IMDB link: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0023649/
IMDB rating: 7,7
Director: Carl Theodor Dreyer
Main Cast: Julian West, Maurice Schutz, Rena Mandel, Sybille Schmitz
"Vampyr ranks in many circles as one of the greatest horror films of all time. In this chilling, atmospheric film from Danish 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 cinematographer is Rudolph Mate). 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.
Dreyer has more in common with filmmakers such as Ingmar Bergman, who openly admired his work, and David Lynch, who has also shown a fondness for dreamlike movies that emphasize mood and imagery over an easily comprehensible plot. Deemed by Alfred Hitchcock 'the only film worth watching... twice',Vampyr's influence has become, by now, incalculable."
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