LA DOLCE VITA • 1960 • Directed by Frederico Fellini

OK, let’s get it out of the way, right off the bat. I think La Dolce Vita is the greatest film ever made; in fact, a perfect film. A perfect film is one that has no missteps, no awkward moments, no bad performances, nothing to take us ‘out’ of the film; a film that flows seamlessly and of a single piece, sound and vision working as one, transporting us to the world of the filmmaker for the duration, and making that world a part of who we are for the rest of our lives. There aren’t many of them: Vertigo, The Searchers, Jules and Jim, Blow-Up, The Rules of the Game  come to mind. You probably have a nomination of your own. Let me tell you why I think La Dolce Vita is such a film. Or, rather, let’s let one of the characters tell us.

Despite the abundance of pleasure and sensation in which his world is steeped, Marcello (Marcello Mastroianni) is... not... happy...

Midway through LDV, Steiner, the doomed aesthete whose sudden and inexplicable fall from grace propels the tragic last third of the film, is telling Marcello (Marcello Mastroianni), the anguished, soul-searching gossip journalist/would-be novelist who ‘tells’ the story of the film, why he loves his favourite painting.

 The doomed aesthete Steiner shares his great love (and great fear) of life's beauty with Marcello.

“Everything is bathed in a wistful light, yet painted with a precision and rigor that makes it almost tangible... You could say it’s an art where nothing is coincidental...”. It is, in fact a perfect description of Fellini’s art. Every shot, its movement, its details, the movement of the actors in the shot, and the impeccable rhythm of their editing, is controlled by the director’s absolutely certain knowledge of how exactly to reproduce his vision for us on screen. These felicities come to light mind you, after multiple viewing with a critic’s eye (I just watched it for about the tenth time); but on first viewing, such is Fellini’s genius that none of this technique is apparent; we are simply swept away by a film that is positively musical in its rhythms and structure, the pace and emotional levels of each scene rising and falling wave-like, in ‘movements’. Like many of his films, LDV reflects Fellini’s love of cabaret and the circus, and many scenes literally contain performances of some sort, but every scene in this symphony of a movie is, in a sense, a song, a ‘number’ - a curtain rising to reveal a short, vivid meditation on yet another aspect of the human condition. If this sounds pretentious, it’s not. LDV succeeds where so many ‘art’ films fail, tackling virtually all of the major life questions, (real vs. abstract, idealized love, art vs. commerce, corrupted religion vs. real spirituality, commitment, aging and death), yet in a way that never calls attention to itself: the symbolism is not leaden or obvious, rather it is woven masterfully into the fabric of the film (something that cannot be said of some of Fellini’s later work).

 Marcello, in a prison of his own device...

The superb screenplay has its characters discuss the eternal verities in a way that springs naturally out of normal human conversation; at parties, nightclubs, in their quiet personal moments, and in a way that never announces an agenda or spells out conclusions. Indeed, Fellini’s gift is so great that many single shots in LDV convey more human truth than other films in their entirety: the sight of Marcello’s aging father, after a night of ill-advised partying with Marcello, and an attempted dalliance with a nightclub dancer, sitting with his back to the camera, in the center of a spare room, bathed in the early morning light, speaking in the unnaturally calm and quiet voice of someone who has just peered over the abyss, tells all we will ever need to know about the terror of growing old, of knowing we can no longer behave as we did when we were young. 

One of the most iconic images in movie history – Marcello Mastroianni and Anita Ekberg share an immortal moment in Rome's
Trevi Fountain...

There are many such indelible shots in LDV: Marcello and Sylvia (Anita Ekberg) quietly leaving the Trevi fountain as the water is shut off in the early morning, accompanied by Nino Rota’s melancholy theme; the rain that begins to fall at the end of the devastating ‘Miracle of the Madonna’ sequence, as if God himself were crying at the perversion of his purpose; the fluttering of the curtains in the bedroom of Steiner’s children - all conveying a wealth of emotional and spiritual information in a few perfectly played moments.

 In a few quietly spellbinding moments, Fellini sums up the bankruptcy of Organized Religion...

