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If you’re hungry for another Gothic vampire period piece in the wake of Nosferatu, sink your fangs into The Vourdalak on Blu-ray on April 8 from Oscilloscope Laboratories.

The 2023 French film is adapted from Aleksey Konstantinovich Tolstoy’s 1839 novella The Family of the Vourdalak, which predates Bram Stoker’s Dracula by over half a century.

Adrien Beau makes his feature directorial debut from a script he co-wrote with Hadrien Bouvier.

Special Features:

Behind the scenes Les condiments irréguliers – 2011 short film by Adrien Beau La petite sirène – 2011 short film by Adrien Beau Theatrical trailer

The film is presented presented with 5.1 surround stereo sound in French with English subtitles.

When the Marquis d’Urfé, a noble emissary of the King of France, is attacked and abandoned in the remote countryside, he finds refuge at an eerie, isolated manor. The resident family, reluctant to take him in, exhibits strange behavior as they await...

Adrien Beau’s feature debut The Vourdalak is a horror film that brings a unique vibe to the table. A French, period-set vampire tale that utilizes some unique effects work to bring the titular fiend to life. The Serbian folk monster the Vourdalak is not exactly the same thing as a vampire, but they’re close cousins. The legends carry a lot of similarities, and Beau uses those to play with audience expectations, while throwing in some unexpected turns at the same time.

Based on a 19th century novel by Aleksey Konstantonovich Tolstoy, The Vourdalak opens with a young French nobleman, the Marquis d’Urfe (Kacey Mottet Klein), lost in the Serbian woods. He has been robbed by bandits, and is completely alone. He eventually finds his way to the home of Gorcha, where he is taken in by the family. Though Gorcha is the patriarch, he is absent when the Marquis arrives.

Stars: Kacey Mottet Klein, Ariane Labed, Vassili Scheider, Grégoire Colin, Claire Duburcq, Gabriel Pavie | Written by Adrien Beau, Hadrien Bouvier | Directed by Adrien Beau

The Vourdalak, or if you prefer, Le Vourdalak, is the most recent adaptation of Alexei Tolstoy’s novella The Family of the Vourdalak. Written in 1839 and first published in 1850, it has already been filmed several times, most famously as the final segment of Mario Bava’s Black Sabbath, the Italians returned to the story in 1972 with Giogio Ferroni’s The Night of the Devils and most recently as A Taste of Blood by Argentinian director Santiago Fernández Calvete.

This time it’s French filmmakers, director Adrien Beau and co-writer Hadrien Bouvier who are adapting it. They begin the film with Marquis Jacques Antoine Saturnin d’Urfe looking for shelter after an attack that wiped out his entire entourage. The owner of the first house he stops at refuses to help,...

"Everything was fine here before you arrived." Oscilloscope Labs in the US has revealed the official trailer for a very peculiar French film called The Vourdalak, described as "an acclaimed 18th Century vampire tale." This initially premiered in the Critics' Week sidebar of the 2023 Venice Film Festival last year, and it will get a limited art house theatrical opening it the US this summer. For any who dare venture in to explore its darkness. Lost in a hostile forest, the Marquis d'Urfé, a noble emissary of the King of France, finds refuge in the home of a strange family... "Adapted from a novella (Aleksei K. Tolstoï's "La famille du Vourdalak") that predates Bram Stoker's Dracula by over half a century, The Vourdalak is an atmospheric, unexpected, sensorial experience that will leave you reeling and giddy in equal measure." Starring Kacey Mottet Klein as Marquis d'Urfé, along with Ariane Labed,...