Leptirica

''Leptirica'' ( sr-Cyrl, Лептирица, lit=The She-Butterfly) is a 1973 Yugoslav made-for-TV folk horror film directed by the Serbian and Yugoslav director Đorđe Kadijević and based on the short story ''After Ninety Years'' (1880) written by Serbian writer Milovan Glišić. Although not being the first Yugoslav film with horror elements, ''Leptirica'' is often described as "the first real horror" made in Serbia and Yugoslavia, cited as the pioneering work of the genre in Serbian and Yugoslav cinema and proclaimed one of the top Serbian and Yugoslav horror films by critics and audience alike.

Plot

Grumpy landowner Živan visits a watermill on the edge of the forest, bringing wheat to be milled into flour. While he converses with the miller Vule, strange sounds are heard outside the mill, Vule believing they are coming from some bird. The two spot Živan's daughter Radojka on the hill with her sheep and Vule comments how beautiful she is, stating that she looks "like a she-butterfly". During the night, Vule once again hears strange sounds coming from the woods. While he sleeps, a millstone suddenly stops working and a strange human-like creature with black hands, hairy face and long teeth enters the mill. It grabs a handful of flour, and after inspecting it, attacks Vule and kills him by biting his neck. The millstone is seen starting to turn again. Vule's body is discovered the following morning by one of the peasants from the nearby village of Zarožje, who runs off in horror and informs the village mayor about his discovery.

The film turns to a romance between Radojka and a poor young man named Strahinja. The two meet seecretly, as Živan refuses to approve their relationship. In the meanwhile, the mayor of the neighboring Zarožje, the village priest and several villagers discuss the death of their miller. It is revealed that Vule is the fourth miller to be killed in the mill over the course of one year, and the villagers suspect that the men were killed by a known vampire called Sava Savanović. Strahinja approaches Živan, asking for Radojka's hand in marriage, but Živan banishes him from his yard. Disappointed, Strahinja bids farewell to Radojka and leaves his village. While passing through Zarožje, he meets the villagers discussing the cursed mill and accepts their offer to become the new miller. He spends the night in the mill, but stays in the mill's attic. Horrified by the vampire's visit, he falls from the attic into bags of flour, but survives the night.

In the morning, the villagers visit the mill and find Strahinja alive. He tells them that he saw the creature, and the villagers are now convinced it was Sava Savanović, who died decades ago. The villagers visit the oldest woman in a neighboring village to ask her if she knows anything about Sava Savanović. She reveals to them that Sava was buried in a crooked ravine under a crooked elm tree. After unsuccessfully attempting to find Sava's grave, villagers decide to use an old way of tracking down a vampire's grave, by guiding a black stallion through the area. They realize Živan is the only man in the region to own a black stallion, so Zarožje mayor goes off to borrow it. Mayor asks Živan why he refused to approve of Radojka's and Strahinja's marriage, but Živan stands firm in his decision. Radojka hears the birdlike sounds and follows them into the forest. She is shown lying on the ground sleeping, waking up with a smile on her lips.

Strahinja and Zarožje villagers take the stallion through a ravine, and the horse reveals the location of the grave. They start digging and find a coffin. While the priest reads a prayer, they nail a hawthorn stake through the coffin and attempt to pour holy water into the hole. However, a white butterfly escapes out of the hole. The villagers do not manage to catch it, but are nevertheless satisfied as they believe they killed the vampire. During the celebration in the village, they promise Strahinja to help him. In the evening, they take Radojka away from her home and bring her to Zarožje, escaping infuriated Živan. The whole village welcomes the couple and the villagers start to prepare the wedding. In accordance with an old custom, an old woman is tasked with guarding the house in which the bride-to-be is staying, in order to prevent the couple from consummating their relationship before marriage. However, Radojka accepts Strahinja's offer to visit her during the night. As the sun is setting down, the strange sounds are heard once again.

The old woman guarding the girl falls asleep, and Strahinja manages to sneak by her. As he undresses sleeping Radojka, he discovers a bloody hole under her breasts. Radojka opens her eyes and transforms into a hairy creature with sharp teeth. She jumps onto Strahinja's back and leads him to Sava's grave, where she forces him to remove the stake out of the coffin. While he does so, she collapses on the ground. The coffin opens, and a doppelganger of Radojka in her vampiric form climbs out of it, with the same stake-made wound between her breasts. While she climbs out of the hole, Strahinja manages to impale her with the stake. The villagers wake up after a night of celebrating. Realizing that Strahinja sneaked into Radojka's room, they joke and laugh, unaware that the couple is not in the house. Strahinja is shown lying motionlessly on the ground with a butterfly in his hair moving its wings.

Cast

* as Radojka
* Petar Božović as Strahinja
* Slobodan Perović as Živan
* as the village mayor
* as the priest
* as Purko, a peasant
* as Sredoje, a peasant
* as Ćebo, a peasant
* as a peasant
* as Vule the miller

Production

In a 2023 interview, Kadijević stated that in the early 1970s he was forced to turn away from cinema and venture into directing for television, as he had been a prominent figure of the Yugoslav Black Wave movement and the authorities' censorship in cinema was starting to strengthen:

The movie was filmed in the village of Zelinje, near the river Drina, close to the city of Zvornik. The 19th century mill that appears in the movie is still in its original location. The film was made in less than a month.

