Savage Hunt of King Stakh

I saw this picture in, of all places, New Delhi. So, viewing a dark Russian tale in such a colourful, lively environment added to the already heightened feeling of high quality weirdness that 'Stakha' (English title: 'The Savage Hunt of King Stakh') conveys. The wonderful and adventurous strangeness of later Soviet era films, so little seen in the West, is here evident, but with an added ingredient of genuine gothicness, somewhat akin to Herzog's 'Nosferatu', but with a thrust further into undiscovered corners and shadows. Rather than discomfort though, this film brings with it a certain coziness, more Poe-like than horrific, much more Byronic than Stephen King-ish. There is a sort of perversity in the art direction, which perfectly accompanies the singular mood of this obscure picture. It was 20 years ago that I saw it, and it is the mood of the piece, not so much the imagery or the soundtrack, which remains in the memory. Naturally, I wish it were accessible. At least one sale of a DVD version would be assured.

Arriving at a secluded castle, a traveler looking into the legends of the area stumbles across a family living in a remote castle concerned that a long-standing curse involving a former ruler of the community years ago is returning to fulfill everything and must help them combat the revived figure.

This was a surprisingly enjoyable if somewhat flawed feature. One of the better elements at play here is the incredibly complex and involved storyline offering up an incredibly complex storyline. The main storyline here involving the traveler's search for the legends in the area which brings him to the particular castle in the middle of the woods and coming across the particular story about the former king who was betrayed and killed by his colleagues comes off quite nicely. The idea of this specific curse ingraining itself over the family in how they operate not just with how he's treated after arriving and observing the strange cleansing rituals and habits that come about here offers a strong starting point for what's going on. That works incredibly well with the solid Gothic atmosphere present here. Not only does the storyline come into play quite well here offering up mystic legends from the past, and long-practiced customs where the execution remains but the reasoning has been lost to time, and the stranger who gets involved with a family under a curse that is all standard elements of the style which all help to tie everything into the traditional format of the genre. The concurrent attacks and hauntings that occur once the particular legend has come to life, ranging from the encounters within the castle walls of the ghostly inhabitants and the chase out in the swamps, provide the kind of solid antics that make for a generally fun time here. There are some issues here that do bring it down. One of the main drawbacks to this one is the absurdly long and unnecessary running time that makes for a rather hard time getting into this one. With a two-hour-plus running time filled with drama involving the early stages of his involvement with the family offering up their localized customs and getting the different class-system interactions with the rest of the family so it's not all that interesting in the first stages. While it's spilling slight bits and pieces about the nature of the curse, there's a stiffness to what's going on that allows for a difficult sell in the first half where it takes a while to get going. The other factor here is a slightly disorienting issue in the final half where quite a bit of the encounters take more of a whimsical, fantasy-based atmosphere rather than being dark and disturbing genre fare that the rest of the film comes off as, which are the main versions that hold it back.

Rated Unrated/R: Violence, Language, and Nudity.