Lugo1989
I came across this film completely by chance. I have never heard of it before even though I was born in Slovenia , which used to be a part of Yugoslavia. The She Butterfly has a very simple premise. It is shot in a beautiful countryside whose inhabitants are puzzled and shocked by the murders of five millworkers. It is clear that it is a doing of a malevolent presence. 1h3min running time is perfect. The film never drags or loses momentum. It also contains some quirky humour which you will especially enjoy if you are from the Balkan region. But the highlight of the film, in my opinion, is the soundtrack. It amplifies the general atmosphere and gives the whole film a haunting and eerie feel. Definitely recomended if you are a fan of old school horror.
Red-Barracuda
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.
mevmijaumau
Leptirica (also known under the correct but an ugly English translation The She-Butterfly) is a 1973 TV film which is famous for being one of the first Yugoslavian horror films. Over the years it has achieved a completely undeserving cult status, mostly because the people who were scared sh*tless by it as kids now see it through nostalgia goggles. Nearly every review of it seen here on IMDb is from someone who remembers being terrified by Leptirica as a child but hasn't re-watched it. Those who do re-watch it (un)fortunately find their childhood experiences shattered as this movie isn't scary at all.Leptirica is based on Milovan Glišić's story After Ninety Years and takes most of its inspiration from traditional Serbian folklore (Sava Savanović, one of the most well-known folklore vampires, is mentioned several times). Considering that the vampire myths originated from the Balkans, it's unusual that this is probably the only Slavic vampire movie, and as such it had great potential and could've been a masterpiece if it were done right. However, Leptirica is anything but.Every character is boring and undefined, and the stiff, awkward performances are further made worse by the horribly uninspired lines of dialogue, non-existent dramaturgy, generic camera-work and bad editing. Most of the 60-minute running time is filled with scenes of little to no importance, or with failed attempts at humor in a movie where such things shouldn't really belong. Each character is a copy of another and contributes to nothing. All of this makes the relatively short runtime feel like eternity. The plot itself doesn't even make sense, or if it does, then it isn't presented very well. The butterfly myth is completely left in the open and we're never even sure how it even correlates with the vampires. Also, the first vampire that appears is a remarkably incompetent villain because the hero of the story is able to escape him simply by getting covered in flour, so that the vampire can't notice him. And it's never really explained how come the vampire can only attack people in the haunted mill and not elsewhere, aside from this being a convenient plot device.The movie is often praised for its atmosphere, but sadly the only scene that was truly atmospheric is the one where the girl lies around in the field covered in sunlight, accompanied by natural sounds. That was the best scene in the movie and the effect it achieves isn't even creepy or something. It's just a nice scene, with the rest of the film taking a very unimaginative approach at storytelling and horror atmosphere. Mostly it's just variations of the point-and-shoot technique of filming the characters having boring conversations.There are only three vampire scenes in the film, but because the general pacing of the film constantly stagnates in dullness, these scenes stick out like a sore thumb. The first scene is just cheesy, the second one is the exact same thing as the first one, except with the amazing flour escape which I mentioned above, so I guess the third horror scene, that famous climactic moment, has to be at least a little bit scary to justify the movie's cult status, right? I mean, it's the most famous scene in the film.Unfortunately, the final vampire scene is even more ridiculous than the two scenes that preceded it. The vampire-girl-piggy-back-ride part is downright funny, the way she was killed is anti-climactic to say the least, and the make-up would be creepier if the girl wasn't covered in some sorts of black muddy covering which I guess is there to resemble monstrous body hair. Even the picture and sound quality haven't held up. The image quality is in bad need of restoration, and the audio is so bad that I had to watch the film with subtitles even though I know the language. The only thing this film has going for it is the beautiful actress Mirjana Nikolić and her wonderful orange hair, which looks great even in the crappy potato- visuals that the film offers.Defenders of this film will often say that you should overlook some of its flaws because of its age. Yes, it's true that the film is horrible by today's standards, but this is absolutely atrocious even in the 1970s TV movie standards. And it's a shame too, Leptirica could've been a fantastic movie.
