Tears of the Prince of Darkness 1992. The USSR no longer exists, and the former member states, now united by the proud acronym of the CIS, are actively trampling on the warm corpse of the Union State. Was no exception and ambiguous Polish horror-maker Marek Pestrak, who filmed for Estonia his version of renunciation of the “scoop”.
From the first shots, the film successfully masquerades as a frank thrash: the credits did not have time to end, and some ritual orgy is already raging on the screen, a river of blood is pouring in full swinging, naked women rush back and forth, severed hands and heads fly in different directions. Five minutes of chaos and the heroine wakes up. She is a famous Polish writer who came to Tallinn to publish her new novel. It’s 1939 and there are some strange things happening in the city. On the first night in the hotel, an attempt is made on the polka, the NKVD scours the city, and the main character of the film “hotel” detective Gunnar himself assumes the duties and responsibility of the bodyguard of an insane writer, who, as it turns out, every night sees such wild dreams, from which he then sculpts his wildly successful novels. A certain baron, who undertook to publish her new novel, is clearly plotting some mischief, and here, out of nowhere, an old typewriter appears, babbling something about the imminent coming into the world of Satan himself. And all the characters are connected in search of a mysterious ring, which, according to legend, is made of a satanic tear, which Lucifer, being expelled from Heaven, dropped into the sea.
All the events of this film, ineptly piled into a rather stinking pile, are loosely related (except, of course, the central storyline with the writer). The plot jumps from scene to scene, not really caring about the logic and harmony of the narrative, the authors try to patch a wild number of holes with a rather cute humor (it should be noted, however, that after 20 years it is already difficult to say which gags were intentional here), leaving the insecure smiling viewer in some uncomfortable bewilderment.
The meaning of the film and the goals of the authors become clear only at the end of the film, when the notorious tear falls into the hands of Soviet troops, which, presumably, are now led by the forces of darkness. The final credits tell the sad story that Soviet planes bombed a Tallinn cinema in 1944, sending many innocent victims to the next world. It was necessary to “paint” such a delusional mystical plot under such a vile opportunistic agitation! For an hour and a half, we were shown “trash, panic and sodomy”, the servants of the devil did not shun (as always, however) anything in their pursuit of the ring, which was supposed to help them open the way to the master in this world, the writer’s dreams abound with nudity and dismemberment, she herself spends hours staring at the mirror, then patting herself on the face, then considering her tits, and at the end – a dick! The Soviet Union is an evil empire! Stalin put on a terrible ring and an evil soton bombed a Tallinn cinema! Really? Is it okay that the Germans in 1941 almost the whole city was turned into ruins?
In general, quite funny, like any cheerful thrash, the spectacle to the finale finally mutates into a nasty and stupid agitation, parasitizing on the body of the Great War. It is not clear that the beautiful actors Vasily Lanova (very funny, by the way, in the role of an evil baron), Jüri Yarvet and Lembit Ulfsak have forgotten here. What exactly did they buy, agreeing to star in this nonsense?
The Soviet Union after its collapse did not kick only lazy, and many continue to kick him to this day. Estonia, which declared its hatred of the former alma mater 20 years ago, persists in it, driving it to the point of absurdity. This film is a curious but rather disgusting testimony to this hatred towards us of our neighbors and former compatriots, a document of the era. Watching it is like dissecting some mutated decaying rodent. Interesting, but too disgusting.
2 out of 10