Much has been made of LDVs ‘decadence’, but it is, of course, a deeply spiritual film. Even the Catholic National Legion of Decency noted that, though ‘dangerously themed’, LDV was “animated throughout by a moral spirit”. In fact, Fellini shows his hand in the first, majestic shot that begins the film: a helicopter is airlifting a statue of Jesus to St. Peter’s. It passes by the ancient aqueducts to fly over the arid, colourless apartment developments in which many of the characters live, and, with St. Peter’s dome framed in the distance, the shadow of Jesus passes over the blank wall of the apartment building. In a few stunning moments, we have passed (with a powerful spiritual symbol in tow) from ancient times into the ‘present’, in which Fellini seems to feel that humanity is in deep, deep trouble. 

...and the possibilities of true faith.

In an impromptu striptease both erotic and sad, a bored, disconnected socialite tries to make contact... with her own true nature...

Marcello, who is unable to step out of his comfortable, hedonistic rut long enough to embrace the creativity and love of art dormant in him, and Steiner, who can, but is not comforted by them, are haunted by this central emptiness. “I’m making a mistake… We’re all making a mistake…” Marcello mutters, as he decides to stop being cynical for a moment and famously join Sylvia in the Trevi Fountain. “I am frightened by peace”, says Steiner as he caresses his children for the last time. “I fear it is only a shell, and that hell is hiding behind it”. The spiritual quest of these characters is also echoed in Marcello’s search for the perfect female (when he already has one who loves him with all her heart) as well as in the many ascents and descents in the film; the characters are always climbing; stairs, towers, hills, balconies, scaffolds, as if they will somehow get a better view of themselves and the world. While Fellini is openly disdainful of organized religion, he seems to be saying that a simple and organic spirituality lies below the surface in all of us, if we will only, like the mediums which appear in several of his greatest films, allow ourselves to hear it. 

...while Marcello tries to avoid his better self at all costs.

In the final scenes of LDV, as the partygoers from an empty and pathetic orgy to which Marcello has fled after Steiner’s death sleepily file out onto a neighboring beach, they discover a grotesque dead sea creature in the surf, as if humanity’s rejection of its natural innocence and nature had itself been washed up on the shore, its dead eyes accusing the assembled company. “It…insists on looking at us” says Marcello. Their spiritual deadness is reinforced by a thread of miscommunication that runs through the entire film. LDV was filmed as the Hercules and Spaghetti Western booms were just going into full swing, and the American and European expatriate actor/hangers-on who populate the film are constantly shouting at each other in a multitude of languages, in a near constant state of miscomprehension. The film is, in fact, bookended by two eloquent scenes which cement this theme: Following the helicopter transporting the Christ statue at the film’s start, is another, carrying Marcello and his best friend and photographer Papparazzo (yes, that’s where the term ‘Paparazzi’ came from) who are for once, covering something besides a busty starlet cheating on her husband. Their attention is drawn by a group of women sunbathing on a roof, and they stop and hover over the women (shifting their attention, as the film often does, from the sacred to the profane). The women want to know where the statue is going, the men want the girl’s’ telephone numbers. They shout at each other over the engine noise, to no avail, and eventually Marcello and Paparazzo fly away.

 As his fellow revelers casually take in the ruination of Nature, Marcello spots a faraway vision —

And, in LDV’s final immortal scene, as the revelers are staring at the beached sea creature, Marcello sees someone waving at him from across a small inlet. It is a young, beautiful and innocent young woman who works at a roadside cafe where Marcello has periodically tried, unsuccessfully, to work on his long neglected novel. She is beckoning him to come back to the cafe (she mimes a typewriter) and by extension, to spend time with her. At first, they shout over the crashing waves and Marcello cannot hear.  But this time, the communication is finally received, and Marcello understands. He first shrugs nonchalantly, then, fully realizing what he is turning down, he winces for a fleeting, bitter second, waves her (and his future) away, and turns back to his companions. For all his longing for a higher purpose, he cannot take the step; he is too far gone. The girl smiles wistfully, and then, for a few electrifying seconds before the fade to black, looks straight at the audience. The ball is now in our court.

...in the form of a beckoning Better Life...

...and, sadly, shrugs it off...

