The initial reception to Vampyr in Europe ranged from mixed to negative.
The press in Germany did not like the film.
At the Berlin premiere, a film critic from The New York Times wrote: “Whatever you think of the director Charles Theodor Dreyer, there is no denying that he is ‘different’. He does things that make people talk about him. You may find his films ridiculous—but you won’t forget them…Although in many ways [Vampyr] was one of the worst films I have ever attended, there were some scenes in it that gripped with brutal directness.”
Press reaction to the film in Paris was mixed. Reporter Herbert Matthews of The New York Times wrote that Vampyr was “a hallucinating film”, that “either held the spectators spellbound as in a long nightmare or else moved them to hysterical laughter”.
For many years after Vampyr’s initial release, the film was viewed by critics as one of Dreyer’s weaker works., while in actuality, it was one of his best–and most radical–film in terms of narrative and visuals.
Modern reception for Vampyr has been more positive. The review aggregator website Rotten Tomatoes reports an approval rating of 98% based upon a sample of 40 reviews. The site’s critical consensus reads, “Full of disorienting visual effects, Vampyr is as theoretically unsettling as it is conceptually disturbing.”
Jonathan Rosenbaum of the Chicago Reader wrote, “The greatness of Carl Dreyer’s [Vampyr] derives partly from its handling of the vampire theme in terms of sexuality and eroticism and partly from its highly distinctive, dreamy look, but it also has something to do with Dreyer’s radical recasting of narrative form”.
Anton Bitel of Channe 4 comparing it to the silent vampire film Nosferatu, stating that it is “lesser known (but in many ways superior)” and that the film is “a triumph of the irrational, Dreyer’s eerie memento mori never allows either protagonist or viewer fully to wake up from its surreal nightmare.”
In 2010, Time Out conducted a poll with several authors, directors, actors and critics who have worked within the horror genre to vote for their top horror films, placing Vampyr at number 50 on their top 100 list.
Vampyr has been released with imperfect image and sound as the original German and French sound and film negatives are lost.
Prints of the French and German versions of the film exist but most are either incomplete or damaged.
Vampyr was released in the US under the titles of The Vampire, and Castle of Doom and in the UK under the title of The Strange Adventures of David Gray.
These prints are severely cut, such as the re-dubbed 60-minute English-language Castle of Doom print.
Vampyr was originally released on DVD on May 13, 1998 by Image Entertainment with 72-minute running time.
Image’s release of Vampyr is based on film restorer David Shepard produced in 1991. The subtitles are large and ingrained due to the source print having Danish subtitles which have been blacked out and covered. This DVD also included the short film “The Mascot” as a bonus feature.
The Criterion Collection released a two-disc edition of Vampyr on July 22, 2008. This DVD includes the original German version, along with book featuring Dreyer and Christen Jul’s original screenplay and Sheridan Le Fanu’s 1872 story “Carmilla.”
A Region 2 DVD of the film was released by Eureka Films in August 2008, containing same bonus material as the Criterion Collection, and commentary from director Guillermo del Toro.
In October 2017, Criterion released the film on Blu-ray, made from a new HD digital transfer of the 1998 restoration.
