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Overview
With all the talk about the new Nosferatu remake, it made sense for the horror dudes to take a look at another classic vampire film – Vampyr. There is a lot to like with this black and white film – even the vampire hater, Rhys, got something out of it. How does it compare to Nosferatu? Check out this latest side dish to find out what we think.
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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vampyr
https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0023649
Trailer
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https://archive.org/details/Vampyr1932
[archiveorg Vampyr1932 width=640 height=480 frameborder=0 webkitallowfullscreen=true mozallowfullscreen=true]
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Transcript
[00:00:00]
Stephen: Another side dish which I love all this. I was looking at our website actually, and I, I’m going to change the Christmas horror to Feast holiday feast So anyway, today we’re doing a public domain on vampire It’s v a m p y r
Rhys: Yeah, I would go Here, but that’s what I always did.
I like that better. Yeah. Yeah, for sure. It’s from 1932. And it has three authors credited to it. Sheridan LaFanu, Christian Jewell, and Carl Theodore Dreyer. The last of which Carl Theodore Dreyer is also the director.
Stephen: Yes. He was the main guy and Sheridan was an. A writer from a hundred years before this or something like that, he had, he did Carmilla, which is a very important vampire erotica [00:01:00] story from Victorian era.
Rhys: And it’s funny too, because those are the sources that Dreyer cited that he took in, like he was doing these books, but when it all. Push came to shove. It really didn’t seem like he actually did the books. He just borrowed some themes and just did what he wanted to. So
Stephen: yeah, from what I saw he started wanting to do this before Nosferatu, but because of whatever setbacks that came out afterwards.
So maybe during all of this, he saw what Stoker’s estate was doing. Yeah,
Rhys: it’s funny because it’s that awkward period where sound was introduced into cinema but not really, people weren’t comfortable with using it yet as far as directors and production goes,
Stephen: yeah, this was his first talkie and from what I heard, he resisted, he wanted to do silent and I don’t know if, He changes mine or the studio did.
I’ve heard [00:02:00] conflicting reports on that, but it’s interesting how We wouldn’t think a silent movie nowadays would be something that would we’d push for that We’d want to do that would enthrall audiences and all that, you know at the time There was resistance to the talkies Charlie chaplain was a big proponent of keeping silent films and he wanted to keep doing silent films Because he thought the medium had better expression and all.
It’s just interesting to me as a tech guy, how resistant some people are to any change, no matter what that change is. Even when you look at it just makes sense to do talk movies and color movies and all that,
Rhys: yeah, when we were talking about freaks, the director there had come from silent movies and been very successful.
And one of the things that he was really successful on was that he would stand inches away from the actors and be telling them exactly what to do as the scene is rolling. And he lost that ability once you introduced sound into the movies. And so I can see where it’s a big leap. If you’re the [00:03:00] director where I’m going to have to give you all your instruction up front, you’re going to have to remember it and actually work with it.
As opposed to me being able to feed it to you as it happens.
Stephen: And we’ve seen in our time, the same resistance to all the computer graphics and the green screens and the resistance some people have to that. And some actors, especially like the nineties and two thousands didn’t want to act in a movie with a green screen, they wouldn’t do it.
There might be some CGI added later, but they wanted that, and now like the prequel trilogies with star Wars, by the time you got the episode three. It was all green screen. They had literally the one scene where they’re sitting around the table with Jar and they’re eating on tattooing.
Literally he filmed that eight different times from different angles and picked out the best performance from each person and put it all together into one. That’s eight different scenes compiled.
Rhys: Yeah. I don’t really know that he’s saving himself much time that way. If you’re going to do it Yeah.
Dreier was Dutch. And They shot this in France, and the funny thing was, they did the sound [00:04:00] afterwards. Yes. They were just lip syncing. In the scenes, and then they went to Berlin and recorded the sound and married them up
Stephen: because they did three languages at one time, German, French, and English.
Okay. They did do English right away.
Rhys: Yeah, and Germans, the only one that survived
Stephen: and they had to recreate it. From the German some of the stuff that was lost.
Rhys: Yeah. It was really interesting to me. The book was written in English. And Dreyer was really big about the book because some of the producers were pushing just to do it as like title cards.
And he is no, because the book itself is its own character. And so he insisted on keeping it as like a book that you would open up and read through the pages.
Stephen: I was wondering because I thought. I was watching like a dubbed version or whatever the criterion collection So it must be a pretty important movie to be included in criterion collection But when they were reading the book, it was [00:05:00] english words So I didn’t know if they like literally went in and changed that but I guess it really wasn’t english.