If all this sounds heavy, well, the subject matter often is, but the viewing experience is most definitely not. La Dolce Vita is sharp, funny, sexy, and so richly depicted in every frame, that we are entranced by one of the most compelling, fascinating and entertaining films ever made. Even the most ordinary scenes are gorgeously photographed in lush, razor-sharp black and white, and Fellini pulls some extraordinary performances, not only from the big names, but in unexpected places as well. Swedish sex bomb Anita Ekberg’s entrance (from a plane ramp to an adoring crowd) seems to parody the very persona she was saddled with for most of her career, but here she is wonderfully vulnerable and warm as Sylvia, the ‘American’ movie star who turns out, beyond her impossibly voluptuous appearance, to be a whole lot deeper, and wiser, than either we or Marcello expect. Rock fans will be surprised and amused by then-model Nico, who, as one of the more prominent partygoers, is daffy, funny, and completely removed from the somber Goth image she was soon to adopt in The Velvet Underground.

Marcello shares a moment of peace with his long-suffering girlfriend Emma (Euro B-Movie queen Yvonne Furneaux) which, thanks to his intractable disaffection, is doomed not to last...

B-movie regular Yvonne Furneaux is tremendously affecting as Emma, Marcello’s long-suffering girlfriend, and French actor Alain Cuny gives the performance of his career as Steiner, whose Zen-like calm and love of great art hide a terrible, deadly dread of life and living. In every respect, La Dolce Vita is, finally, a riveting film experience, unique and unforgettable. If you’ve already seen it, you already know what I mean; if this is your first time, you are experiencing a film to which you will return, every few years, for the rest of your life. It is, after all, a perfect movie.

Blade Runner • 1982 • Directed by Ridley Scott

Roy, the Combat Model Repicant: All these moments will be lost… in time… like tears in the rain…
— Rutger Hauer to Harrison Ford in Blade Runner

When Blade Runner was finally released in 1982, after a long, arduous and grueling production history, marked by equal measures of technical difficulty and personal turmoil, it met with a decisively lukewarm reception from a confused and disappointed public. In the wake of Harrison’s Ford’s sudden rise to stardom in Star Wars and Raiders of the Lost Ark, adoring new fans expected to see ‘Indiana’ in another riproaring, uplifting sci-fi epic. What they got was a dark and dystopian dreamscape of a movie, a violent futurist nightmare with the heart of a classic private eye noir, and a lot more on its mind than explosions and derring-do.  Additionally saddled with a lugubrious studio endorsed faux Raymond Chandler narration (which Ford purposely read in as expressionless a manner as possible, hoping the studio would drop it) and a mawkish ‘happy’ ending based on unused footage from, of all things, The Shining, Blade Runner was doomed in its initial run. Over the years, a number of different cuts of the film appeared on tape, laser disc, and in festival showings (a total of seven discrete versions, according to Paul Sammon’s terrific essay The Seven Faces of Blade Runner), provoking continued fan interest and debate; and with the release in 1992 of the Official Director’s Cut, this emotionally charged, visually resplendent film was, finally, and properly, acknowledged as Ridley Scott’s masterwork, and quite arguably, the best science fiction film of all time.

Ridley Scott's Blade Runner takes place in one of the most breathtaking and convincing created realities in Film...

Based on the 1968 novel Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? by sci-fi master Philip K. Dick (other Dick-based films run from the superb Minority Report to the execrable Total Recall, but Runner remains the first, and still best, adaptation of Dick’s work), Blade Runner takes place on a pollution-racked, rain-soaked and decaying planet Earth, in a time when the powerful and privileged have long since fled to far flung space colonies to live a lifestyle maintained and protected by armies of hyper humanized androids, or ‘replicants’. The latest incarnation of these sophisticated humanoid creatures, the Nexus 6, as a result of having been given artificial memories, the better to be controlled, have been inconveniently developing self-awareness and real emotions; and, like most oppressed beings whose needs and humanity go unrecognized, have begun a furious and bloody revolt. 

We're not gonna take it... anymore...

Called in to ‘retire’ four replicant escapees, including ‘pleasure model’ Pris (Darryl Hannah) and the brooding, angst-ridden ‘combat model’ Roy (Rutger Hauer), old-school retired cop Deckard (Ford, in his finest role) is brought out of retirement to ply his greatest skill: an almost preternatural ability to hunt down replicants, whom he stubbornly dismisses as machines. As the violence of the replicants, (spurred on by a desperate search for a way to evade the built-in fail-safe of their 4-year lifespan) escalates, Deckard pursues his prey without pity. But, after doggedly hunting and brutally killing beautiful ‘assassin model’ Zhora (in a thrilling and disturbing chase setpeice drenched in blood and shattering glass), Deckard is inexplicably stricken with remorse… Is it due to his losing battle against falling in love with the stunning and ethereal experimental replicant Rachael (Sean Young), or does Deckard’s hatred of replicants reflect his own misdirected self loathing, born of a dawning realization of his own origins…

Doomed Love doesn't come any hotter than Sean Young in Blade Runner

Script, acting and direction notwithstanding, great science fiction films stand or fall, finally, on the strength of their artificially rendered ‘authenticity’; and Blade Runner’s thought provoking, romantic story is mounted in the most believable and awe-inspiring ‘created world’ ever designed for film; a jaw dropping and unforgettable visual landscape which stands as the best, most convincing argument against the current all-pervasive dominance of computer generated imagery, or CGI.

