Savage Hunt of King Stakh, The (Blu-ray Review)
- Review Date: Nov 29, 2024
- Format: Blu-ray Disc
-
Director
Valeri RubinchikRelease Date(s)
1980 (July 16, 2024)Studio(s)
Belarusfilm/Satra/Sovexportfilm (Deaf Crocodile Films)- Film/Program Grade: B
- Video Grade: B
- Audio Grade: B+
- Extras Grade: B+
Review
The Savage Hunt of King Stakh (aka Dikaya okhota korolya Stakha) is a striking example of genre filmmaking that defies genre, the product of a country that long suffered from having its own cultural identity subsumed under the identity of others: Belarus. Belarus had been subjected to the process of Russification under the tsars and then Sovietization under leaders like Vladimir Lenin and Joseph Stalin, resulting in the kind of cultural melancholy that was the subject of the 1964 novella King Stakh’s Wild Hunt by Uladzimir Karatkievich (aka Vladimir Korotkevich). That’s not necessarily the kind of subject matter that would have proved amenable to Soviet censorship, but Karatkievich leaned heavily into traditional Wild Hunt folklore to serve as a framing device, couching his cultural critique under the guise of folk horror. Yet as with everything else in King Stakh’s Wild Hunt, nothing is quite as it may seem on the surface.
All of that made it a challenging story to adapt into a feature film, but Belarusian filmmaker Valeri Rubinchik finally brought it to life in 1980 as The Savage Hunt of King Stakh. Rubinchik retained the overall structure of the novella and many of its characters, but shifted the tone significantly. The central figure is still Andrei Beloretski (Boris Plotnikov), an ethnographer who visits a rural Belarusian estate while travelling the country in order to catalogue local folklore. The mistress of the estate, Nadeja Yanovski (Elena Dimitrova), is the last of her generation, and she believes that she’s soon to be the victim of the long-deceased King Stakh and his ghostly followers when they return to wreak vengeance upon her family. Beloretski ends up having his own encounter with Stakh’s phantasmal train, and he also uncovers living folklore like the Little Man and the Blue Lady. Yet the real driving force behind Nedeja’s torments might be something much closer to home. The Savage Hunt of King Stakh also stars Albert Filozov, Roman Filippov, Boris Khmelnitskiy, Valentina Shendrikova, and Vladimir Fyodorov.
The Wild Hunt is a familiar conceit that has permeated folklore across a variety of different nationalities and cultures. It’s also fed its way downstream into modern popular culture as well, from fiction to visual media to video games. It’s even managed to cover all three forms in one intellectual property thanks to Polish author Andrzej Sapkowski and his series of novels about Geralt of Rivia, The Witcher, which has been adapted into a streaming series by Netflix and an even more successful series of roleplaying games by CD Project Red. Yet while the concept of the Wild Hunt may be a familiar one, it’s nebulous enough that it can serve nearly any allegorical purpose. For Karatkievich and Rubinchik, it was a mean to an end, not an end unto itself.
As a result, The Savage Hunt of King Stakh is folk horror that isn’t really horror, or any other conventional genre for that matter. Andrei Beloretski’s nominal goal is the preservation of local mythology, but he ends up demythologizing that folklore instead, and the film demythologizes folk horror along with it. The Savage Hunt of King Stakh is something of a shaggy dog story, with Rubinchik carefully establishing the tropes of mystical horror only to pull the rug out from under all of them by the end of the film—the shaggy dog in this case is actually Scooby-doo. The tsars, Lenin, and Stalin understood all too well that control of culture was a means to control the people themselves, and in The Savage Hunt of King Stakh, the ruling class has been exploiting cultural fears in order to keep the commoners under control. It’s even become a potential means for enrichment that might allow one member of the aristocracy to take advantage of another.
Karatkievich ended his novella on a hopeful note, with Andrei and Nadeja waking up from their living nightmare and forging a new future together. Rubinchik tempered that somewhat by ending things on a far more ambiguous note instead. He also altered the timeframe of the story in order to place it at the dawn of the 20th century. That helped to signify the way that encroaching modernity would soon subsume the folklore of the past, but it also placed the story closer to the point where Belarusian culture would find itself under the thumb of Soviet control. That’s arguably the real horror in The Savage Hunt of King Stakh.
