A Holy Place (1990)

 

Director: Djordje Kadijevic

Screenplay: Djordje Kadijevic

Based on a story by Nikolai Gogol

Cast: Dragan Jovanovic as Pop Toma; Branka Pujic as Katarina; Aleksandar Bercek as Zupanski; Mira Banjac as Gospodarica Zupanski; Danilo Lazovic as Doros; Maja Sabljic as Lenka; Predrag Miletic as Nikita; Rados Bajic as Spira

A Night of a Thousand Horror (Movies) #221

 

Made in the former Yugoslavia, Djordje Kadijevic's trajectory as a filmmaker before this film is fascinating. Originally making films set in World War II, his tackling of the subject matter was incredibly controversial, forcing him into television production. Far from more restrictive, Kadijevic thrived, claiming under his belt a cult hit when he transitioned to horror and folklore narrative. The She-Butterfly (1973), adapting a story by Milovan Glišić, would develop a reputation over the decades as an one long horror tale for his homeland the same way horror tales, shot for the likes of the BBC, would gain a cult reputation for people who caught them off television in the United Kingdom in the seventies. With A Holy Place, he turns his attention to the legendary author Nikolai Gogol.

Gogol is someone I have complete admiration for as an author, initially for his dark humoured satire Dead Souls (1842), where a man learns he can step up the ranks of society by collecting the deceased of lord's records, which have not been officially decreed as dead, and pass them off as his own villagers. Gogol, alongside a sudden strike of creative block which tragically fell on him at the end of his career, leading a second part of Dead Souls dealing with the redemption of the novel's lead to be left an unfinished fragment, is ironically someone who is acclaimed as a realist author yet has two adaptations to cinema based on a horror tale. This is not surprising in some ways as, in his work to depict reality juggling between a satire in play form of bureaucracy to humorous documents of peasant life, adapting his land's folklore is as much an act of recreating his home land on paper. It is only with the irony that the tale in question has been adapted twice, as both one of the only Russian horror films in existence, Viy (1967), and this Serbian (former Yugoslavian) adaptation in 1990.

In both, a young priest in training has an unfortunate encounter with an elderly woman who lets him and his friends sleep at her home in the middle of nowhere, in Viy being ridden on like a horse, in A Holy Place a much more violent case equivalent to a mugging as in both the old woman is clearly a witch. Both lead to the priest struggling back only to find a young woman in their place once he is able to escape the witch's clutches. This is immediately where Kadijevic's adaptation with his own screenplay takes a new direction, as whilst most would still be shocked, the priest is already embraced with the woman on the ground, in lust with her white garter and stocking covered legs each side of him, only for her to die.

A Holy Place openly deviates from the source, in that the priest is abruptly selected to says prayers for the young daughter of a rich man who chose him, revealed to be the woman he encountered on the previous night, forced to read prayers on three nights whilst she is far removed from life and death as a supernatural threat to his life. The original Viy whilst macabre has a very quick pace, at only less than eighty minutes, and a greater sense of farce, both in its priest character both eventually being left constantly drunk and shoved around over the three nights, and that the film, both adaptation the source material fully and with the involvement of veteran stop motion animation and fantasy film maker Aleksandr Ptushko, has more practical effects and monsters appearing as the nights continue. A Holy Place is more sombre, far darker and especially more sexual.

Surprisingly more sexual as, in one part of the review that is time stamped to a specific time, the British would finally be able to see A Holy Place legally in a limited edition bonus alongside the Russian Viy, from a distributor called Eureka under their Masters of Cinema label, which is strange as Djordje Kadijevic's film has been decreed suitable for twelve year olds to see despite being an incredible explicit film in the little it has. Namely, that, once the priest appears to the home of the young woman, it is increasingly obvious there are many sinister things going on. Originally held as a figure of grace, she is significantly more cruel and sinister as the priest hears stories from others, even witnessing her work first hand when the dog trainer on the premises is now a dumb individual barely coherent as he wanders the premises. The mother gone, the relationship with her father is even darker, including once the priest learns of the erotic painting said father commissioned of his beloved daughter only he can see.

Naturalistic, as was the case of The She-Butterfly, A Holy Place is grounded in a reality but the supernatural invades. It is ironic that the film, for that one British release in 2021, was limited edition only, with the wears and tears of preservation, as whilst Viy is the adaptation that has become legendary, A Holy Place in its deviations and expansions on the Gogol tale is actually superior in other areas to those Viy succeed in. It is not horror in the sense it is meant to scare, but its macabre narrative does entice. Moments which never appear again, like the fact the father is haunted by his late wife, whose painting will vanish from the frame, have an impact as a result.

Those which linger as even more striking. The young woman Katarina as a figure becomes significantly darker as you learn more of her. I did not expect this review to lead to the following, but she literally castrates men, by stomping on their crotches repeated, which can almost be feminist were it not for the fact, trying to seduce one of the older maids, she is a sadist in general to anyone. The ending of A Holy Place is not dissimilar to Viy's, baring that it excludes the fully monstrous in favour of a matter-of-fact bleak ending, or that this does not end with two random priests abruptly undercutting the narrative with black humour. A Holy Place, if you can see it, is definitely of reward.