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Fresh and Exciting

Fanciful, disturbing, and wildly original, it announces the arrival of a fresh, bold voice in American cinema.

The film's masterful storytelling did its job. The message was clear. No need to overdo.

Story: It's very simple but honestly that is fine.

How to go about talking about Vampyr? This is a film that was made in 1932, but could almost be ten years older – it is mainly silent, with sparse moments of dialogue. Sometimes events seem deliberately obfuscated. There are also inter-titles that relay moments and goings-on that might otherwise not be clear.But little IS clear. The main character is either referred to as David or Allen Gray. He is played by Julian West, who bears a resemblance to HP Lovecraft and is really named Nicolas de Gunzburg. The film's critical mauling on release (after the more successful and sophisticated 'Dracula' and 'Frankenstein', both 1931) caused Director Carl Dreyer to suffer a nervous breakdown. And yet what might he have expected? The picture is surely a deliberate exercise in weirdness.It is an unrelenting cacophony of suffering, dying, silhouettes, grainy rooms, and creeping grotesques. Gray's role is seemingly to wander through it, reacting to all that goes on around him. He is me, he is you and he is caught in a spiralling nightmare. That's what this picture is – the most genuine depiction of a nightmare.Played by Sybille Schmitz, the character of Léone's apparent transformation into a vampire is eerily effective - simply a lowering of the eyebrows and the curl of an evil smile. This causes her sister, lovely Giséle (Rena Mandel) to elicit Gray's help, and courtesy of a book called Vampyrs, he identifies her symptoms.Gray himself appears to either be a ghost, or dreams he is a ghost, leading to another of the film's frightening highlights. As a ghost, or an astral projection, he observes himself lying in a windowed coffin, apparently dead. We see him in the coffin staring up as other sinister observers peer in.The eccentric doctor who has been observing proceedings comes to a horrible end, suffocated in a flour mill. Dreyer's camera is preoccupied with this, and returns to his hopelessly flailing body and reaching hands long moments before he finally dies.It isn't always easy to stay glued to this because not only does it not really follow a pattern, but the style of weirdness gives no assurance that events are ever going to become any clearer. And yet the imagery rewards – the one-legged policeman, the inexplicable deformed old man, the scythe-wielding peasant (Death?) on a ramshackle boat, and Gray and Giselle scampering through the sepia summertime. It is horribly haunting and not easily forgotten.

Despite having dialogue this feels very much like a silent film. This dated, spooky little gem concentrates on visual imagery rather than concentrate dialogue and this fact gives it a dreamy, ethereal quality rarely seen in modern cinema. Indeed the film works best as a series of haunting visual images as our hero experiences weird events, hallucinations, and frightening dreams. Although difficult to watch and not exactly entertaining, VAMPYR is nonetheless a fascinating horror film which taps into some of our deepest fears.Despite having a vampire, this is a film which actually feels like a ghost story due to some spooky scenes of character's spirits coming out of their bodies and walking about in dream states. Exceptional use is made of shadows as they are given lives of their own in a very unsettling way. The acting is understated and efficient, but there is little in the way of a linear plot or storyline - it's just the images, linked together to form a puzzling whole. This is definitely a unique item and a good example of expressionistic cinematography, and it stays in the mind long after viewing.

I'm not exactly a fan of most really old films, most of them just don't really hold up for me or are just not my cup of tea; could be a generation thing or just simply me I don't know. But this is one of those gems that I really can sink my teeth into.I'll admit to me this is probably one of the most bizarre horror films I've seen. It's a vampire film and yet it isn't; to me it's kinda more of an art horror film since there really isn't much in story or characterization, it's a film where were really in it for the visuals and this film had got some damn good visuals which help make this not just a classic but a great experience.The film to me is sort of has a dreamlike quality to it as if your walking into a nightmare. From just the use of light, shadow, as well as most of the countryside and shack they shot the film at they've succeeded in creating a world that is dark, foreboding, where there can be danger hiding within the shadows, or in the next room. The music is great it has a very eerie tone to it that evokes a feeling of unsettlement or even dread in some places.But of course the visuals are the highlight of the film, you might even have to watch this film again just to uncover more. From some room with skulls and strange items in it, a witches room? Shadows moving in places and disconnected from other presences. A character seeing his own death which I'll admit was creepy because like him I wondered when the heck did that happen, then turning into a ghost for a while. But my favorite and to me most creepy visual was the infamous bellman with a scythe, it looked like the grim reaper to me.I'm not sure whether the film has a theme or not, it sort of left up to you to draw your own conclusions on that. To me I always thought it was on the fear and inexcapablity of death, since images of death are invoked throughout the film. Or even our never ending fear and attraction toward the darkness of life and ourselves, since the main character always goes toward dangerous locations in the film and the lure and temptation of vampirism becomes strong for one woman bitten by a vamp. I don't know like I said it's up to you which to me is part of what makes the film special.Venture into the darkness if you dare.Rating: 4 stars

Carl Theodor Dreyer's Vampyr is a seminal work of considerable importance in cinema history heavily influencing other films made during that same period. It is classified a horror film and yet it somehow stands apart from that genre requiring a distinction all its own. Loosely based on Sheridan Le Fanu's "Carmilla" (a horrific tale of vampirism), it is a place where the world of the living and the shadowy land of the dead cross over into a netherworld where the shadows of the living, and, presumably, the dead, come to life of their own accord. The anemic deliberately bloodless look of the film by cinematographer Rudolph Mate (who would become a director in his own right) literally infuses the film with a dreamlike atmosphere. The vampire herself, an elderly woman, the very personification of death, commands this shadow realm and threatens the extinction of its principle protagonist who envisions his own premature burial at the hands of all those under the vampire's spell for no one can be trusted. Without doubt, one of the truly exceptional examples of the cinematic art on the order of Jean Cocteau's "Orpheus".