CinemaSerf
Jun 13, 2022
7/10
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.