Rhys: Yeah And it is a very important film just some of the stuff they do, like they shot this all through gauze. They held gauze in front of the camera and then depending on how foggy they wanted everything to look would determine how far away the gauze would be from the lens of the camera. So it gives the whole thing this kind of, the whole film feels very surreal.
Stephen: It does, but I also felt like for the older black and white movies we’ve watched, this one, Was the first one that really felt like modern film techniques. It felt like almost like it, it was put into black and white because it was a decision like, one of Edgar’s film, Edgar’s films or something, it felt modern in that.
And some of those things they did with shadows. The special effects, like when he astral projected and they separated the body and the shadows coming to life and interacting [00:06:00] with the real world type stuff, really some bizarre things going on in this movie. I was very impressed. I was like this movie.
Was way ahead of its time as far as themes and content in the movie
Rhys: and not unlike, whenever this happens anytime when it first screened in Berlin, people were actively booing it and at one showing, they demanded their money back and the theater wouldn’t, oh, weren’t going to give them their money back, it turned into a riot, police had to come in with Billy clubs and disperse the crowd.
Stephen: What was it? We said the one time when the cop showed up and we were playing, Hey, for us, any media is good. Media
Rhys: is good news. That’s right. It did better in France. It did better in England. It did better in the States, but he missed the opening in France. Cause he was busy having a nervous breakdown over how terrible it did in Germany.
Stephen: And, that’s so hard because. I look at it now and I’m like, this is a great movie knowing the time period. I wouldn’t say, Oh my God, this is better than Avengers Endgame. I’m never going to watch [00:07:00] Endgame once again. I wouldn’t even cancel my like TV subscription to watch this show, but it’s crazy how.
Things now, we’ve got many cult movies. We enjoy that at the time people were like, that’s the worst thing ever. People should be beheaded because of it and stuff. And now it’s like people are like, Hey, that was pretty good.
Rhys: Yeah. Yeah. I think the other thing that really struck me was that the cast was made up entirely of normal people except for two professional actors.
Maurice Schultz and Cybill Schmitz were both actual actors, but everybody else were just people they found on the street. Except for who played Alan Gray and that was played by Julian West who went on to become a fashion mogul But he had money and was willing to fund the film as long as he got to star in it
Stephen: Yeah, if you’re rich you can do whatever you want.
Rhys: Yeah
Stephen: He did a good job really well, but
Rhys: it was the only movie he’s ever [00:08:00] done.
Stephen: That’s pretty cool. The only that sitting around it with your billionaires smoking your cigar saying I was in a movie once I paid for everything. So of course I was in it, but I was in it, right?
I, one of the things I really appreciated about it, and it’s, some of the end felt a little disjointed. It was like, wait, what is going on? Where is it? Wait, they’re going, wait, who’s what? That was a little weird. But I appreciated the fact that the vampire. Was a woman, an old woman, and she was just mean and nasty, so they wouldn’t let her into heaven, and so she’s a vampire, and they described it in the book as that creature that comes up from the depths and, she didn’t look all decayed or anything like that, but that’s my favorite type of vampires.
Rhys: Yeah. It’s really interesting. And vampires are like Krampus where it was, it’s a mythology that happened from veil to veil, to hill, to mountain. And so there’s all these different blends of effects that what does it, how they [00:09:00] work, how they react. And it’s always just cool to see that stuff.
Stephen: It was an iron stake in this one, not a wire
Rhys: and stake, right? Through the heart at sunrise.
Stephen: Yes. Yes. And they did really good with the body transformed a skeleton, and there was some interesting like when the poison when they’re handing it, it was a skeleton hand and yeah, I love the poison though, big poison symbol.
So everyone in the audience could tell what it is. Yeah. The only real big comment I have was there was one single shot scene that. Lasted for a while three quarters of the way through or so. And I thought it was fantastic with the because this was before steady cams. This was when most cameras were set down and they didn’t move, but they had several where the camera adjusted and followed people.
And they had this 1 shot where he actually moved between a couple rooms following people in that. And that was pretty impressive. I thought again. This movie was [00:10:00] way above its time for the time period compared to some others.
Rhys: Yep, for sure.
Stephen: All right. So there we go. Vampyr and we have plenty more coming up.
We’ve got more public domain side dishes. We’ve got plenty of regular episodes with all the best choices. And we’re getting down on season five here. We got a new episode coming out as of this recording later this week. There’s a lot going on and we’ve got calendars now every month of the year on the website, and then we’re putting new releases that for that month which isn’t necessarily every new release, but trying to get the ones people are expecting in that.
Some exciting things, anyone listening, go check out the website. Listen to all the episodes. We’ve got some good stuff. Absolutely. And Hey, remember your side dishes here. You never have to pay extra for take all the side dishes you want.
Rhys: That’s
right. It’s a buffet. See you later, man. See you, Steve.
