Synopsis

DVD release for film on July 22. With Vampyr Danish filmmaker Carl Theodor Dreyer's brilliance at achieving mesmerizing atmosphere and austere profoundly unsettling imagery (as in The Passion of Joan of Arc and Day of Wrath) was for once applied to the horror genre. Yet the result-concerning an occult student assailed by various supernatural haunts and local evildoers at an inn outside Paris-is nearly unclassifiable a host of stunning camera and editing tricks and densely layered sounds creating a mood of dreamlike terror. With its roiling fogs ominous scythes and foreboding echoes Vampyr is one of cinema's great nightmares.

Official Review

When Carl Theodor Dryer set out to make VAMPYR in 1930 his goal was to make a commercial film. Fully two years after the theatrical release and subsequent failure of Dryer’s epic silent film THE PASSION OF JOAN OF ARC the Danish filmmaker was unable to find funding for his next project within the studio system. Taking cue from recent productions like Jean Cocteau’s BLOOD OF A POET and the Dalí/Buñuel collaboration L’ÂGE D’OR, Dryer finally secured financing from a wealthy aristocrat. In the case of VAMPYR the backer turned out to be Baron Nicholas de Gunzberg. De Gunzberg—who would adopt the name Julian West—had only one request, to star in the production. Dryer himself would be credited as Producer. …Read More