1932 silent (?) vampire movie Rating: 17/20
Plot: Allan Grey, a wandering soul obsessed with the study of demons and witches and other occult interests, travels to a creepy castle. He begins seeing weird things that may or may actually be happening--shadows move around by themselves, old men deliver packages to be opened after their deaths, a grave being un-dug, general creepiness. Einstein and a woman somehow become involved, and characters read excerpts from a dull book about vampires.
First off, I really had trouble following the plot of this one. It's dreamy, wandering, and hallucinatory, so I eventually shut off the part of my brain that tries to figure out what's going on and just let it soak in the imagery and ingenious special effects. I imagine these are images that hadn't been seen by people when this came out in the early 30's. There are some odd camera angles and movements, most notably in a scene where characters are carrying a coffin with a glass window in the lid out of the castle mostly shown from the perspective of the corpse within. The effects--dancing disembodied shadows, "backwards" digging, wandering lights--work with the use of lighting and almost no sound (there's some barely audible music and a tiny bit of German [?] dialogue) to create an absorbing atmosphere that make this a genuinely creepy experience. My only complaint would be the middle third of the movie in which there's far too much plot development (and confusion) and the interjected reading from a vampire book which disrupts with an almost documentary feel, but the first and last thirds move like a slow-motion dream with lots of images that would work without the narrative as individual artistic achievements. Cool horror movie.
Here I am enjoying Vampyr in the last picture before my favorite hat was further molested by the dog:
My brain stayed on and was usually saying "what the hell?". Maybe there are better copies of this movie, but the one I watched was so poor and murky that I was often confused as to whether it was day or night, and I certainly didn't get much clarification from the movie. It does have many amazing images and I'm sure it was a wowser in 1932, but I was confused and a little bored. I did like the ending quite a bit. This is a very strange choice to follow up 'The Passion of Joan of Arc' for Dreyer, and it is like a low budget exploitation film following the superior 'Dracula' and 'Frankenstein' from the year before. A 13.
ReplyDeleteExploitation film? This movie's got such a feel to it that I'd rank it right up there with 'Dracula' and 'Frankenstein'
ReplyDeleteIt is confusing though. But I thought the murkiness was part of the charm...
I don't know. The thing was funded by the lead actor so I'm inclined to think the murk was due to the budget. But if you want to view it with murky-colored glasses, then maybe I'm being too harsh. I did like the casket scene. What I could not figure out is why he was there and what was with the out-of-body experience? Was it like Luke when he sees his own face in Vader's helmet? Now I'm really confused.
ReplyDeleteBut that reminds me... do you ever watch 'Robot Chicken'? They do a 'Star Wars' spoof and one segment shows a bunch of alien strippers under the tag-line "Toshi power converters". Very funny stuff.
Wasn't he there to do research on vampires? And the out-of-body experiences were the result of his reading from a vampire book, weren't they?
ReplyDeleteI've seen parts of 'Robot Chicken' a couple times, but I don't remember seeing any Star Wars stuff. Remember, I don't have any of that fancy cable television or anything.