Oeuvre is an in-depth examination of the entire body of work of an important director.
Roman Polanski’s 1967 film The Fearless Vampire Killers is a source of confusion right down to its title. Released internationally as the more mellifluous Dance of the Vampires and hampered with the ludicrous alternate title or Pardon Me, But Your Teeth Are in My Neck, Polanski’s movie is practically a study in misunderstood intentions. Aimed somewhere between an homage to classic horror films and lightly ribald comedy, Vampire Killers is a lovingly made adult fairy tale and the sign of a director not quite powerful enough to sway studio designs to his own wishes.
Fresh off international success with 1965′s masterful Repulsion (and its less well known follow up, Cul-de-Sac), Polanski suddenly found himself a valued commodity, a an auteur for whom studios would risk cash over. Making the most of his opportunity, Vampire Killers is far more lavish than his previous films. Filmed in (glorious!) Metrocolor, featuring elaborate costuming more suitable to a Shakespearean historical film than a comedy-horror and taking place in enormous, crafted to aged-perfection sets, the film is visually magnificent. It opens with a trippy animated title sequence that combines shifting craters/blobs with dripping blood and that slowly pulls out to reveal a full moon above a snowy field. It looks like something out of a children’s picture-book, which makes it only more remarkable when a sleigh slowly jingles across the snow and into the film.
Vampire Killers’ protagonist is ostensibly Professor Abronsius (Jack MacGowran), a kooky Van Helsing-type dedicated to destroying vampires, although there’s no evidence that he’s ever actually found one; in fact, the opening narrator makes a point of noting that his university colleagues call him “the nut.” He’s accompanied on the sleigh by his assistant Alfred (Polanski), a cowardly, rather foolish young man easily swayed by a bit of deep cleavage. And there’s sure a lot of that. Vampire Killers is one of the lightest of Polanski’s films, not least due to his cavalier and almost teenage attitude towards sensuality; where Knife in the Water and Repulsion dealt with obsessive, borderline antagonistic takes on sexuality, the amount of action you get here is via a naked Sharon Tate covered in bubble bath. Which, to be fair, is pretty amazing.
The film’s plot is more a series of running jokes and sly clichés than a full narrative; there’s a magnificently hideous hunchback, a series of crucifix gags (including a Jewish vampire laughingly waving one away) and even what very well might be the first gay cinematic vampire. It’s a movie about horror tropes and how they can be twisted easily into comedy, although it tends to be more of the “smile knowingly” than “laugh aloud” variety, not about a clever story. Instead, the movie moves forward due to its knowledge and affection for its own sources; the head vampire, Count von Krolock (Ferdy Mayne), is a clear parody of Christopher Lee’s Dracula, while the elaborate decrepitude of his castle serves its own series of cobweb-based jokes. MacGowran’s Abronsius, rather than a focused killer, is practically a master of pratfalls, unable to set down his bag of garlic and stakes without tripping over it. Similarly, Alfred is so bumbling as to not be taken remotely seriously, a vampire hunter who can’t stand to drive a stake in a coffin.
Vampire Killers is masterfully shot and framed, with crack comic timing from MacGowran in particular. But it’s also a lightweight movie, a case of a young director playing with the possibilities that his early success brought him. It’s particularly notable that it’s the first film that Polanski cast himself in as more than a cameo; although according to his autobiography, he wanted to play the young hitchhiker in Knife in the Water, his desire not to be seen as an auteur overreaching by directing, writing and acting won out. That desire clearly didn’t have the same sway here, or at least his confidence after a few internationally applauded efforts was a bit higher.
The film was unfortunately edited for American release (butchered would also be an acceptable term), with voices redubbed and entire sequences removed, regardless of how such deletions impacted the film’s continuity. Apparently Polanski was infuriated by this studio interference, but the critical blasting it received upon release can only be partially blamed on that. At this stage in his career, a numbskull-and-boobs undead comedy must have seemed bewildering and a step down for the pride of Polish cinema. The director’s first foray into big budget films has become a strange footnote in his career, but fortunately one of his greatest successes would be just around the corner.
by Nathan Kamal
