Has anyone else seen the restored original “Sampo?” If you think that the MST3K version (from American International) is weird, you should try this. When Lemminkäinen goes back to get the Sampo from the witch Louhi, she kills him with a snake and throws him in the ocean. Lemminkäinen’s mom walks across the water to find him and save him. After that, Lemminkäinen goes back again to get the Sampo again (it turns out that he’s not too bright).
It’s available on Amazon, but only in the European PAL format. Most PC’s will play it, but you need to change the settings, which if you do that too many times, the drive will stay as a PAL drive forever. Or just read the info on IMDb about it. It’s fascinating.
I highly recommend reading a good translation of the Kalevala if you like myths. It is the national mythopoeic lore of Finland and contains some amazing tales and wild adventures. This movie is derived from those tales.
Yeah, all of Aleksandr Ptushko films are amazing… in their original form. Forget the AIP versions MST did, if you want to see how beautiful and imaginative they can be, watch the restored originals.
Of the 3, Sampo was chopped up the most and lost around 20 minutes.
Here’s an interesting piece on the making of the film, the conflicts that arose and such, like how the Fins wanted the Sampo to be more mysterious, and the compromise of making it both a “realistically depicted, tangible mill that churns out flour, salt, and money, as well as a metaphorical and miraculous object, a provider of civilization and of eternal happiness. Thus the people of Kalevala are not deprived of their happiness even though the Sampo is destroyed at the end of the film.”
Interesting how much more gruesome the moments with Lemminkäinen’s death and resurrection, how he was left in bits and pieces and the mother had to rake up those pieces from the sea and put them back together.
Thanks for the heads up! I pre-ordered a copy and I’m looking forward to it. According to the press release I read, the blu-ray is going to include an hour-long interview with this guy named Mike Nelson from a little show called MST3K…
Curious: How many of y’all have, while watching the MST3K episode, ignored the chatter between Mike & the bots at the beginning of the movie in order to listen to the opening narration?
I pre-ordered a copy of this and noticed that they still have a 4K Blu-Ray release of Ilya Muromets in stock. This the original version of the film that appeared as The Sword and the Dragon in MST3K Ep. 617.