VIY

Like a drunk monk on spring break, Vault of Horror stumbles onto the fearless, effects-laden folk witchery of VIY (1967)! This Soviet Gothic horror masterpiece follows a partying seminary student who spends a night in the barn of a haggard crone. When she tries to ride him like a horse, he kills her, only to discover he actually killed the landowner's beautiful daughter—and now he must sit with her body in a church for three nights. Each night the dead witch rises, taunts, and torments him with increasingly carnivalesque and demonic horrors. Based on a story by Nikolai Gogol and incorporating folk horror, gothic, and pagan imagery, and a whole host of creative camera tricks and effects, VIY is a colorful, eerie, dreamlike funhouse of a horror film—and a feast for the eyes.