Vampyr (1932)

Written by CinemaSerf on June 13, 2022

This is the ultimate slow burn, but boy is it worth it... Julian West (aka Baron Nicolas de Gunzburg) is "Allan Gray" - a wandering soul who arrives at a secluded inn in a tiny hamlet. When an old man enters him room muttering about a woman's impending death and leaves him a book, our hero goes exploring and finds himself at an eerie old house where he discovers all sorts of creepy - vampiric - goings on; and the race is on the identify and destroy the creature before it's curse wreaks havoc. It is by no means akin the modern day representation of the vampire; the story is depicted using hues and shadows - light (or lack of it) is enormously important to this; the "shadow" effects are also magnificently sinister and ghostly. The narrative itself is not the greatest, the story jerks about a bit, but that doesn't really matter - it's an adapted take on a well hewn story and Theyer's focus on developing a sense of menace and tension more than compensates. Jan Hieronimko stands out at the poison-dispensing local quack as does Sybille Schmitz as "Léone" (interestingly, neither professional actors) in what is a beautifully evocative, scary telling of Le Fanu's book beautifully augmented by a sophisticated Wolfang Zeller piano accompaniment.