'Vampyr: The Dream of Allan Gray') is a 1932 gothic horror film directed by Danish director Carl Theodor Dreyer.

It was written by Dreyer and Christen Jul based on elements from Sheridan Le Fanu's 1872 collection of supernatural stories In a Glass Darkly.

The film was funded by Baron Nicolas de Gunzburg, who (credited as Julian West) also played the starring role of Allan Gray, a student of the occult who wanders into the French village of Courtempierre, which is under the curse of a vampire.

The film was shot entirely on location, and to enhance the atmospheric content, Dreyer opted for a washed out, soft focus photographic technique.

Late one evening, Allan Gray, a wandering student of the occult, arrives at an inn close to the village of Courtempierre, France, and rents a room.

He is awakened from his sleep by an old man, who enters the locked room and leaves a small rectangular package on the table with "To be opened upon my death" written on the wrapping paper.

He also sees an old woman who seems to hold sway over the shadows, and encounters an old man with a mustache, who shows Gray the door.

Giséle, the lord of the manor's younger daughter, is there when he dies, but her sister, Léone, does not leave her bed, as she is gravely ill. A coachman is sent to get the police, and the old servant's wife invites Gray to stay the night.

As he begins to read about how the creatures suck blood and gain control over the living and dead, Giséle says she sees Léone walking outside.

Gray wakes up sensing danger and rushes to Léone's bedside, where he stops her from drinking poison that the old woman had the doctor bring to the manor.

Just outside the factory, Gray trips and has an out-of-body experience, in which he sees himself dead, sealed in a coffin with a window, and carried away to be buried.

They open the grave and find the old woman perfectly preserved, until they hammer a large metal bar through her heart, at which point she becomes a skeleton.

[a] The ghost of the lord of the manor appears to the doctor, causing him to run away and the soldier to fall to his death down a flight of stairs.

[8] Carl Theodor Dreyer began planning Vampyr in late 1929, a year after the release of his previous film, The Passion of Joan of Arc.

[10] As Vampyr was Dreyer's first sound film, he went to England to study the new technology, and, while there, he got together with Danish writer Christen Jul, who was living in London at the time.

At that time, in France there was a small movement of artistic independently financed films, including Luis Buñuel's L'Âge d'Or and Jean Cocteau's The Blood of a Poet which were both produced in 1930.

[10] Gunzberg had arguments with his family about becoming an actor, so he created the pseudonym "Julian West", a name that would be the same in all three languages in which the film was going to be shot.

[12] Many of the film's crew members had worked with Dreyer on Joan of Arc, cinematographer Rudolph Maté and art director Hermann Warm among them.

Dreyer later related that, while looking for a suitable mire, he and his team passed a house where "strange white shadows danced around the windows and doors".

[14] Critic and writer Kim Newman described the style of Vampyr as being more like that of experimental features such as Un Chien Andalou (1929), than "quickie horror film[s]" made after the release of Dracula (1931).

[15] Dreyer originally was going to film Vampyr in what he described as a "heavy style", but changed direction after cinematographer Maté showed him a shot that came out fuzzy and blurred.

[1][16] This washed-out look was an effect Dreyer desired, and he had Maté shoot the rest of the film through a piece of gauze held three feet (.9 m) away from the camera to re-create it.

[21] When it finally premiered in Berlin on 6 May 1932,[19][20] the audience booed the film, and Dreyer reportedly removed several scenes following the first showing.

Castle of Doom, an English-dubbed version edited severely as to both the film continuity and the music track, appeared a few years later on the roadshow circuit.

[12] After the Berlin premiere, a film critic from The New York Times wrote: "Whatever you think of the director Charles [sic] Theodor Dreyer, there is no denying that he is 'different'.

[12] Reporter Herbert Matthews of The New York Times called Vampyr "a hallucinating film", that "either held the spectators spellbound as in a long nightmare or else moved them to hysterical laughter".

[35] The Eureka release contains the same bonus material as the Criterion Collection discs, but also includes two deleted scenes and an audio commentary by director Guillermo del Toro.