Vampyr

Watched Carl Dreyer's Vampyr last night... I can't think of another film that replicates that elusive, intangible feeling that comes with being on the edge of sleep. The weird movement of the actors caused by the under cranked camera, the reverse shots, the milky photography, the strange shadow play, the sudden breaks in continuity all add up to perhaps the most singular vision in Horror Cinema. I've seen the film perhaps 4 or 5 times over the years between the odd TV screening, the UK Redemption video and the Master of Cinema DVD, and still I was looking ahead to the moment in the film where Allan Grey sees dirt shoveled down upon him from the vantage point of inside his own coffin - but of course no such scene exists in the film. I was probably seeing the film thru the prism of later horror films – there are similar moments in The Evil Dead and City of the Living Dead, but it seems oddly appropriate that I would experience this false memory with Dreyer’s dreamlike film…