Štićenik (1973)

Well, seeing as each of the other short films included with Leptirica are nearly just as long as the feature itself, let's take them one at a time individually. Štićenik is a black-and-white horror film that mixes psychological horror with folklore and wraps it up with striking visuals and spooky ambiance to create something quite hypnotic. It's almost shocking that this is made by the same man who made Leptirica.

The setup of the story is very simple: a creepy man clad in all-black and donning a distinctive bowler hat chases another man into an asylum, where he takes refuge. A doctor there takes him under his wing and tries to figure out a way to help him, all while that weird guy scouts the place out, threatening at any time to storm their stronghold and take back what is his. It works as a springboard for a nightmarish sort of indistinct dread that propels everything. It's mostly a psychological horror experience, contrary to its inclusion in a folk horror box set, but there's enough of that to justify its inclusion by the end. It's a sturdy, reliable tale that is told in an unsettling way.

Can you recall Leptirica's awful sound effects, music, and the editing stringing it all together? Well, here we have a soundtrack that simply knocks it out of the park, forming a perfect union with its gloomy gothic visuals. The interplay of light and shadow inherent in the black and white photography too is played with in cool ways throughout the film, and a striking feature of the audio design is its tinniness and extremely washed out, reverb-heavy sound that, against all odds, adds a lot to the atmosphere and to the distant feel of the story and its characters. Acting is intense and ADR is solid as well, with very little of the blatant, near-constant mistakes Leptirica had. I actually begin to ask myself if it's even really fair to this film to keep bringing that film up, but hey: same director and the same year somehow as well. It's bizarre. 

And look, I'm not crazy. I know most people wouldn't exactly be gripped with something like this, and it's definitely a film you watch early on a weekend while dead sober as opposed to after a few drinks once the possibility of drowsiness arises, but I still think it's a solid enough horror film from a region with less representation than is perhaps deserved in the wider discussion of cinema. Those with short attention spans will be fleeing for the exits within minutes, but those with a little patience will likely be able to find at least something they like, especially if they tend to respond to psychological horror.