Traveler Allan Gray arrives in the village of Courtempierre and takes lodgings in a small inn. Gray has a great interest in the supernatural, particularly vampires. He’s barely settled in when he feels a sinister force descending upon him. In the night an old man enters his room to tell him ‘she must not die’. One of the old man’s daughters, Leone, has been bitten by a vampire. In order to break the curse, Gray and Leone’s sister Gisele must find the original vampire and drive a stake through her heart.

Credits: TheMovieDb.

Film Cast:

• Allan Grey: Nicolas de Gunzburg
• The Lord of the Manor: Maurice Schutz
• Giséle: Rena Mandel
• Léone: Sybille Schmitz
• The Village Doctor: Jan Hieronimko
• The Old Woman from the Cemetery: Henriette Gérard
• The Old Servant: Albert Bras
• The Old Servant’s Wife: N. Babanini
• The Nurse: Jane Mora
• Limping Man: Georges Boidin

Film Crew:

• Director of Photography: Rudolph Maté
• Producer: Carl Theodor Dreyer
• Novel: Sheridan Le Fanu
• Screenplay: Christen Jul
• Original Music Composer: Wolfgang Zeller
• Director of Photography: Louis Née
• Sound Editor: Paul Falkenberg
• Art Direction: Hermann Warm
• Set Decoration: César Silvagni
• Sound Designer: Hans Bittman
• Special Effects: Henri Armand
• Producer: Nicolas de Gunzburg
• Assistant Director: Ralph Christian Holm
• Editor: Tonka Taldy
• Assistant Director: Éliane Tayar

Movie Reviews:

• CinemaSerf: This is the ultimate slow burn, but boy is it worth it… Julian West (aka Baron Nicolas de Gunzburg) is “Allan Gray” – a wandering soul who arrives at a secluded inn in a tiny hamlet. When an old man enters him room muttering about a woman’s impending death and leaves him a book, our hero goes exploring and finds himself at an eerie old house where he discovers all sorts of creepy – vampiric – goings on; and the race is on the identify and destroy the creature before it’s curse wreaks havoc. It is by no means akin the modern day representation of the vampire; the story is depicted using hues and shadows – light (or lack of it) is enormously important to this; the “shadow” effects are also magnificently sinister and ghostly. The narrative itself is not the greatest, the story jerks about a bit, but that doesn’t really matter – it’s an adapted take on a well hewn story and Theyer’s focus on developing a sense of menace and tension more than compensates. Jan Hieronimko stands out at the poison-dispensing local quack as does Sybille Schmitz as “Léone” (interestingly, neither professional actors) in what is a beautifully evocative, scary telling of Le Fanu’s book beautifully augmented by a sophisticated Wolfang Zeller piano accompaniment.