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| Vampyr | 
 enlarge | Directors: Carl Theodor Dreyer, Wladyslaw Starewicz
Actors: Julian West, Maurice Schutz, Rena Mandel, Sybille Schmitz, Jan Hieronimko
Studio: Image Entertainment
Category: DVD
List Price: $24.99
Buy Used: $8.50
You Save: $16.49 (66%)
New (31) Used (20) from $8.50
Avg. Customer Rating:  38 reviews
Sales Rank: 27123
Format: Black & White, Dvd-video, Silent, Ntsc
Languages: German (Original Language), English (Subtitled)
Rating: Unrated
Number Of Items: 1
Running Time: 72
Aspect Ratio: 1.33:1
DVD Layers: 1
DVD Sides: 1
Picture Format: Academy Ratio
Shipping Weight (lbs): 0.2
Dimensions (in): 7.4 x 5 x 0.6
MPN: 4308
ISBN: 6305078491
UPC: 014381430820
EAN: 9786305078494
ASIN: 6305078491
Theatrical Release Date: 1931
Release Date: May 13, 1998
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
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| Editorial Reviews:
Amazon.com
In this chilling, atmospheric German film from 1932, director Carl Theodor Dreyer favors style over story, offering a minimal plot that draws only partially from established vampire folklore. Instead, Dreyer emphasizes an utterly dreamlike visual approach, using trick photography (double exposures, etc.) and a fog-like effect created by allowing additional light to leak onto the exposed film. The result is an unsettling film that seems to spring literally from the subconscious, freely adapted from the Victorian short story Carmilla by noted horror author Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu, about a young man who discovers the presence of a female vampire in a mysterious European castle. There's more to the story, of course, but it's the ghostly, otherworldly tone of the film that lingers powerfully in the memory. Dreyer maintains this eerie mood by suggesting horror and impending doom as opposed to any overt displays of terrifying imagery. Watching Vampyr is like being placed under a hypnotic trance, where the rules of everyday reality no longer apply. As a splendid bonus, the DVD includes The Mascot, a delightful 26-minute animated film from 1934. Created by pioneering animator Wladyslaw Starewicz, this clever film--in which a menagerie of toys and dolls springs to life--serves as an impressive precursor to the popular Wallace & Gromit films of the 1990s. --Jeff Shannon
Description
Carl Theodor Dreyer's eerie horror classic stars Julian West as a visitor to a remote inn under the spell of an aged, bloodthristy female vampire. Extremely atmospheric, this rare gem delivers a decided chill.
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| Customer Reviews: Read 33 more reviews...
 A human soul in fear of Death cried out May 10, 2008
The rat-toothed Nosferatu and the charming Transylvanian Count are the best known examples of early vampire movies, mostly because there weren't very many others at the time.
But more often than not, "Vampyr" gets passed over when you talk about early vampire movies -- and that's a shame. Carl Th. Dreyer's masterpiece (loosely based on the works of J. Sheridan Le Fanu) is a straightforward little story wrapped in a hazy cocoon of dreamlike imagery and haunting direction. From the very beginning, this movie clings to you like a spiderweb.
Occult student Allan Gray is staying at a hotel in the French countryside. But after being woken by a strange old man's cryptic warning, he finds that the inn is swarming with eerie supernatural happenings, including shadows that move independently. After he departs, a strange old man lets an ancient crone out of a closet.
And when Allan arrives at a nearby chateau, he finds that the owner has been murdered, and his daughter Leone is suffering from mysterious wounds. After the girl is rescued from a strange old crone, she begins acting predatory toward her sister Gisele -- and the weird old doctor says that only a transfusion will save her. But the doctor is in league with the vampire -- and is working to destroy Leone...
"Vampyr" has a pretty simple storyline, loosely based on a couple of J. Sheridan Le Fanu's short stories (including the classic "Carmilla"). But it's not the plot that makes this movie a classic -- it's the powerful, ghostly visuals that permeate it. And the beautiful real-life settings (the inn, chateau and church) don't hurt the atmosphere of it all.
In many ways, "Vampyr" is like a silent movie -- the characters are quiet, text cards intersperse the scenes, and several minutes are taken up by printed text from the "History of Vampires" book. In addition to this, the visuals are so powerful that it's almost a shock when one of the characters actually speaks out loud. Even then, nobody says anything unless it's actually necessary.
Dreyer films this movie as if it were a choreographed dream, letting the camera drift through ornate rooms and hazy hills. And he often fixed on striking images -- pale feverish faces, still windvanes, cloudy skies, scythes, and the movement of shadows on walls and the ground. And there are some spectacularly creepy moments, such as when Leone starts baring her teeth gleefully at Gisele, or Allan watching the view from inside a coffin.
