The Fearless Vampire Killers (1967)

Official trailer

The Fearless Vampire Killers deserves its 6.5 as a beautiful, uneven oddity, a horror comedy more interested in atmosphere than in jokes, and it works more often as a gorgeous gothic fairy tale than as a laugh-out-loud parody. Roman Polanski made it in 1967, between his early masterpieces, as an affectionate send-up of the Hammer vampire films then in vogue. It looks wonderful, it has real charm, and it’s only intermittently funny. That makes it a strange recommendation.

You watch it for the craft and the mood more than for the comedy it promises.

I’m torn on this one. I’d frame half its shots and hang them on my wall, and the long stretches between gags still try my patience. It’s a film I admire more than I enjoy, and the 6.5 is where those two feelings meet.

The film carries a sad shadow now. Sharon Tate, who plays the innkeeper’s daughter and who married Polanski shortly after, was murdered two years later, and her luminous presence here is hard to watch without that knowledge. It lends the film an unintended melancholy that deepens its already wistful tone, and I find her scenes the hardest part of the picture to take lightly.

A Parody That Loves Its Target

The film follows a bumbling old vampire-hunting professor and his clumsy assistant as they travel through a snowbound Transylvanian landscape and stumble into the castle of a courtly vampire count. The plot is a loving inversion of the Hammer formula, with incompetent heroes, a vampire who’s more decadent aristocrat than menace, and a climax at a grand ball of the undead. Polanski clearly adores the genre he’s spoofing, and the affection shows in how lovingly he recreates its trappings.

The comedy is gentle and often visual, built on slapstick, awkwardness, and absurd situations instead of sharp wit. The professor is a doddering fool, the assistant a lovesick incompetent, and much of the humor comes from their bungling. Some of it works beautifully, especially a sequence where the assistant must waltz at the vampires’ ball while trying to hide that he and his companions are the only ones casting reflections in a mirror. Other gags fall flat or go on too long. The film’s comic batting average is mixed.

The Look of It

The film’s greatest strength is its visual beauty.

Polanski and his cinematographer create a sumptuous gothic fairy-tale world of snow-covered forests, a magnificent decaying castle, and candlelit interiors of real splendor. The film was shot in widescreen and color at a time when horror was often cheap, and it looks like a lavish storybook come to life. The snowbound exteriors in particular are gorgeous, and the great ball sequence, with its ranks of moldering aristocratic vampires dancing in a ruined hall, is a showpiece.

The ball is where I fall for the film. Those rows of rotting aristocrats dancing in a ruined hall, with the mirror gag giving away the living guests, make up the one stretch where the jokes and the design pull in the same direction. I wish the whole picture had that snap.

This visual richness is the main reason to see the film. Polanski treats the comedy almost as an excuse to build a beautiful gothic world, and that world is the lasting pleasure. The film is worth watching with the sound down as a piece of pure design.

That’s both a compliment to its images and a quiet criticism of how much its comedy delivers. The craft outpaces the humor consistently.

The Tonal Uncertainty

The central problem is that the film never quite decides how funny it wants to be. It drifts between comedy, gentle whimsy and stretches of straight gothic atmosphere that aren’t played for laughs at all. The jokes are spaced so far apart across those atmospheric passages that the rhythm loses me, feeling closer to a leisurely fairy tale than a comedy, and I’d have cut twenty minutes to let the laughs build some momentum.

There’s also a strain of melancholy and even cruelty running underneath, very much Polanski, that sits oddly against the slapstick. The ending takes a darkly ironic turn that’s clever and tonally jarring after ninety minutes of gentle whimsy. I like the sting in it, and I also think the film hasn’t earned it, because it spent so long telling me nothing here could hurt. It’s charming and accomplished, and it never settles on being a light romp or a darker fable.

Is The Fearless Vampire Killers worth watching?

The Fearless Vampire Killers deserves its 6.5 as a gorgeous, affectionate, tonally uncertain oddity, a Hammer parody that succeeds more as a gothic fairy tale than as a comedy. Polanski’s love for the genre and his extraordinary visual craft create a sumptuous storybook world, and the great vampire-ball sequence is a showpiece. It loses points for a mixed comic batting average, a leisurely rhythm that works against the jokes, and a tonal uncertainty that keeps it from fully landing as either comedy or fable.

A beautiful, charming, flawed film worth seeing for its craft and its place in the genre, and Sharon Tate’s luminous presence now gives it an unintended sadness. I land at 6.5 because the eye behind it is so good and the comedy it promises shows up so rarely. I’m glad it exists, and I’m frustrated that it isn’t funnier.

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