#the family of the vourdalak

[fourorfivemovements]

Films Watched in 2024: 89. Le Vourdalak/The Vourdalak (2023) - Dir. Adrien Beau

[see-arcane]

(Orlock arguing with any vampire)

Other vampire: (just pulls the blinds up)

Orlok: A common mistake. I must be tricked into overfeeding on a fair martyr maiden so that I miss sunrise's approach and the first rooster cry of morning. Sunlight in and of itself does me no harm. :)

Every vampire sizzling and exploding and turning to dust in a single ray of sunshine since 1922: fucking WHAT

Orlok: yeah :)

Dracula, Clarimonde, Carmilla, Ruthven, the Vourdalaks and every other Victorian era literary bloodsucker tanning on the beach: yeah :) :) :) :) :)

[contentabnormal]

Boris Karloff as Gorca in the third & final segment of Black Sabbath

Watercolors on Paper, 8.5" x 11", 2024

By Josh Ryals

[wordwizards]

jesus christ man

Transcript: "Sdenka so remarkably reminded me of the Duchess de Gramont, with that faint line traced on her forehead— the same line that, in France, had made me suicidal with longing..."

[stheresya]

Aleksey Tolstoy's short story The Family of the Vourdalak offers the most sinister and my absolute favorite take on the vampire myth so far. In this story the vourdalak works as the slavic version of the vampire, but what differentiates it from its most known bloodsucking peers is that when a vourdalak comes back to life they seek primarily the blood of the people they used to love in their previous life. And I find that so fascinating because in early vampire stories like Dracula we see that a vampire retains their human memories but lose all human attachment to them and care only about feeding on anything alive, while the vourdalak is a vampire whose feelings of love gets twisted into one of hunger. You loved those people in life, you shall consume them in death because you loved them life.

[vincentgravesly]

The Family of the Vourdalak

a classic vampire novella

4 minutes TikTok If you think of vampire stories, tales of a mysterious stranger with a dark, supernaturally long come to mind. In classics especially, it’s common that the vampire is someone new in town that the human heroes are meeting for the first time under some ill-fated circumstances, be it taking care of a sick girl while her mother has to leave or selling a guy an old house right next…

[lauralot89]

I read "The Family of the Vourdalak" by Alexei Tolstoy.

I thought this one was a novella but it turned out to be only 27 pages.

The story is narrated by the Marquis d'Urfé. In 1759, he traveled to Maldovia from Versaille on a diplomatic mission. During his travels, he stayed with a family in a Serbian village. The family were all extremely stressed, as the patriarch had gone into the mountains to try and kill a bandit, but warned them that if he did not return within ten days, he was dead. He further warned that if he returned after ten days, he would be a vampire and had to be killed with an aspen stake. The day d'Urfé arrived was the tenth day, and if the grandfather did not appear by 8 PM, he would be dead.

Immediately after the clock finishes its eight chime, the grandfather, Gorcha, appears from the wood. No one is sure if this counts as within or after ten days. The family dog immediately begins growling and barking at Gorcha, who successfully orders it to be shot.

Eventually, it's determined that Gorcha is a vampire, but only after he drains his oldest grandson of blood, killing him, and tries to go after his other grandson as well. Gorcha is staked, and d'Urfé continues on to Maldovia, where he spends six months.

On his way back to Versailles, d'Urfé goes back through the same village. Most of the inhabitants are now dead: the family only had the one Aspen stake (I am not making that up, it's a plot point), and then the grandson returned from the dead as a vampire and so on, until the whole family were vampires and they spread out to the rest of the town. Things get worse for d'Urfé from there.

In this story, the vampires are specifically referred to as vourdalaks. d'Urfé distinguishes between vourdalaks and other vampires by saying that vourdalaks feed off of their families. This story is from 1839 and is the first time I've seen a distinction that only some types of vampires eat their family members.

In this story, the vampires are still "living" even after being staked, and can still move around with the stake inside them if they aren't buried or if they're dug up. They have the power to paralyze people by staring at them. They can also hide their creepy, corpse appearance behind a glamor, though sufficient pain and/or contact with a religious icon breaks through the spell.

Also, this story kind of got slapstick-y at times? I'm talking grabbing hold of a stake that's poking through a vampire and using it as the lever to fling a vampire through the air. Incredible stuff.

And this one featured male vampires feeding on male victims, although it was only implied and never directly shown.

