Leptirica

Wonderful, I've seen this movie ONCE when I was a kid and since then it's burned in my mind as of the most scary films I've ever seen. And I've seen A LOT of horror. Hm, I think I will try to find this film again, I'm pretty curious about how I would feel now while watching it. It certainly did contribute to my love for the horror-genre, and vampire figures in films, in general. This particular vampire , leptirica, is very old in Slavic folklore. The female vampire shapeshifter, upir, can even be considered as a metaphor for many things. Feminine mystery or sexuality is one of them.Interesting !

"Leptirica" is a Yugoslavian female vampire horror film from the early 70s shot in the Serbian countryside and based on a novel.The incredibly eerie beginning takes place in a mill.The old miller listens strange bird voices and while he's sleeping the millstone suddenly stops working and a strange creature with black hands,long nails,angry eyes and long teeth bites his neck and drinks his blood.Soon the area of a small Yugoslavian village and the dark woods are plagued with the attacks of a truly hideous vampire creature...This is my first Yugoslavian horror film and I'm highly impressed.It features some of the creepiest vampire attack scenes ever captured on screen.It's also based on Serbian folklore,unfortunately my DVD-R don't have English subtitles,so 90% of the plot went beyond me.Still if you want to see truly scary horror film try to find "Leptirica".9 out of 10.

Leptirica aka She Butterfly is an interesting little made for TV folk horror film, from the former Yugoslavia (now Serbia), based on the story After Ninety Years (1880) written by Milovan Glisic (who was konwn as the "Serbian Gogol", for it's six degrees of seperation to Mad Love).

The Balkans are home to polymath Johann Weikhard von Valvasor, who documented the world's first written account on vampires- about the legend of Jure Grando from Istria (now Slovenia)- in his encyclopedia: The Glory Of The Duchy Of Carniola.

His book was published 17 years before Stoker wrote Dracula; basing the story on folk tales he heard from the mountain dwelling villagers living along the Drina River Valley.

And so we have the tale of the Leptirica...the She-Butterly...a vampiric apparition of a beautiful young maiden, who shapeshifts into a werewolf, whenever she needs to feed.

She's already gone through 4 millers in the past year...and the villagers are starting to get suspicious.

The elders hold a town hall meeting and decide that they must take action.

Meanwhile, a poor, jobless young man has been wooing her in her maiden form. But her dad keeps intervening to stifle their love.

So he joins the older men, who suggest he take up the job of the miller, considering the position has recently been vacated by the death of the previous miller.

He agrees, hoping it will win things over with her dad, but it doesn't take long before he, himself, is attacked.

Luckily he survives...but it's the last straw.

The villagers fear a vampire is at work here. So they go to the town's old witch, hoping she'll have some advice.

She points the finger at an old grave. So the men set off to dig it up, so that they can stake the corpse and (hopefully) end the curse.

But they must use Parzivalian tactics find it.

However, when they do...a small butterfly is released...and they are unable to catch it.

It escapes.

But, now endowed with a newfound confidence (after having survived the attack)- alongside a little encouragement from his friends- the young man sets off to elope with his beloved (regardless of her father's wishes).

Everything seems to be going fine until he goes to consummate the marriage; at which point he discovers a gaping hole in her stomach...right about where they had staked that unburied coffin they were directed to uncover.

He tries to remove the stake, in hope it might save her soul, and return her to her former self.

But it's too late...she has now taken on her monstrous form permanently...ultimately leading to the film's conclusion.

I really liked pretty much everything about this film...but there is one thing I just didn't get.

What did her father do with the Butterfly when he caught it? (I guess I'll have to read the story...)

Otherwise it's a really enjoyable film.

I particularly enjoyed how they messed with the mad drunken priest.

If you are into folk horror, this will definitely be up your alley.

7 out of 10.

A fellow IMDb user alerted me that this 70's TV movie was in fact the very first horror movie from Yugoslavia. I can't honestly say I have actually seen any others myself but this fact did leave me somewhat intrigued for sure. In the event, Leptirica proved to be a very fascinating watch indeed and one which suggests that the Serbs are missing a trick in not having made more horror films steeped in their folklore. Like most vampire films from other parts of Europe, the events in this one take place in the 19th century. More specifically, the action occurs in a rural village which relies on a cursed mill in which a succession of millers have been murdered in the night by a vampire, a being who once was called Sava Savanovic, a man who died one hundred years ago. Unlike most other European vampire presentations, though, the creature here is a long way off the sophisticated aristocratic blood-sucker variety and is instead a filthy feral beast with excess body hair, sharp nails and teeth. This seems to tie in more accurately with the traditional Serbian model which is like a cross-over between a vampire and a werewolf. I very much appreciated the difference here and had never before seen a depiction of this creature done quite in this way. It felt a very authentic rendering and one which seemed to have emerged organically from Serbian culture.

Similar to the tradition of fairy-tales from eastern and central Europe, there is also a fearless ambiguity to how events are played out on screen. Many aspects are never explained fully and remain tantalisingly remote and enigmatic. The vampire itself emerges suddenly and aggressively, it performs strange rituals such as covering its hands in flour, while it appears to mysteriously exist partially as a butterfly. These types of unusual details possibly are not explained fully as the intended Yugoslavian television audience perhaps were expected to understand them from widely told folk tales from that country. I don't know for sure if that is true but whatever the case, the result is to the overall benefit of the film as far as I am concerned as unexplained mysteries often work best when it comes to strange supernatural stories. After all, the unknown is often the lair of the scariest things of all. When the horror moments occur in this movie, they are often very effective and chilling, with the vampire itself a memorably scary creature, who indulges in witchy behaviour such as riding its victim. It's nice to see that this old television movie from the former Yugoslavia has been developing an appreciative audience over the years. It's a very interesting alternative indeed to the more traditional Gothic fare from Western Europe.

I saw this as a child and I remember that I was so scared that I couldn´t sleep for days. So, like twenty years later, here I am, watching it for the second time. The feeling, of course is not the same, ´cause through the years I became very big fan and some kind of an expert for horror cinema. But still... This is probably the first real horror made in Yugoslavia and it´s still the best. Dark atmosphere accomplished here is very unique and it really gives you the creeps. When I think of the comparison, the only movie that comes to my mind is BLAIR WITCH PROJECT (same atmosphere, dark woods, witches, etc.) and trust me when I say that Myrick & Sanchez flick is not at all superior. The only thing that annoyed me are the "comic elements". I really felt that they are not necessary (it is similar problem with all Yugoslavian suspense movies, such as: Variola Vera, The Strangler vs Strangler, Deja-Vu and more recently T.T.Syndhrome). But the last half an hour of the movie is so brilliant that we can forgive the director Kadijevic for that mistake.