Dance of the Vampires aka The Fearless Vampire Killers (1967)

(On Cable TV, September 2019) What a dud. I watched Dance of the Vampires semi-reluctantly. It was on a list of films I had to see (I don’t control the list; the list controls me) and I went in as reluctantly as I do with other Roman Polanski films. It’s hard to ignore the writer-director’s 1973 actions in confronting his filmography, and I’ve noticed that my favourite Polanski movies (which aren’t the ones you’d expect) work in spite of him rather than because of him. Dance of the Vampires further invites discomfort because it features Sharon Tate as a damsel to be rescued from a murderous cult (or vampires, but still) by none other than Polanski himself playing an apprentice vampire hunter. But even if you completely disregard the whole matter of Tate’s murder and Polanski’s flight from justice for rape, Dance of the Vampires is a hard film to like. Billed as a comedy, it now feels tedious and unremarkable. Part of the problem, I suspect, is that there have been many movies satirizing vampire films over the decades (even for kids!) and even the latest vampire films often have touches of humour far funnier than anything here. Seen today, Dance of the Vampires isn’t nearly as fresh as it must have felt back then. It’s also frankly dull—the comic devices are tired, the jokes are lame and the ending is a downer. As a result, it’s a comedy without laughs and a vampire film without thrills. It felt interminable and too easily satisfied with weak jokes. Some movies have survived well through the decades, but Dance of the Vampires isn’t one of them. Made redundant and repugnant by later life events and later movies, I can’t bring myself to recommend it except to dedicated film history students.