Kadijević found the strange sounds that can be heard throughout the film with the help of the workers of Television Belgrade musical department. The sounds used were the recordings of a species of birds which lives in the uninhabited areas of India.

Deviations from Milovan Glišić's short story

While in the film the villagers conclude the millers were killed by the vampire Sava Savanović, in the story it is Strahinja who discovers that the creature killing the millers is a vampire and manages to discover its name. He drags a timber into the mill and covers it with a blanket, making it seem like a lying person, and hides in the attic with two rifles. After the vampire enters the mill, he grabs a handful of flour, inspects it and sits by the fire. After some time he jumps on the timber believing it is the sleeping miller. Realizing that he was tricked, the vampire shouts: "Hey, Sava Savanović, after ninety years of being a vampire, never have you remained dinnerless the way you did tonight!" Strahinja fires his rifles, forcing Sava to scream and disappear. While in the film the villagers nail the stake through the coffin without opening it, in the story they open it and spot two rifle wounds on the vampire's chest that are almost healed.

While in the film the vampire(ss) is depicted as a hairy, dark-skinned creature, in the story Sava Savanović is described as a "rather tall man with a blood-red face" and "a linen cloak across his shoulders, falling down his back to his heels". When the villagers open the coffin, they find Sava's body preserved "as if laid there yesterday", with blood-red skin and "stuffed like a turkey".

In the original story, the narrator explains that the butterfly escaping from Sava's body "could not harm grown people" and that it "had been taking life of children from Zarožje and Ovčina long time before it disappeared".

The most prominent difference between the story and the film is that in the story Radojka does not turn into a vampire. After Sava Savanović is killed and Strahinja and Radojka are wed, the celebration is visited by Živan, who, realizing he has no other choice, makes peace with the couple and the Zarožje villagers, and the newlyweds return to their homevillage.

Reception, influence and legacy

Upon its release, the film received large attention by the Yugoslav public. The reactions of the film critics were mixed: part of them praised the film and compared it to the best works of horror in world cinema, while the other part criticized the director's and TV Belgrade's intention to scare the audience, large part of which was still traumatized by events of World War II.

''Leptirica'' was not the first Yugoslav film with horror elements. It was preceded by two films, both also directed by Kadijević for Television Belgrade, '' Darovi moje rođake Marije'' (''The Gifts of My Cousin Maria'', 1969) and '' Štićenik'' (''Ward'', 1973), the first inspired by a story by Serbian writer Momčilo Nastasijević and the latter based on a story by Serbian writer Filip David. However, as Serbian writer and film and literary critic Dejan Ognjanović stated: "Those two early films are known today only to the biggest film lovers. At the time, the audience didn't perceive them as horror films: on the contrary, the records reveal that the audience viewed them as boring and incomprehensible. ''The Gifts of My Cousin Maria'' is basically a dreary TV drama, which can be viewed as a horror film in retrospective, as a part of Kadijević's poetics and as a part of studies of horror motifs in our cinema. ''Ward'' too was an uncommunicative art film." Thus, ''Leptirica'' is often viewed as "the first real horror film" in the history of Serbian and Yugoslav cinema.

Ognjanović and screenwriter Aleksadar Radivojević both regretfully stated that ''Leptirica'', although a pioneering work of Serbian and Yugoslav horror film, had little influence on Serbian and Yugoslav cinema in that the film's popularity did not result in horror genre gaining more acceptance among Serbian and Yugoslav filmmakers. Radivojević stated: "''Leptirica'' did not influence our cinema much, because our cinema stands stubbornly firm in its artistic approach and defends itself from the horror genre, seeing it as something allegedly less serious, less potent and artistically less valuable." Both of them, however, agree that ''Leptirica'' made a lasting impression on the Yugoslav audience. The fact that it was the first Yugoslav film of its kind made ''Leptirica'' widely remembered as "the scariest film ever" by a number of people across former Yugoslavia. After the film was first aired, there were numerous rumors across Yugoslavia about people dying of heart attack while watching the film, but none of them was ever confirmed.

Robert Eggers credited ''Leptirica'' as one of the films that influenced his adaptation of ''Nosferatu''. He included the film in "Conjuring ''Nosferatu'': Robert Eggers Presents", a nine-film program taking place at New York City's Film at Lincoln Center from 5 to 9 February 2025. In a press statement, Eggers called ''Leptirica'' "visually naïve and yet terrifying".

Kadijević stated on several occasions that he had never considered ''Leptirica'' a horror film, and that he had never been interested in horror as a genre. He stated that he viewed ''Leptirica'' as a fantasy film dealing with the presence of metaphysical evil in the human conscience.

See also

* Cinema of Serbia
* Cinema of Yugoslavia
* List of films based on Slavic mythology
* Vampire film

References

External links

''Leptirica'' (full film)
on Radio Television of Serbia Culture and Arts Program official YouTube channel
*
* {{Rotten tomatoes, the_she_butterfly

1973 television films
1973 horror films
Serbian horror films
Yugoslav horror films
Serbian fantasy films
Yugoslav fantasy films
Serbian television films
Folk horror films
Films based on Slavic mythology
Vampire films
Films directed by Đorđe Kadijević
1970s Serbian-language films
Films set in Serbia
Films shot in Bosnia and Herzegovina