"Fearless Vampire Killers" (1967)

Released in 1967 as Dance of the Vampires or Pardon Me but Your Teeth Are In My Neck, the U.S. title was shorter, as apparently was the movie. The home video version claims to be unedited with an extra twenty minutes of footage, but one can hardly imagine what would have been cut, even by the late sixties standards. This film, directed by Roman Polanski, is a spoof of vampire themes and movies, notably those of the Hammer films. It features the two-man team, a “Van Helsian” older professor (Abronsius) and his bumbling younger assistant (Alfred, played by Polanski). The film follows their exploits as they arrive at an inn in central Europe with the mission of finding and destroying a vampire.

In spoofing the vampire film, it serves to highlight many of the themes of the genre. The nature of evil is clearly presented. The vampire “cult” in the film is just that, presented clearly as a congregation devoted to “Lucifer.” It is a religious community to rival the community of faith set out to attack it. However, the community of faith in Fearless Vampire Killers is not one of faith, but of mere academic knowledge. Professor Abronsius has devoted his life to studying the evil of vampirism, but in doing so he sees it as a scientific subject, and has no fear or respect for the evil. In this aspect he is very un-Van Helsian, and that is his undoing. They may be “fearless,” but they fail to kill a single vampire in the film.

To this writer’s knowledge, this is the first vampire film in which the good not only fails to defeat the evil but the evil actually wins. The end of the film has the vampire hunters trapped in the castle; about to be consumed by a group of vampires involved in their annual ball. They manage a daring escape; saving a girl whom was also a prisoner at the castle. Unfortunately, she had already been attacked and as they race away from the castle in a sled she completes her transformation and bites the professor’s assistant. A voice over narration, that also introduced the film, informs the viewer that Professor Abronsius in an effort to destroy vampirism has in fact enabled it to spread to the world. In this final voice over, the voice of the narrator is recognized to be that of the head, or pastor, of the vampires.

Therefore, the end of the sixties has turned many of the themes of Stoker’s novel on their heads. Evil is still a supernatural power that is all too real, but the community has lost its power to overcome it. Good does not overcome evil. This is a powerful statement and reflects the changes in western culture. Modernity has lost its footing. Whereas Stoker did critique the modern culture, and showed the reality of evil that it had denied, he still had enough faith in it that it overcame the evil by facing it. Polanski shows the modern culture and worldview, embodied in Abronsius, as a danger. It seeks to know the world and explain it, but does not respect it and therefore is destroyed by it. This theme would gain ground in later films.