Country: Italy
Year: 1960
Duration: 87'
Russia, 1830. Dr Kruvajan and Dr Gorobec are traveling to Moscow to attend a scientific conference. Along the way, they stop inside a deconsecrated chapel, where they find the sarcophagus of a witch who had been put to death a century earlier. After an accident, a drop of Kruvajan’s blood falls on the witch’s mummified corpse, bringing her back to life. The witch is eager for revenge and goes to a castle where Katia, a great-granddaughter of hers, lives with her father and her brother. [cg]
In collaboration with Cineteca Nazionale
Biography
film director
Mario Bava
Mario Bava (San Remo, 1914) died in Rome 1980. His father was a camera person at the time of silent movies and passed down to Mario his passion for the cinema as well as a love for painting and an interest in everything that is connected with images. Until 1960 he worked as director of photography. In the 1940s he directed a few short films. He debuted as a director with Black Sunday, today still considered his masterpiece. Subsequently, he started to make color films and began to make a long series of gothic horror films that have largely been overlooked in Italian criticism. His cinema has earned a healthy reputation abroad and has been subjected to an important re-evaluation over the last thirty years.
FILMOGRAFIA
La maschera del demonio (1960), I tre volti della paura (1963), La frusta e il corpo (1963), Sei donne per l'assassino (1964), Terrore nello spazio (1965), Diabolik (1968), Il rosso segno della follia (1969), Reazione a catena (1971), Gli orrori del castello di Norimberga (1972), La casa dell'esorcismo (1974), Schock (1977), La venere d'Ille (1978).
Declaration
film director
“I had read Viy by Gogol, which is a marvelous story and a film waiting to be made. At Silvi Marina, I read it to my children, who were still small at the time: poor things, they were so scared they slept between us in bed. Since Dracula had just come out, I thought I’d make a horror movie. I had Viy, it was the first movie I ever directed and it was a very big step, because if I failed it was over for me as a director and a cameraman. The result was Black Sunday. It was a completely different story, all that was left of Viy was the protagonist’s name. The movie made five billion lira in America, and from then on I was a director.”
Cast
& Credits
regia, fotografia/director, cinematography
Mario Bava
soggetto/story
dal racconto Il Vij di/from the short story Viy by Nikolaj Gogol
sceneggiatura/screenplay
Mario Bava, Marcello Coscia, Ennio De Concini, Mario Serandrei
scenografia/production design
Giorgio Giovannini
montaggio/film editing
Mario Serandrei
musica/musica
Roberto Nicolosi
interpreti e personaggi/cast and characters
Barbara Steele (Katia Vajda), John Richardson (Dr André Gorobec), Andrea Checchi (Dr Thomas Kruvajan), Ivo Garrani (principe Vajda), Arturo Dominici (Javutich), Tino Bianchi (Ivan)
produttore/producer
Massimo De Rita
produzione/production
Galatea,Jolly Film
Mario Bava
soggetto/story
dal racconto Il Vij di/from the short story Viy by Nikolaj Gogol
sceneggiatura/screenplay
Mario Bava, Marcello Coscia, Ennio De Concini, Mario Serandrei
scenografia/production design
Giorgio Giovannini
montaggio/film editing
Mario Serandrei
musica/musica
Roberto Nicolosi
interpreti e personaggi/cast and characters
Barbara Steele (Katia Vajda), John Richardson (Dr André Gorobec), Andrea Checchi (Dr Thomas Kruvajan), Ivo Garrani (principe Vajda), Arturo Dominici (Javutich), Tino Bianchi (Ivan)
produttore/producer
Massimo De Rita
produzione/production
Galatea,Jolly Film
