What was the first horror film in the USSR – you definitely did not watch it!

You will be surprised – the first horror film appeared almost simultaneously with Russian cinema. In 1908, the first domestic film was released (“Ponizovaya Volnitsa” / “Stenka Razin” /), and a year later the director and screenwriter Vasily Goncharov shot the first Russian horror film.

In fact, it is the first adaptation of its kind of Nikolai Gogol’s Viy. Unfortunately, this film has not been preserved, as well as Goncharov’s next work, entitled “At midnight in the cemetery”. The film was released in the winter of 1910. In 1912 and 1916, two more film adaptations of “Viya” were released, between them the premiere of the occult drama “Vampire Woman” took place.

With the formation of the USSR, horror as a genre literally disappeared. Horror and science fiction films were practically not made in those years, as they contradicted the ideology of the Soviet regime. At that time, the cinema was required not to pull Soviet citizens from reality, to inspire them to succeed, to entertain.

Nevertheless, the horrors, as best they could, seeped into the domestic cinema of the times of the USSR. So, in 1940, the film “Vasilisa the Beautiful” directed by Alexander Row was released, which added two monsters at once – the Zmey Gorynych familiar to many and the frightening giant talking spider. His voice really inspired fear, and the cinema as a whole exuded an atmosphere of anxiety, so many people consider this particular picture to be the first horror film in the USSR.

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