And he steeps the entire movie in dreamlike effects -- hazy countrysides, skeletons, floating girls, and shadows that can dance and move independently. These strange effects are done almost effortlessly, adding to the feeling that you're surrounded by the unreal. Dreyer even puts a note of humor in from time to time, such as the dancing shadows with their little folk band.
Julian West (aka Nicolas de Gunzburg) does a pretty solid job as our unflappable hero, although I question how his suit remains pristine all through the movie -- and he does a glorious job in that bizarre dream sequence. Sybille Schmitz has a small part, but is wonderfully feral as she starts to turn vampiric, and Henriette Gerard is unspeakably creepy as the ancient, stone-faced vampire who wants other people to suffer as well.
Carl Th. Dreyer's "Vampyr" is a rarity among vampire movies -- all haunting images and ghostly, subtle horror, with excellent acting and exquisite directions. It's a cinematic classic that should not be overlooked.
this is how nightmares are March 1, 2008
1 out of 1 found this review helpful
*Vampyr* is full of stark and terrifying images, and the atmosphere of eeriness and illogic approximates the feel of a nightmare better than any horror film... That's not knocking other horror films; most horror films are out to tell a story, but *Vampyr* is about images and atmosphere and in the process creates something truly haunting.
 creepy January 13, 2008
very creepy, and entertaining silent film. very well directed, and acted. this film is no nosferatu, but the images presented here left me in awe. i wonder what this movies impact had on its original audience. check it out.
 Down loaded another film January 2, 2008
0 out of 3 found this review helpful
I asked for this film but got a hodgepodge of other films and TV shows in it's place. Strange.
 Not bad, but the new transfer should improve things. December 20, 2007
1 out of 1 found this review helpful
Vampyr: Der Traum des Allan Grey (Carl Theodor Dreyer, 1932)
Carl Theodor Dreyer is universally considered one of the greatest directors who ever lived, but I'm pretty sure that even his staunchest defenders would admit that his movies are something of an acquired taste. Vampyr is no exception to the rule, a melodramatic potboiler loosely based on a Sheridan LeFanu's Carmilla, but markedly different than any other potboiler-- or any other melodrama-- you're ever likely to see. Dreyer steeped the film in Expressionism-- perhaps more so than any film since Wiene's Der Golem seventeen years before-- and jettisoned the majority of the plot in order to emphasize atmosphere. (Unfortunately, this worked in 1932 about as well as it works today, and upon its initial release, it was a critical and box-office disaster.)
There is a plot to the film, however loose it may be, and it involves Allan Grey (Julian West, the stage name of the film's producer, Nicolas de Gunzburg), who wanders into an old castle whose scion is about to die. He charges Grey, through the bequest of a book, with the protection of his two daughters, whom he believes to be the victims of vampiric depredation. Despite there actually being a plot, though, a good portion of the film is given over to Grey's dreams and odd encounters he has during his stay. It seems to be these, more than the plot, that people remember about the film-- the chap with the scythe waiting for the boat, the burial dream, the disassociated shadow with the wooden leg.
If you're coming into this looking for a straightforward horror film, you'll probably wind up disappointed. Nosferatu it is not. It is, however, impossible (even in the godawful American DVD release, with gothic-script subtitles that take up almost a quarter of the screen) to deny that the film does succeed in evoking what it sets out to evoke-- a feeling of disorientation, almost dread. The very plotlessness of large stretches of the film are part of the reason for that, as the viewer's never quite sure what's going on, or whether any given scene will be followed by a scene that would make sense after it. The scenes themselves are constructed with an eye towards the dreamlike state that Grey finds himself in, as well, with Dreyer using primitive, though surprisingly effective, camera tricks (the most famous being shooting some scenes through a thin gauze pad) along with the innate grasp of the power of chiaroscuro that informs all his films.
For all this, though, and as much as I admire the film on a technical level, it's not all that watchable. I realize a great deal of this has to do with an awful DVD transfer, and I have high hopes that things will be better when a rumored new transfer appears from Masters of Cinema. But some of what may seem to modern viewers like film stock degradation was quite deliberate on Dreyer's part. I'll admit that maybe it just needs to grow on me; after all, I'm a huge fan of Elias Merhige's grainy 8MM flick Begotten, and Merhige wasn't doing anything Dreyer hadn't done in Vampyr. So I'll reserve final judgment until Masters of Cinema gets the new release out, and just profess cautious optimism. ***
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