The 1990 Russian Fantasy Horror film Dominus is based on two Ray Bradbury stories. As the stories are presented separately, the film is an anthology.

This came up next on the list of Ray Bradbury TV and movie appearances and adaptations of which I could find a copy to watch. Several copies are on YouTube, but none had the option of auto translated captions or voiceover as other Russian films have. It wasn’t that the auto translation feature on YouTube was down, because I tested it with another Russian film and captions were working. They were just for whatever reason not available with this film. It is wonderful that Ray Bradbury was so popular in Russia, but I regarded the prospect of viewing a film entirely in Russian with dismay.

As the first part, titled “Dominus,” was based on Bradbury’s 1943 story “The Scythe,” with which I am very familiar, I decided to watch it anyway. As far as I can tell, it mostly followed the story closely. During the Depression, the down on their luck Erickson family is traveling in an old car. When they become stuck in mud, father Drew Erickson, played by Viktor Yevgrafov, walks to a nearby farmhouse. There he finds a recently deceased old man with a note leaving the farm to the finder, specifically instructing the finder to take care of a scythe placed near the old man, who is holding a stalk of wheat. An enormous wheat field surrounds the farm.

At first Drew and his wife Molly, played by Yelena Yevseyenko, are delighted. They have two children, Drew Jr., played by Sasha Miharev, and Suzy, played by Natalya Korenchenko. The only difference in character names from the original story is that Susie is spelled Suzy. The children appear to be about eight or nine years old. Suzy is lively, loud, and a bit annoying. Drew Jr. is quiet and seems sickly.

Drew Sr. soon deduces this is no ordinary wheat field. He is not meant to harvest the wheat, only to cut the ripe stalks. The stalks are human souls and when a person’s stalk is cut that person dies. He identifies the three stalks representing his family which to his horror appear ripe. He takes elaborate precautions to protect these stalks. Drew suffers anxiety over his family including ominous visions of various fates befalling them. At one point he and Molly argue, possibly about leaving the farm as Drew is so anxious, but of course it was impossible to tell what they were saying.

The action proceeds as in the original story except for the final image, which to me made no sense. Perhaps someone knowledgeable in Russian could understand the significance, but I felt the action should have ended where the original story did. The movie was very true to the story up to that point.

The second part, titled “Wonder Wheel,” was based on Bradbury’s 1948 story “The Black Ferris.” It starts with a lot of chaotic party type footage apparently meant to create a carnival atmosphere, interspersed with shots of the Wonder Wheel. Some of this footage contained brief glimpses of nudity and general weirdness.

In this story, two boys, Hank and Peter, stalk a suspicious carnival character, Mr. Cooger. The names also seemed to be the same here except that rather than being pronounced “cougar,” the name was pronounced with a soft “g” as in “George,” coming out like “coodger.” The little boy was definitely Pete but if the older boy was Hank I didn’t catch the name. A main difference in this version is that Pete appears four or five years younger than Hank while in the story they were the same age. None of the actors are credited by character name in Internet Movie Database so I can’t tell who played who.

The events mostly proceed as in the original story, which was later adapted into part of the novel Something Wicked This Way Comes. Mr. Cooger assumes the appearance of a young boy and insinuates himself into the home of a woman Hank and Pete know, and they try to warn her.

A chief difference between the short story and the novel is that in the short story the parents don’t believe the kids that Mr. Cooger is riding a ferris wheel which changes his age to younger or older depending on whether it turns forwards or backwards. In the short story the parents are mean to the kids while in the novel Will’s father is sympathetic. In this movie, Hank tries to tell his father what is going on. I couldn’t understand the father’s response, but his manner was sympathetic.

In Something Wicked This Way Comes, the ferris wheel of the short story is changed to a merry-go-round. Indications are that Bradbury was in process of making this change by at least 1956. Well, this movie gives the best of both! The Wonder Wheel rotates from fully upright like a ferris wheel to flat like a merry-go-round. It is quite the spectacle.

For anyone who has read Something Wicked This Way Comes or watched the 1983 film, or read the story “The Black Ferris” or seen the 1990 episode of The Ray Bradbury Theater, the fate of Mr. Cooger is similar in all versions.

Overall from what I could tell with no knowledge of Russian, this film was faithful to the two stories and ranks as a pretty good Bradbury adaptation.