Vampyr

Vampyr
1932 - Germany
Directed By Carl Theodore Dreyer



SYNOPSIS

Allan (Julian West) is an occult fanatic. He stays at an old inn and is approached by an old man. The man warns that a sickly woman must not die and presents Allan with a package to be opened upon the man's death. He soon turns up dead. Allan opens the package to find a book about vampires, and he starts to realize what's plaguing the sickly woman and all the strange things he's been seeing around the tiny town.



MY THOUGHTS

A masterpiece of early horror, Vampyr is a visual delight.

The film has much more in common with the classic German Expressionist horror classics like Nosferatu and The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari, than with more contemporary horror films of the time like Dracula and Frankenstein.

The film is not silent but it uses very limited dialogue and some sound effects to help tell the story. Title cards are used to great effect like as in silent films. Other than those, the images are all there is to tell the story.

Vampyr has some genuinely creepy moments, but is never scary. When dreaming, a ghostly Allan comes across his own corpse in a coffin. It's a haunting and upsetting. Shadows also frequently move around, unattached to humans. The vampire of the title barely even appears in the film. She's a creepy looking old hag. Her icy stare is chill-inducing. Those and many others are images that will stick with you long after you see the film.



The battered condition of the film print also added to the eerie atmosphere. The print's heavily scratched and speckled quality adds to the intentionally hazy cinematography to create a dreamy, ethereal world.

Vampyr is like an old-school version of what modern filmmaker Guy Maddin does with every film he makes, like Tales from the Gimli Hospital.

There's barely a plot to the film, and even on a first viewing, I spotted some glaring plot holes, but they weren't terribly distracting. The film allegedly has missing scenes and it's possible they helped to answer those problems.

Classic horror film buffs and fans of non-conventional experimental films should definitely check this one out, if you haven't already.