Viy

A seminary student is made to spend three nights praying alone in a wooden church over the body of a young woman he beat to death, who was a witch.

Each night is worse. She rises from the coffin, which flies. He draws a chalk circle. On the third night she calls up every demon she knows, and finally Viy himself, a creature with eyelids so heavy they must be lifted by others.

It is adapted from Gogol and was made at Mosfilm with the state's blessing on the grounds that it was a literary classic.

The effects are entirely practical, done with wires, rotating sets and puppets, and the flying coffin is achieved by spinning the whole church.

At 77 minutes it wastes nothing and the final assault is one of the great sequences of supernatural excess.