"Imagine that we are sitting in a very ordinary room. Suddenly we are told that there is a corpse behind the door. Instantly, the room we are sitting in has taken on another look. The light, the atmosphere have changed, though they are physically the same. This is because we have changed and the objects are as we conceive them. This is the effect I wanted to produce in Vampyr" (Dreyer, quoted in Ebbe Neegard, Carl Dreyer, BFI). In a way comparable only to F. W. Murnau's Nosferatu, Dreyer's Vampyr is a horror film that relies on-as it preys on-the viewer's subconscious apprehensions. If in all other Dreyer films a stark materialism opens the door to the spirit, here the material world is as gossamer as fear itself: people glide through walls, shadows have no owners, dogs bark and children cry though there are no dogs or children to be seen; characters, like sounds, dissolve with no explanation into the wild play of light and shadow. Into this nightmare wanders the loner David Gray, stopping at the proverbial inn where he encounters the two daughters of the innkeeper, a seemingly pleasant old lady, and desire in its most feared form: vampirism.