What was the greatest vampire movie of all time? No, not Bela Lugosi tiptoeing around in creaky old Dracula. Not Interview with the Vampire, either. No, the best of the bat boys appeared in an obscure 1932 Danish classic called Vampyr.
Directed by legendary filmmaker Carl Theodor Dreyer (The Passion of Joan of Arc, Day of Wrath), this beautifully remastered version from Kino on Video tells the eerie tale of a young man whose ramblings through a pastoral countryside bring him to an inn where doom reigns. It seems one of the innkeeper's daughters has received a lethal hickey from the undead and is failing fast. The race is on to find the fanged one and his henchmen before the beautiful victim loses her soul.
What separates Vampyr from other films in the genre is the sense of terror imparted by its bizarre edge. There is no gore, no monsters, no wild chase scenes, no pseudo-eroticism, no man-into-bat silliness. Instead, a surreal edge of suspense prevails. The viewer stumbles into a world where the rules change from scene to scene, where shadows come alive with horror, where silences are deafening, and where time runs in constant short supply. The horror comes not from a monster, but from a world where monsters thrive.
Dreyer's bold camera captures amazing sequences - especially the hero's terrifying dream of being sealed in a glass-lidded coffin, watching the world pass by upside down en route to his burial. The climax of the action, when the vampire's protector is cornered in a flour mill, is considered one of the most horrifying (nongruesome) scenes ever conceived.
Vampyr was made the same year as Lugosi's Dracula but was met with confusion and scorn by critics and audiences. Today, however, its bold imagination reveals it to be the rarest of rarities: a brilliantly conceived work of art.
Vampyr: US$29.95. Kino on Video: (800) 562 3330, +1 (212) 629 6880, fax +1 (212) 714 0871, e-mail kinoint@infohouse.com.
STREET CRED
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