In my understanding, Tolstoy has another story abou Marquis d'Urfé, "The Reunion After 300 Years," but that one has no vampires and/or vourdalaks.

[schlock-luster-video]

🎨📼🎨 NEW ART! 📼🎨📼

Just wrapped up this new sketch inspired by The Vourdalek (2023)!

[drawinggoose]

Does anyone here knows the novella Family of the Vourdalak by Aleksey Tolstoy? Because it seems I just found another adaptation besides Mario Bava’s Black Sabbath.

[libraryleopard]

Listen, this is very important. If you liked Nosferatu (2024) dir. Robert Eggers you must go to your nearest search engine and look up The Vourdalak dir. Adrien Beau. It is of the UTMOST important that you watch this film if you liked Nosferatu. It’s about a French courtier who is robbed while traveling through Eastern Europe and must seek refuge with a local peasant family whose patriarch is transformed into a vampire who can only feed on his loved ones. It has everything you need in gothic cinema—a French dandy experiencing the Horrors, people running around in billowing nightgowns at night, a vampire played by a puppet that is genuinely sinister and represents the repressive forces of the patriarchy, Ariane Labed covered in blood, the most horrifying sucking noises known to mankind. We must not forget The Vourdalak!

[collinsportmaine]

Vampire Identification Guide

The Vourdalak is French film is based on a Russia novella that predates Bram Stoker’s Dracula by 58 years. It tells the tell of a family waiting for Gorcha (their patriarch) to return from fighting the Turks. Before leaving he warned them, if he returned after 6 day - do not let him enter the house. But he returns on the 7th day!

Vourdalaks are from Balkan and Slavic folklore - vampires that return from the grave to feed on their family, decimating their bloodline and feasting on the blood of all those they hold dear.

A unique element of this French film is the Gorcha is depicted as a life size puppet, voiced by the director Adrien Beau.

[see-arcane]

I want to see a story where Dracula realizes he might need some lieutenants/generals in his take over Britain/the world plan and so he invites every notable 19th century vampire to his castle in an attempt to convince them of the idea, even the ones that should be dead at this point. Also maybe even begrudgingly his schoolyard rivial turned asshole neighbor that stole his style, Orlok.

Meanwhile poor Jonathan is stuck in the corner while this all ensues.

Jonathan trapped in Vampire Hell with Dracula and the Weird Sisters: Dangerous. Peak supernatural gothic dread. Iconic and ominous.

Jonathan roped into playing secretary for the Vampire Takeover Planning Committee because saying no is not an option: Objectively hilarious

Picturing him there taking his little notes while Dracula pitches world conquest plans in just barely veiled language--("Yes, he knows. He knows I know this. We're just playing vampire reveal chicken at this point and I don't want to lose, just roll with it.")--about property, assets, 'livestock,' et cetera, all the while swallowing back a screaming fit and trying not to make eye contact with Dracula's weird colleague who keeps trying to lamprey-suction himself onto the shaving cut.

Meanwhile, Ruthven, Clarimonde, Carmilla, and assorted vourdalaks are just constantly interrupting Dracula's pitch to ask if they can't have. You know. Some refreshments. (Long look at Jonathan)

Dracula: "If you get a taste of him before I do, I will give all of you the Dolingen treatment. My castle is half a ruin anyway, I will bring thunderbolts through the roof for this, do not test me. That includes you, Orlok."

(Orlok has not been listening to a single word. Jonathan is being dragged off by rats.)

((Varney saw the name 'Dracula' on the invite and immediately burned it on instinct.))

[ursacolossus]

Thoughts about the queer themes of Le Vourdalak. Spoilers under the cut:

I think it’s really telling and interesting that Piotr is the only family member killed in a non-intimate manner. Gorcha doesn’t even get -close- to Piotr, Piotr was also the only family member willing to fight back, who saw Gorcha for what he was. Queerness recognized in others as a reflection of the self.

Gorcha shooting Piotr in the head, (with a traditionally phallic, masculine weapon) from a distance, wasting all of that blood, that life force, avoiding the physical intimacy of Piotr’s destruction, feels like internalized disgust from Gorcha, especially in light of the last half of the film.

Piotr shooting the dog in men’s clothing, trying their best to be a good model of what a dutiful son and man is supposed to be, shooting the dog -because- Gorcha asked them to. The man whose respect everyone else in the family, even the dog, dies for.

