With Vampyr, Danish filmmaker Carl Theodor Dreyer channeled his genius for creating mesmerizing atmosphere and austere, unsettling imagery into the horror genre. The result—a chilling film about a student of the occult who encounters supernatural haunts and local evildoers in a village outside of Paris—is nearly unclassifiable. A host of stunning camera and editing tricks and densely layered sounds create a mood of dreamlike terror. With its roiling fogs, ominous scythes, and foreboding echoes, Vampyr is one of cinema’s great nightmares.

SPECIAL FEATURES

High-definition digital transfer of the original German-language version of the film from the 1998 restoration by Martin Koerber and the Cineteca di Bologna, with uncompressed monaural soundtrack on the Blu-ray

Alternate version with English text

Audio commentary from 2008 featuring film scholar Tony Rayns

Carl Th. Dreyer, a 1966 documentary by Jørgen Roos chronicling Dreyer’s career

Video essay by scholar Casper Tybjerg on Dreyer’s influences in creating Vampyr

Radio broadcast from 1958 of Dreyer reading an essay about filmmaking

PLUS: An essay by critic Mark Le Fanu and, for the Blu-ray edition, an essay by Kim Newman; a piece by Koerber on the restoration; a 1964 interview with producer and actor Nicolas de Gunzburg; and a book featuring Dreyer and Christen Jul’s original screenplay and Sheridan Le Fanu’s 1872 story “Carmilla,” a source for the film

Cover by Michael Boland