale, so spoilers alert!