 Director Carl Theodor Dreyer began planning Vampyr in late 1929 , a year after the release of his previous film The Passion of Joan of Arc . The production company behind Dreyer 's previous film had plans for Dreyer to make another film , but the project was dropped which led to Dreyer deciding to go outside the studio system to make his next film . Being Dreyer 's first sound film , it was made under difficult circumstances as the arrival of sound put the European film industry in turmoil . In France , film studios lagged behind technologically with the first French sound films being shot on sound stages in England . Dreyer went to England to study sound film , where he got together with Danish writer Christen Jul who was living in London at the time . Dreyer decided to create a story based on the supernatural and read over thirty mystery stories and found a number of re @-@ occurring elements including doors opening mysteriously and door handles moving with no one knowing why . Dreyer decided that " We can jolly well make this stuff too " . In London and New York , the stage version of Dracula had been a large hit in 1927 . Dreyer and Jul created a story based on vampires which Dreyer considered to be " fashionable things at the time " . Vampyr is based on elements from J. Sheridan Le Fanu 's In a Glass Darkly , a collection of five stories first published in 1872 . Dreyer draws from two of the stories for Vampyr , one being Carmilla , a vampire story with a lesbian subtext and the other being The Room in the Dragon Volant about a live burial . Dreyer found it difficult to decide on a title for the film . It may have initially been titled Destiny and then Shadows of Hell . When the film was presented in the film journal Close Up it was titled The Strange Adventure of David Gray . 
