You will be surprised – the first horror film appeared almost simultaneously with Russian cinema. In 1908, the first domestic film (“Ponizovaya Volnitsa” / “Stenka Razin” /) was released, and a year later director and screenwriter Vasily Goncharov made the first Russian horror film.
In fact, this is the first adaptation of Nikolai Gogol’s Via. Unfortunately, this film did not survive, as did another work by Goncharov called “At Midnight in the Cemetery”. The film was released in the winter of 1910. Two more film adaptations of “Viya” were released in 1912 and 1916, with the premiere of the occult drama “Vampire Woman” between them.
With the creation of the USSR, horror as a genre literally disappeared. Horror and science fiction films were practically not shot in those years, because it was against the ideology of the Soviet regime. At that time, cinema was required not to tear Soviet citizens from reality, to inspire them to achieve, to entertain.
Nevertheless, the horrors, as much as they could, seeped into the domestic cinematography of the times of the USSR. So, in 1940, the film “Vasilisa the Beautiful” was released by director Alexander Rowe, who added two monsters to the picture at once – Zmey Gorynych, known to many, and a terrifying giant talking spider. His voice really inspired fear, and the cinema as a whole exuded an atmosphere of anxiety, so many consider this particular picture to be the first horror film in the USSR.
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Source: The Voice Mag
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