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.

She is beautiful. Her cascade of red hair set against drab surroundings is like a warm fire on a miserable night. Little wonder she thinks getting kidnapped by an aging vampire is a step up from her dreary life among the rabble. When Polanski follows her to the vampire’s castle and vows to rescue her, her soft reply is “There’s a party tonight…. Did you see my dress?”

She’s not giving up her new position for some love-struck schoolboy. She sneaks away when his back is turned…. As a director Polanski has a gift for showing the differences between men and women through their actions and motives, and often the way a man can misread a women because he is caught up in his own fantasy. Polanski’s hero crashes the undead party but Tate is unimpressed until his rescue speech changes tactics midstream to promises of Venice and the world beyond her mountain village. For the first time Tate shows interest….

Polanski’s boy-hero grows up - but not because he rescues the girl or slays the villain. He grows up when he discovers he must play into her fantasy to win the girl.