Cinematographer Tatyana Loginova shot The Savage Hunt of King Stakh on 35mm film using spherical lenses. At the time, not many theatres in the Soviet Union were equipped to handle widescreen, so the majority of them still exhibited everything open-matte at 1.37:1. It does look like Loginova might have protected for theatres that matted to 1.66:1 or even 1.85:1, since there’s plenty of headroom at the top and bottom of the frame, but 1.37:1 is still ideal ratio. According to Deaf Crocodile, this version is based on a scan of the “best surviving film and audio elements,” with digital restoration work handled by Craig Rogers. The source looks like a later-generation dupe element, probably a print. Aside from a stray hair or two at the bottom edge of the frame, the image is as clean as it can be, with only some light density fluctuations to mar it. (There’s a disclaimer at the beginning that due to fading in the source, not all of the fluctuations could be corrected.) Given the element involved, shadow detail isn’t the best resolved, but that’s been ameliorated slightly by sacrificing the deepest black levels in order to maximize the detail that’s available. Loginova and Rubinchik’s muted color scheme has been reproduced accurately, accentuating the haunting nature of the story perfectly.
Audio is offered in Russian 1.0 mono LPCM, with removable English subtitles. It’s a surprisingly solid track, with enough air on the top end that the dialogue always sounds crisp and clear but never harsh or distorted. Noise and any other age-related artifacts have all been kept to a minimum. Evgeniy Glebov’s eerie score is reproduced well.
The Deaf Crocodile Deluxe Limited Edition Blu-ray release of The Savage Hunt of King Stakh includes a 60-page booklet featuring essays by Walter Chaw and Peter Rollberg. Everything comes housed in a rigid slipcase, with artwork and graphic design by David Mack and Beth Morris. There’s also a card tucked inside with a QR code that can be scanned in order to access transcribed versions of the bonus content. (Note that Deaf Crocodile is also offering a Standard Edition that omits the booklet and the slipcase, although it still includes the QR code.) The following extras are included, all of them in HD:
- Audio Commentary by Mike White
- Audio Commentary by Stephen R. Bissette
- Introduction by Kier-La Janisse (13:01)
- The Wild, Wild Hunt of King Stakh (16:10)
- 2024 Restoration Trailer (1:43)
The first commentary features Mike White of the Projection Booth podcast. He describes some of the similarities and the differences between the book and the film, as well as the differences between the various shortened versions of the film. He explores the wild hunt in folklore, as well as how The Savage Hunt of King Stakh fits into Gothic and folk horror in general. In addition, he looks at the film’s themes, the Belarusian setting, and the overall political context. While he spends a bit too much time pointing out things that he feels are flaws in the film (he also reads from some of the negative reviews that it received), there’s still plenty of interesting information to be had here.
The second commentary features film historian, author, cartoonist, and artist Stephen R. Bissette. He delves a bit deeper into the characters and the various members of the cast and crew, offering tons of biographical detail about each of them. Like White, he examines the differences between the film and the book, reading passages from the latter when appropriate, and also compares the stories to the actual folklore that inspired them. He talks about the ways in which the Wild Hunt has permeated pop culture like the cinema, television, and music. (Interestingly, he sees the finale of Quatermass and the Pit as being loosely derived from the concept.) He also dives into other minutiae about the film like the history of its production company Belarusfilm, as well as practical information about the production itself. As always, Bissette names his sources and suggests further reading, so his commentary is an invaluable resource.
Author, critic, podcaster, and programmer Kier-La Janisse offers an Introduction for The Savage Hunt of King Stakh that provides an overview of the story, the book, and the film. She also details the political implications of the various allegorical interpretations of the film. Finally, The Wild, Wild Hunt of King Stakh is a visual essay by film historian Evan Chester that focuses on the folk horror elements in the film. He does note some of the differences between the book and the film, as well as the way that it subverts the typical folk horror clash between the rational outsider and the superstitious locals—in this case, reason ultimately triumphs over superstition. He admits that the idiosyncratic nature of The Savage Hunt of King Stakh won’t be for everyone, but it still deserves a wider audience.
Deaf Crocodile has been steadily building up a varied catalogue of neglected films that includes bits of lost Americana like Solomon King and classic Danish animation like Benny’s Bathtub, but it’s their efforts in bringing lesser-known Eastern Bloc filmmaking to western audiences that’s still their bread-and-butter. From classic fantasy like the works of Alexandr Ptushko to animation like Cat City and The Pied Piper, they’ve been offering a wide variety of titles that’s a treasure trove for anyone who wants to learn more about Eastern filmmaking. The Savage Hunt of King Stakh is no exception, and it’s well worth a look.
- Stephen Bjork
(You can follow Stephen on social media at these links: Twitter, Facebook, and Letterboxd).