Toronto Silent Film Festival & The Fox Theatre's annual Hallowe'en Silent Scream Special presents “One of Cinema’s greatest nightmares”, Carl T Dreyer's 1932 classic Vampyr as a silent film with live accompaniment at the historic 100+ year old Fox Theatre.

"I wanted to create a waking dream on screen and show that horror is not to be found in the things around us but in our own subconscious,” said Danish film-maker Carl Theodor Dreyer whose loosely adapted Sheridan Le Fanu’s two stories, Carmilla and The Room in the Dragon Volant for his tale of dread. His use of shadows and light create a profoundly unsettling film experience, whose rich atmospheric settings move seamlessly between perceptions of nightmarish dreams and reality.

Vampyr was released as a minimalist sound film with the director using the silent film aesthetic to its fullest extent. We're returning it to that state with live music. The dialogue was nominal at best, and with English subtitling, nothing is lost.

Vampyr holds its place in the canon of vampire film lore as one of the most deeply disquieting experiences. Don’t see it alone.

To get you in the proper mood for Vampyr, we're starting off with the rarely screened 13min. short, The Fall of the House of Usher 1928 directed by James S Watson & Melville Weber

With nods to The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari, Der Golem and Faust, this avant-garde ode to German Expressionism is a fantastical montage of imagery designed to encapsulate the claustrophobia and instability in Poe’s classic morbid tale.

Welcoming the talents of composer Laura Sgroi on the piano for accompaniment

Tickets: $15 ($13 for Fox Members/Seniors) Advance Tickets ON SALE NOW via the Fox Theatre website (not through the festival). Tickets will also be available at the door. The historic Fox Theatre is licenced.