But Piotr doesn’t die respecting Gorcha, Piotr is the only one that knows they will most likely die for trying, goes to that death facing it with clear eyes. They dressed in something that made them feel brave and Gorcha saw them, saw the disrespect for his authority, the disrespect of traditional gender, and killed that queerness before it could kill him.

Piotr is also an incredibly important symbol of queerness not equating to evil in this movie. Piotr is just a person trying to do the best they can, caught in a system that does not accept them, but their queerness is never framed as evil, honestly neutral for the most part, which really helps contrast Piotr against Gorcha. Piotr is also never bitten, and so they are excluded from the family’s second rising. They get to end as they are, human, instead of being transformed.

Gorcha simpers a lot in this film, he moans and flounces and makes fun of the man he likes and ultimately tricks him into sex, and that is what both kills the Marquis -and- kills Gorcha. The Marquis could be seen as a hero for killing Gorcha, (he isn’t, for personality-related reasons) but he’s already been corrupted due to the -interest- and the bite of Gorcha. The queerness thrust upon him. The same as Jonathan Harker, the same as Thomas Hutter, doomed by the visceral attentions of The Other.

Obviously I’m not saying this is a homophobic film, there are just a lot of layers and to have the monster be so explicitly queer is so -interesting-. To have him be the traditional, Slavic-origin vampire, a shambling corpse, to have him be an otherworldly puppet AND to have him represent centuries of patriarchy and have him be queer is so many things at once, I love this movie a lot, is what I’m trying to say.

[wordwizards]

so in the vourdalak novella, there's a scene where donde wants to stake his dad, but his siblings hid the stake from him. in the movie, there's a scene where they're trying to escape the dad, but piotr has the stake and is busy in his room crying. i think the moral here is that if your dad gets turned into a vampire, you should carve more than one stake, especially if you live in the woods and have access to all the wood you could possibly need. i'm just saying

[annabelle--cane]

the vourdalak thoughts: spooky scary! they put some puppets in that thang! the horror of unconditional love and the patriarchal family! if you want that "holiest love" passage from dracula taken to its most horrific extreme then this is the movie for you.

[silencespring]

Good Vampire movies that are NOT Nosferatu or Dracula! 🦇

I'm not hating on the classics. I'm just spreading the love of the genre. 🖤

1.) The Vourdalak (2023)

This movie is an adaptation of gothic novella La Famille du Vourdalak by A. K. Tolstoy, which predates Dracula by half a century. It follows the Marquis Jacques, a nobleman who flees from his assailants to the home of a dysfunctional, fiercely traditional family in the outskirts of Serbia. It's darkly humorous but still sticks to its horror foundation. 

2.) My Heart Can't Beat Unless You Tell It To (2020)

A brother and sister struggle against familial obligations and each other as they feed their  little vampire brother through kidnapping and murder. One of the few examples of media that takes the vampire allegory over to oppressive religious and cultural institutions. It's a low budget indie film that makes the best of its money. 

3.) Thirst (2009)

What if we took the toxic dynamics of Possession, mixed it with vampires, and put it in a Korean adaptation of a French Naturalism novel (Thérèse Raquin) that had nothing to do with vampires? Well, you get Thirst, combined with the usual Park Chan-wook storytelling.

4.) Bliss (2019)

A Los Angeles artist that actually makes enough money from her paintings to live in LA turns to a new hallucinogenic drug for inspiration. This starts sane. It does not stay sane. Then again, most of the movies on this list fall into that category!

5.) A Girl Walks Home Alone At Night

A black-and-white Iranian spaghetti western vampire flick that was filmed in California tells the story of a girl and a boy in Bad City. It's one of those movies that you either hate or love, judging by the mixed reviews, but it also has a skateboarding vampire and I think that seals the deal. 

6.) Livid (2011)

I watched Abigail and I felt a serious sense of deja vu. Wasn't this movie already made? Yes, criminals being hunted down by a small vampire ballerina in the home that they have invaded has, in fact, been done before. It's convoluted, it's weird, it's French, and it's camp as hell.

7.) Afflicted (2013)

Having learned of his AVM, a young man decides to travel the world despite his doctor's and family's concerns. This resonates deeply with me because I, too, decided to travel due to a similar condition despite my doctor's and family's concerns. Thankfully, I did not turn into a vampire, which he does. I don't usually find much quality or effort in found footage, but this one is certainly a rare exception!

If you have any more suggestions, feel free to add to the list! 🦇