Les Vampires (Full Frame)

Last Minute Sales & Specials

A legendary seven-hour silent crime serial in ten episodes. "Les Vampires" follows the exploits of a brazen and resourceful band of arch-criminals who rob the rich, transfix the elite of France, and almost elude the obsessive pursuit of crusading journalist Phillipe Guerande and his sidekick Mazamette. A series of Grand Vampires with names such as Satanas and Venomous share the irresistible Irma Vep (an anagram of "vampire") as strategist and mistress. Sometimes seductively garbed in a black body stocking and a black hood, sometimes disguised as a boy or hidden in plain view as a maid, stenographer or bourgeois spinster, feared and desired by both her cohorts and stalkers, Irma is perhaps the first liberated screen woman. Shot off-the-cuff by writer-director Louis Feuillade in the streets and interiors of 1915 Paris, "Les Vampires" was banned by the Paris police for glorifying crime. A smash hit when finally released, and for fifty years celebrated as a masterpiece of French cinema, "Les Vampires" is complete and restored on one two-sided disc, with English titles and inserts, tints and an evocative orchestral score.

Insert Essay, "The Public Is My Master: Louis Feuillade and Les Vampires" by Fabrice Zagury; "For The Children" (1916), a three-minute comedy sketch by the cast and crew of "Les Vampires" to raise funds for the French war orphans, directed by Louis Feuillade; "Bout de Zan and the Shirker" (1916), an eight-minute comedy that features the child actor Bout de Zan from Episode 8 of "Les Vampires" and is directed by Louis Feuillade. Restored with English titles and inserts.Featurette, Double Sided.