VAMPYR: FROM CARMILLA TO CARL DREYER
It started out simply enough, as a review of the 1932 horror film VAMPYR. But as in all aspects of life, I have no self-control, and so off we go into a history of vampire literature, the transition from silent to sound film, the Pagan-horror stories of Arthur Machen, the wild costume parties of Baron Nicolas Louis Alexandre de Gunzburg, and yeah, somewhere in there we talk about Vampyr.
“As mentioned, the film’s protagonist is Allan Grey (Julian West), described in a title card as a man steeped in the study of the occult and macabre secrets of the world and prone to wandering the land in search of mysterious experiences (inspired, some claim, by the character of Dr. Martin Hesselius from In a Glass Darkly). That might be one of the earliest examples of the “informed attribute,” when a movie insists that a character embodies a particular skill or trait despite all evidence on screen to the contrary. Allan Grey seems to have absolutely no knowledge of the occult or any sort of competency in identifying it or dealing with it. In fact, his sole skills seem to be looking in windows and bugging his eyes out in confused terror.”
-----Keith Allison is the chief Bacchanologist at Teleport City.
#1 by JASON FARRELL on October 8, 2014 - 10:55 am
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I am so glad that you reviewed VAMPYR because I saw it for the second time recently and the clearest thought I had “This is the backbone of Lucio Fulci’s entire catelogue, both horror and non-horror” – Structurally and atmospeherically, I would be be quite surprised if that wasn’t Fulci’s root fim
#2 by JASON FARRELL on October 8, 2014 - 10:58 am
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“Upon its release in Europe, audiences booed Vampyr and yelled insults at it. One particularly unruly crowd stormed the box office of their theater and demanded a refund of their ticket prices”
Also, I would like to call on The Warriors Rule, wherein any film where the above happens immediately means that movie is awesome.
#3 by Alaric on October 8, 2014 - 9:16 pm
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Y’know, in Soker’s novel, Dracula walks around in broad daylight, too.
#4 by El Santo on October 9, 2014 - 9:10 am
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“Y’know, in Stoker’s novel, Dracula walks around in broad daylight, too.”
Funny, isn’t it? Not one of the four foundational 19th-century vampire stories has the vampire more than mildly inconvenienced by the sun. The notion of vampires as strictly nocturnal really didn’t make the jump from folklore to pop culture until Nosferatu, and even then it took a radically different form from what the legends portrayed. Traditionally, it wasn’t that sunlight destroyed vampires, but rather that during the hours of daylight, they went back to being just ordinary corpses. The only modern take on the subject that I know of to use that idea is the PRC George Zucco vehicle, Dead Men Walk.
#5 by James on October 12, 2014 - 3:59 pm
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“Traditionally, it wasn’t that sunlight destroyed vampires, but rather that during the hours of daylight, they went back to being just ordinary corpses.”
That seems to happen in the Herzog film, since Van Helsing finds Dracula on the floor and declares he needs a stake and hammer to finish him off.