Freely adapted from classic Victorian supernatural tales by author Sheridan Le Fanu, Vampyr tells the story of a young man who becomes involved with two sisters, one of whom, wasting away with a strange sickness, turns out to be the victim of a vampire.

In Vampyr Dreyer has transformed Le Fanu's horror tales into a mystic quest, a meditation on the theme of death, and neatly fashioned it as an abstract experimental film. The camera is like a sleepwalker, leading us trancelike into a labyrinth from which cause and effect have disappeared. The hauntingly sinister atmosphere created is disquieting and unforgettable.

Summary from
Foreign Films.com

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

Editorial Reviews
Amazon.com

Complete credited cast:

Julian West (I) .... David Gray
Maurice Schutz .... Lord of the Manor
Rena Mandel .... Gisele
Sybille Schmitz .... Leone
Jan Hieronimko .... Doctor
Henriette Gérard .... Marguerite Chopin
Albert Bras .... Old Servant
N. Babanini .... His Wife
Jane Mora .... Nurse