Carl Th. Dreyer
Denmark,
1932
With _Vampyr,_ Danish filmmaker Carl Theodor Dreyer's brilliance at achieving mesmerizing atmosphere and austere, profoundly unsettling imagery (_The Passion of Joan of Arc_ and _Day of Wrath_) was for once applied to the horror genre. Yet the result—concerning an occult student assailed by various supernatural haunts and local evildoers in a village outside Paris—is nearly unclassifiable, a host of stunning camera and editing tricks and densely layered sounds creating a mood of dreamlike terror. With its roiling fogs, ominous scythes, and foreboding echoes, _Vampyr_ is one of cinema's great nightmares.