History has not been kind to Dreyer's Vampyr

History has not been kind to Carl Th. Dreyer's Vampyr (1932), one of the first, though not the first (see, Nosferatu) cinematic depictions of the vampire legend. It was one of Dreyer's first films in the sound era but to be honest it could just as well have been a silent, as there is virtually no dialog and a lot of film-time is wasted w/ a scrolling text from an "ancient" book about vampires, filling is in on the whole legend, with which everyone now is well acquainted. In this telling, we follow a young man visiting the country (outside Paris, apparently) who stops at a decrepit country inn where his sleep is interrupted by horrid noises - and eventually by the death of another guest! The young man wanders over to a nearby half-ruined estate where he learns about the vampire legend and somehow feels obligated to help break the curse by keeping a stricken young woman awake through the night and aiding in the plunge of a stake into the heart of a vampire corpse. The plot elements are extremely difficult to keep straight, not is there any need to dwell on the story line. Main the film is memorable for a few striking images and some groundbreaking photography: misty outdoor scenes in which the protagonist seems to drift away from his own body (probably shot in double-exposure?), skeletal hands, a woman's face in possession and slowly transforming into a vampire grin, a deadly scream in the night, the entombment of the camera and the illusion we have of being carried to a waiting gravesite, the death by live burial of the vampire's assistant, plus others. But there are so many more frightening and imaginative vampire and zombie movies over the past 50 years or so: Night of the Living Dead (the best!), Let the Right One In, the Twilight series - to name just a few - that Dreyer's comes off today as perhaps foundational but not especially weird or scary or thoughtful. Unlike his other great films of this era, such as the Passion of Joan of Arc, this one comes off more like a relic than a masterpiece.