LES VAMPIRES (Kino, 1914-15) D: Louis Feuillade, w/ Musidora, Edouard Mathé. Rating: NNN DVD package: none Rating: NNN
Back in the teens, Louis Feuillade invented – or swiped from other media – most of the key thriller devices we use today, and they’re all on display in Les Vampires: exotic weapons, a high-tech superweapon, death traps, secret panels, shootouts, things going boom, and classic Hitchcock-style suspense, where we know what peril awaits but the characters don’t.
It also has stock characters. Intrepid reporter Philippe Guérande (Edouard Mathé) is determined to bring down the titular gang nominally led by a string of criminal masterminds but really inspired by Irma Vep (Musidora), the movies’ first great bad girl.
The evil geniuses get busted or killed, and she just moves on to the next one and carries on with robbery, murder, kidnapping and looking good in hooded tights.
There are also special effects and stunts, the latter performed without safety wires or, for the most part, doubles. That really is Mathé fighting atop a moving train. Later on there’s a spectacular moment that prefigures Bruce Willis’s trick with the fire hose in Die Hard.
Much of the first half of this near-seven-hour epic (it was originally a serial) is delivered in static master shots and inserts. Later on, Feuillade discovers more dramatic angles, close-ups, travelling shots, pans and tilts. They’re used sparingly and must have been breathtaking back in the day.
There is no commentary, but go to Kino’s Fantomas set and you’ll find more of the same antique thrills and film historian David Kalat’s fine discussion of Feuillade, thriller history and a bit about Les Vampires.
The print was restored in 1966 and remastered for high-def. It’s got scratches, dirt and flicker, but it’s still quite watchable.
EXTRAS Pillarboxed, b&w, English intertitles.
movies@nowtoronto.com
