An intrepid reporter and his loyal friend battle a bizarre secret society of criminals known as The Vampires.Director Louis Feuillade is something of a legend, having directed an astonishing 630 films in the silent era (and perhaps more). He is best known for "Fantomas", the serial he made prior to "Vampires", and while the former may be marginally superior, they are both exquisite in their own way, and a great example of early thrillers.Indeed, it is quite impressive that a film is seven hours long and still exists one hundred years later. Given how many silent films have since been lost forever, it is incredible that Feuillade's work seems to be intact and in great shape.

(1)Phillipe Guèrande, press correspondent, young, supple, Parisian, conventional _jeune premier, supposedly looking dashing, goes to Sologne, where the decapitated corpse of Insp. Durtal has been found, to investigate the case of the Vampires. And it is with the news of this atrocious, appalling event—the finding of a beheaded corpse—that daddy Feuillade's serial begins.Some of the scenes may seem static, _paceless, sagging—at least for one used to the snappy American serials made 20—40 yrs later; in fact, they are merely leisurely shot—the pace of a director who has hours of footage ahead to tell his story.

Serials are a low point in film history, and the period around the Great War was bad for the French film industry, as well. Commemorating both is "Les Vampires," probably one of the best-remembered serials and the most accessible French motion picture of any kind from its era.Serials are banal sensationalism aimed at lowbrow tastes. They always have been, from their inception in magazines, newspapers and other cheap literature, which has continued to this day with television. It's always been economical--promising return customers looking for a satisfying wrapping up of previous installments' cliffhangers and loose ends. Usually, the budgets for them are quite thrifty. Additionally, it doesn't require much imagination if one repackages the same devices for each episode--and even less if one repackages the same devices from previous serials--all of which Louis Feuillade, more or less, did here. In many ways, TV series are today's serials.Feuillade further popularized serials in France, which was probably inescapable anyhow with the flood of American films (and serials) into the cinemas. For some reason, he seems to have garnered more respect than any other maker of chapter plays has--even to this day. I don't know of any other director mostly known for serials offhand. His pictures have had widespread popularity in their day, but also "Les Vampires" seems to remain one of the most praised representations of 1910s cinema. It's not evident that it has anything to do with a mastery of film-making, though; to the contrary, I think that's absent. The long takes from fixed camera positions get very boring, especially the scenes of extended length--those of the characters' every action: scaling buildings, driving off in automobiles, how exactly they go about their crimes and such, as fellow commenter tedg and others have described. This is similar to the practice in early cinema that film historians have called the "operational aesthetic," but which was dated even by 1915.As other filmmakers did, Feuillade alters tinting to suggest changes of light within the story. Other filmmakers, especially those in Denmark, actually changed the lighting of the scene for the change in light within the scene, which usually required a well-positioned splice. Otherwise, like Feuillade, Danish filmmakers from around this time tended to avoid editing and camera movement, too, but they replaced it with innovations in mise-en-scène, which aid the camera in creating brilliant images, as can editing and movement of the camera. Such innovation, staging, composition, or mastery is lacking in "Les Vampires." The actors do all the work, and the camera just sits there.You might, but I don't like this serial's content, either. It's a series of convoluted story lines involving a reporter detective and his sidekick Mazamette (played by an awful mugger of an actor) trying to rid Paris of Irma Vep and the underworld criminal gang known as the "vampires." To me it seems to be nearly seven hours of each side ineptly attempting to capture, imprison or kill the other.In episode eight: Why did they give Mazamette's child a gun, and why did they originate such an elaborate scheme to arrest the bad guy in the first place? Why would they use a kid? Where was a gun in the hands of a decent shot when it should have been in other scenes? And, the vampires require a justice to arrive after enough time has been provided for possible escape to declare their prisoner guilty, although, to their credit, they never do that again. Anyhow, you see my point.(*Review title taken from "The Serial Speaks," New York Dramatic Mirror, which is quoted in the chapter on serials in "The Oxford History of World Cinema.")

"Les Vampires" (1915 - 398 minutes - B&W) is a classic of the mute cinema series directed by Louis Feuillade. In ten episodes, it counts the adventures of a masked assailants group who haunt Paris. The mythical actress Musidora [ the first "Vamp" of the European cinema ] is the star in the series, that achieved fame due to the great admiration among the surrealists (Andres Breton and Luis Buñuel were its bigger fans), seduced by the dreamily scenes that sometimes appears in the narrative. At first "Les Vampires" was rejected for the French vanguard directors, that considered it like a mere policeman series. The film was saved from destruction thanks to the efforts of the founder of the French Film library, Henri Langlois, and after years forgotten, "Les Vampires" was exhibited again in the sixties, in concurred sessions that had marked time, especially in Paris, London and New York, causing a reevaluation of the critics relatively to the work of Feuillade. Andres Bazin, the great critic of the French cinema, said that "Les Vampires" was "one of the biggest film of all the times", admiration shared with the directors of the new French cinema. Today, Feuillade is placed side by side to other geniuses of the mute period of the cinema, as Griffith, Stroheim, Murnau and Gance. The episodes: 1: The Cut Head (31 minutes); 2: The Ring that Kills (13 minutes); 3: The Red Book (39 minutes); 4: The Specter (30 minutes); 5: The Escape of the Dead Man (35 minutes); 6: Hypnotic eyes (53 minutes); 7: Satanus (42 minutes); 8: The Master of the Thunder (50 minutes); 9: The Poisoner (48 minutes); 10: The Terrible Marriage (57 minutes).