Seriously, though, this movie isn’t bad at all. It’s not really something I’d watch with popcorn and company, but with a cup of tea and a darkened room it’s a nice experience. It was made in 1932, which, as we’ve seen, generally entails a smooth black and white quality. Not so in this case. The film is scratchy and wonderfully terrible, it jumps and flickers and creates a lovely atmosphere of vague, decaying paranoia. ‘Vague’, incidentally, is a word that I could use repeatedly to describe Carl Theodor Dreyer’s little horror. The whole story moves along in a dreamy, almost lazy haze. No one stops to explain things, no one rushes to the next plot point… it’s actually pretty relaxing.
The tale itself follows a young man named Gray
as he comes upon a dingy inn on the edge of town and is subsequently drawn into a vampiric (vampyric?) mystery involving an elderly man in a dodgy bathrobe
and his two daughters. The man seems to anticipate his own death, and gives Mr. Gray a small package to be opened after that event. One attack by shadowy-shotgun later, and the package is revealed to be a book detailing the process of a vampire’s attack. We find out that one of the late man’s daughters has fallen ill, with mysterious wounds on her throat, and is convinced she is damned.
To make a very confusing story short, the vampire is in fact an old woman who resides in the nearby graveyard. Gray and one of the servants go about staking her
and subjecting her doctor-minion to what looks like a singularly unpleasant death.
The daughter feels a weight lifted from her soul and is promptly cured, and the story ends on a happy note.
Sounds like a short flick? Well, it is. At a mere 70 minutes long, the simple story is balanced by weird, winding segments that make very little sense at all. Like, for example, Mr. Gray sitting down at a bench and suddenly dividing into a shadow-version of himself,
and proceeding to explore the villains’ hideout in transparent form. He witnesses the apparent burial of his corporeal body (a very interesting scene, as we get a view from inside the coffin.),
only to return abruptly to his seat at the bench outdoors. Is this a vision? A dream? Some kind of surreal illusion? I have no idea. The main reason to watch this film is, in my opinion, for pure visual inspiration. The work with shadows is amazing,
and the movie’s tendency to linger over stark and strange shots is a joy to watch. Definitely something I would recommend to the budding cinematographer, just for research.
Now, you ask, isn’t this a double feature? Why yes!
The copy of Vampyr that I procured is packaged with a short film called Fétiche, by Wladislaw Starewicz. It was made in 1934, and is tacked innocently onto the end of Vampyr as something of an afterthought. With very little information, I happily prepare to skim through the 26-minute piece.
…I… I actually struggle for words. This thing is 26 minutes of sheer, unadulterated what the bloody hell.
It starts with a woman working away on a small toy dog. A drop of sweat (or possibly a tear) gathers on her brow and falls onto the little creature, where it promptly wriggles and burrows its way into the stuffing like some kind of salty parasite.
We are treated then to one of the blessedly brief portions of dialogue, wherein the woman’s son professes his desire for an orange, and the mother says they cannot afford such things. I hope very much that this is a dub, because no one in their right mind would allow voice acting so terrible into their work. It’s atrocious. So the little dog comes to creepy, uncanny-valley life and he, along with his companion toys, are shipped in a box to a toy store, but all the other toys escape through a hole in the box before they reach their destination. The dog is purchased but also escapes and comes into possession of an orange in a marketplace.
Then Satan throws a carnival or something
and all the other toys wind up there and do… toy debauchery? I don’t even know. Every second of horror that was missing from Vampyr is present in this terrifying little thing. My jaw literally dropped at the whirl of incoherent chaos that flashed upon the screen.
First
And then
And then
And then
And then
And then
And then
And then... I just don’t know how to describe it further. The little boy gets his orange and Satan disintegrates while the other toys get caught by the police. Just… just watch it. I’m serious. Go find a copy of Vampyr and skip the whole movie, I don’t care. You just need to see this. It makes nailbread-in-a-jar look like a wholesome, mundane thing. This is what insanity looks like.
…Fabulously well-animated insanity. Actually, I’ve found out that Fétiche is a pretty famous thing among animation buffs, and with good reason. The stop-motion puppetry is the best I’ve seen so far, and if that’s your area of interest you have another reason to track this film down and give it a look-see.
Spin.
Vampyr is © 1991 Film Preservation Associates, all rights reserved.
Fétiche is © Gelma-Film (I think).
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