| The Headless Horseman | |
| Director: | Vladimir Vajnshtok |
| Starring: | Oleg Vidov Ludmila Savelyeva Aarne Üksküla Ivan Ivanovich Petrov |
| Music: | Nikita Bogoslovsky |
| Studio: | Lenfilm |
| Runtime: | 104 minutes |
| Country: | Soviet Union Cuba |
| Language: | Russian |
| Gross: | 51,7 million tickets sold[1] [2] |
The Headless Horseman (Russian: Всадник без головы|Vsadnik bez golovy) is a 1973 Soviet-Cuban Red Western film directed by Vladimir Vajnshtok based on the eponymous novel by Thomas Mayne Reid.[3] [4] The film was the first Soviet Western. It was a box office success, 51,7 million tickets were sold and the picture holds the 33rd place in terms of cinema attendance in the Soviet Union.[5] [6]
The film takes place in 1850, Texas, United States. Louise, daughter of the wealthy plantation owner Poindexter, master of the hacienda Casa del Corvo, falls in love with a poor mustanger Maurice Gerald. The night their secret rendezvous happens, her brother Henry disappears. Suspicion in murder falls on Gerald, who was found covered in blood, with signs of struggle on the body and on Henry's cloak. One more minute, and an angry crowd would have Gerald lynched, but then the mysterious Headless Horseman appears...
The picture was filmed in Crimea and Azerbaijan; Yalta, Bilohirsk and Khizi served as the locations. The manes and tails of horses were painted with silver. Cotton fields were created by decorators scattering ordinary cotton around and the cacti were plastic. The slaves were played by Cuban medical students from Simferopol. Many actors spoke Spanish and the mouth movements do not always match the Russian dubbing.[7]