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Good story, Not enough for a whole film

Best movie ever!

Simple and well acted, it has tension enough to knot the stomach.

The story-telling is good with flashbacks.The film is both funny and heartbreaking. You smile in a scene and get a soulcrushing revelation in the next.

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.

"Leptirica" is a Yugoslavian female vampire horror film from the early 70s shot in the Serbian countryside and based on a novel.The incredibly eerie beginning takes place in a mill.The old miller listens strange bird voices and while he's sleeping the millstone suddenly stops working and a strange creature with black hands,long nails,angry eyes and long teeth bites his neck and drinks his blood.Soon the area of a small Yugoslavian village and the dark woods are plagued with the attacks of a truly hideous vampire creature...This is my first Yugoslavian horror film and I'm highly impressed.It features some of the creepiest vampire attack scenes ever captured on screen.It's also based on Serbian folklore,unfortunately my DVD-R don't have English subtitles,so 90% of the plot went beyond me.Still if you want to see truly scary horror film try to find "Leptirica".9 out of 10.

Wonderful, I've seen this movie ONCE when I was a kid and since then it's burned in my mind as of the most scary films I've ever seen. And I've seen A LOT of horror. Hm, I think I will try to find this film again, I'm pretty curious about how I would feel now while watching it. It certainly did contribute to my love for the horror-genre, and vampire figures in films, in general. This particular vampire , leptirica, is very old in Slavic folklore. The female vampire shapeshifter, upir, can even be considered as a metaphor for many things. Feminine mystery or sexuality is one of them.Interesting !

I couldn't agree more. It is one of the horror that scared me the most when I was a child. Spooky vampire story from the Balkans - a short description of the movie. B&W technique makes it even more scary. "Leptirica" is based upon a short story an I've read it - "Posle devedeset godina" (Milovan Glisic the author). I can only say it is almost as scary as the movie. Recently I had three opportunity to see "Leptirica" again. And it is still scary (and I'm not seven years old any more). There are only three chiller scenes, but even those three are too much. The atmosphere itself is scary enough. I give it 10 because it's the only horror that scared me twice.