 The entire film was shot on actual locations with many scenes shot in Courtempierre , France . Dreyer and his cinematographer Rudolph Maté took part in scouting for locations for Vampyr . Dreyer left most of his scouting to an assistant , who Dreyer instructed to find " a factory in ruins , a chopped up phantom , worthy of the imagination of Edgar Allan Poe . Somewhere in Paris . We can 't travel far . " In the original script , the village doctor was supposed to flee the village and get trapped in a swamp . On looking for a suitable mire , the crew found a mill where they saw white shadows around the windows and doors . After seeing this place , they changed the film 's ending to take place at this mill where the doctor dies by suffocating under the milled flour . 
