Fearless Vampire Killers (1967)

Fearless Vampire Killers is painful to watch the first time: plodding slowly and flaunting a so-dry-it’s-probably-just-not-funny humor that is based in cringing slapstick and Yiddish vaudeville. MGM supposedly did such a slashjob on the script that director and (uncredited) star Roman Polanski disowned it on release. And yet there is magic in the film.

The sets are a marvel of manufactured decay. Every candelabra is drowned in melted wax. Every surface festooned with cobwebs. Interior textures are dense, dark, and dirty. Romanesque Gothique. Even the paintings are ghastly. The gray castle isolated in snowy mountains accompanied by disturbing choral music is cold on cold - an iconic horror setting, but the script is anything but traditional!

Thirty years before Joss Weadon, Polanski turned every vampire movie cliche on its head! Despite the title no vampires are killed, the heroes are bumbling, the ghouls range from pitiable to pathetic, and the damsel-in-distress doesn’t want to be rescued…. Polanski introduces the first Jewish vampire and the first gay (male) vampire, both unfortunately as gags…. For good measure there’s a hunchback who is an uncomfortable study in grotesque….

But there’s also Sharon Tate.
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