Vampyr (DVD)
With Vampyr, Danish filmmaker Carl Theodor Dreyer channeled his genius for creating mesmerizing atmosphere and austere, unsettling imagery into the horror genre. The result—a chilling film about a student of the occult who encounters supernatural haunts and local evildoers in a village outside of Paris—is nearly unclassifiable. A host of stunning camera and editing tricks and densely layered sounds create a mood of dreamlike terror. With its roiling fogs, ominous scythes, and foreboding echoes, Vampyr is one of cinema’s great nightmares.
SPECIAL FEATURES
- High-definition digital transfer of the original German-language version of the film from the 1998 restoration by Martin Koerber and the Cineteca di Bologna, with uncompressed monaural soundtrack on the Blu-ray
- Alternate version with English text
- Audio commentary from 2008 featuring film scholar Tony Rayns
- Carl Th. Dreyer, a 1966 documentary by Jørgen Roos chronicling Dreyer’s career
- Video essay by scholar Casper Tybjerg on Dreyer’s influences in creating Vampyr
- Radio broadcast from 1958 of Dreyer reading an essay about filmmaking
- PLUS: An essay by critic Mark Le Fanu and, for the Blu-ray edition, an essay by Kim Newman; a piece by Koerber on the restoration; a 1964 interview with producer and actor Nicolas de Gunzburg; and a book featuring Dreyer and Christen Jul’s original screenplay and Sheridan Le Fanu’s 1872 story “Carmilla,” a source for the film
Cover by Michael Boland