Vampyr - Criterion Collection | DVD Countdown: Counting Down The Biggest DVD Releases

Product Description

With Vampyr Danish filmmaker Carl Theodor Dreyer's brilliance at achieving mesmerizing atmosphere and austere profoundly unsettling imagery (as in The Passion of Joan of Arc and Day of Wrath) was for once applied to the horror genre. Yet the result-concerning an occult student assailed by various supernatural haunts and local evildoers at an inn outside Paris-is nearly unclassifiable a host of stunning camera and editing tricks and densely layered sounds creating a mood of dreamlike terror. With its roiling fogs ominous scythes and foreboding echoes Vampyr is one of cinema's great nightmares.SPECIAL EDITION DOUBLE-DISC SET FEATURES:New restored high-definition digital transfer of the 1998 film restoration by Martin Koerber and the Cineteca di BolognaOptional all-new English-text version of the filmAudio commentary featuring film scholar Tony RaynsCarl Th. Dreyer (1966) a documentary by Jorgen Roos chronicling Dreyer's careerVisual essay by scholar Casper Tybjerg on Dreyer's influences in creating VampyrA 19TK radio broadcast of Dreyer reading an essay about filmmakingNew and improved English subtitle translationPLUS: A booklet featuring new essays by Mark Le Fanu and Kim Newman Martin Koerber on the restoration and an archival interview with producer and star Nicolas de Gunzburg as well as a book featuring Dreyer and Christen Jul's original screenplay and Sheridan Le Fanu 1871 story "Carmilla" a source for the filmSystem Requirements:Running Time: 75 minutes Language: German Subtitles: English Format: DVD MOVIE Genre: HORROR/VAMPIRES Rating: NR UPC: 715515030427 Manufacturer No: CC1757DDVD

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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