Russian horror films/ visuals

Horror in the Soviet union

'Fans of horror film curious about Russian-language contributions will find a USSR-sized gap in their research. Soviet horror films are rarely presented as an existing category, and write-ups on Russian horror film often skip straight to the post-Soviet period. Indeed, the genre had a hard time with the demands of Soviet cinema. However, as I hope to show here, rumors of its non-existence have been greatly exaggerated.

Horror film had little time to bloom in the early Soviet period. There was some carryover from pre-revolutionary auteurs such as Evgeny Bauer, creator of morbid gems like Dying Swan (1916), but prevailing artistic tendencies, and then official demands, soon clamped down on anything resembling horror, establishing a trend that would last several decades.

USSR cinema was called upon to express not only specific ideas, but also particular moods deemed ideologically appropriate for the Soviet viewer. The plucky optimism of comedies and the somber triumph of war movies had their utility for presenting a particular mindset to which the Soviet citizen could aspire; the indulgent despondency of horror did not.'

The first important exception to the absence of horror is the well-known (and often claimed as the only) Soviet horror film, Viy, released in 1967 and ostensibly granted legitimacy via its respectable roots in Nikolai Gogol’s eponymous 1835 novella, as well as director Alexander Ptushko’s impressive resume of fairy tale films and animated features.

Andrei Tarkovsky

I decided to create my own link to Russian horror from Russian post punk, as both scenes stem from this sense of rebelling against the Soviet Union and what was popular at that time; both share themes of an underground nature, alongside censorship against horror films and punk - both didn't align with the social norms in Soviet Russia. Additionally, I want to use imagery from this era/ genre of film within my album cover designs, as they have an eerie/ haunting feel that captures the mood of Russian post punk; as well as this, the translation of Molchat Doma to 'houses are silent' has this eerie atmosphere in itself, and links to desolate landscapes, etc. 

A key director that I looked at was Andrei Tarkovsky, whom shaped the visuals of Soviet cinema; his work dealt with a lot more heavier subject matter than the Soviet norm, and often featured the beginnings of horror within his films, such as references to vampires in Solaris. The visuals above really stood out to me as they involved the desolate and creepy landscapes of Soviet Russia, which inspires some of the work of post punk bands; discussing subjects such as isolation and the attitude of 'us against the world'. I want to use some of these visuals in my own designs to reference this idea of isolation and a melancholy tone within Russian post punk; for instance, Molchat Doma grew up in Minsk, an area heavily affected by the damage of the Chernobyl disaster.