It's funny that while Finnish filmmakers would not touch supernatural horror with a proverbial six-foot pole for decades after the brief overture in 1952, writer-director Ismo Sajakorpi would at least flirt with it in television throughout the 70s and 80s. As part of the immensely popular musical entertainment group Kivikasvot, Sajakorpi would stage many parodic yet also genuinely atmospheric takes on iconic horror tales for the group's television shows and specials, culminating in the "vampire operetta" Lepakkolinna, which had at least many younger viewers shaking in their boots.
Merkitty was an experiment in straight-ahead horror, a standalone television theatre play about Silvo's former prostitute, who seemingly survives a suicide attempt but is haunted by increasingly infernal visions where a looming Baron Samedi figure stalks her. The unremarkable but effective story would have needed a longer running time and perhaps a bit more even acting to effectively work out all its ideas, including the role of Melasniemi's adulterous doctor, who tries to solve Silvo's hysterical condition with regressive hypnosis. But the programme does accomplish its main mission by staging a few archetypal, yet all the more effectively macabre shock sequences with just a few tricks of lighting, staging, make-up and a blaring score needle-dropped from works by various avant-garde composers.
There is nothing in Merkitty that had not been done before and often better in the history of audiovisual culture, but not so in the history Finnish television. Sajakorpi would improve on it four years later with the more elaborate and mature Painajainen.
