Review of The Fearless Vampire Killers (1967) by Tero H — 16 Nov 2008

This movie has a really peculiar atmosphere. It is both dark, light, slightly ominous, yet totally silly, while being stereotypic and paradoxically very original and inventive. It gets better the more you watch it - a rare thing with a movie.

Professor Abronsius played by Jack MacGowran looks and behaves in a fashion suited for a crazy scientist, but I found Polanski's character rather ..bland.. somehow. As if his directing the movie was taxing to his performance as Abronsius' "sidekick". Or perhaps his character's meekness is what I observed. The stunningly beautiful lady so well played by Sharon Tate was interesting to watch as well.

I saw the restored European version of the movie, not the one spoiled (so I heard) by the American movie company. I got this on DVD, unfortunately the dvd doesn't have that much in the way of extras.

I sort of remembered the movie to be scarier than it was, so I have to conclude that this is not a horror movie, this is a comedy about the classic vampire horror-myth. Theres a lot of physical humour. So I guess one has to like comedies or vampire movies or both to like this one as much as I did. If you don't like either a lot, you probably won't like this one either. For me this was a fun, simple, charming vampire-movie which made me laugh.