While CGI can slavishly imitate the surfaces, textures and movements of the real world, nothing takes the place of a real object in real space captured by a camera on film. The model-based backdrop envisioned by effects pioneer Douglas Trumbull and production designer Syd Meade, with its richly imagined detail and uncanny and seamless melding of actual Los Angeles locations (The Bradbury Apartments, The Bonaventure Hotel, Union Station and Frank Lloyd Wright’s Ennis House) with their gorgeously wrought models and the legendary MGM backlot ‘city street set’, presents this anti-utopian environment with such unimpeachable realism that our disbelief is successfully and permanently suspended from the opening frames. 

Without the “oh yeah, right…” reaction that generally accompanies even the most expensive CGI, we are allowed to be swept, without the distractions of cheap fakery and bombast, into Blade Runner’s difficult, demanding, and arrestingly romantic story, unimpeded. While the rich, multi-textured and multi-layered score of Vangelis (unfairly dismissed as the composer of the pedestrian and tediously over-referenced Chariots of Fire) is rightly noted for its sweeping swathes of epic synth and late-night noirish piano themes, it just as often seeps into and interacts with Peter Pennell’s superb sound design, as tactile visuals, sounds and music combine into the vast tapestry of rain-soaked metal, stone and glass which is the LA of Blade Runner’s near and melancholy future.

That other Achilles heel of much science fiction cinema , the corny, overwrought hammery of bad acting by cardboard characters, is also conspicuously missing in Blade Runner. The film is blessed with a sparse and tersely eloquent script, and is packed with canny, colourful performances by such character notables as M. Emmet Walsh and Edward James Olmos as Deckard’s police handlers, the great Joanna Cassidy as doomed hitlady/stripper Zhora, Darryll Hannah as the punkish and deadly Pris, James Hong, hilarious as eye designer Hannibal Chew, and especially William (Newhart’s ‘my other brother Darryl’) Sanderson in a surprisingly subtle turn as the replicants’ pathetic co-creator Sebastian. Ford is desperately convincing and affecting as a seemingly ordinary guy caught up in a most extraordinary situation; unable to stop his destructive pursuit of Pris and Roy even as its essential injustice and his own true nature are slowly and surely dawning on him. The life of the film, however, belongs equally to two actors whose performances here belie the unfortunate arc of their careers in the 25+ years since Runner. As Rachael, the soulful android who clings mournfully to memories that she knows are artificial, Sean Young is hypnotic and drenched in sadness; vulnerable and irresistible.

Are Memories what make us real? Or is it Dreams? And is there a difference?

And, as the tortured, anguished Roy, whose demand for justice and recognition as he rails against the approaching darkness render him more heartrendingly ‘human’ than many of Runner’s actual humans, Rutger Hauer delivers the performance of a lifetime: majestic, and at once childlike and terrifying, Hauer compels us to sympathize with, and even root for, an often repellent character who has, as Roy tells Deckard “done some questionable things…” As Roy’s frantic search for meaning and affirmation lead him to a confrontation with his ‘maker’ that evokes myths from Prometheus to Frankenstein, Hauer’s performance is a wonder of controlled rage and afflicted pathos; ironically, the elegiac rooftop passing of this supposedly non-human character is one of the great death scenes in film. While both these actors have continued to work steadily and

… like tears in the rain…

creditably over the years, Young’s personal demons, and Hauer’s typecasting as an otherworldly plot device have resulted in the unfortunate underuse of their considerable talents; one hopes that career-resurrecting roles still lie in their futures.

It’s too bad she won’t live… but then again, who does?

— Edward James Olmos to Harrison Ford in Blade Runner

Complementing its fine performances and stunning production, and further distinguishing Blade Runner from the competition, is its unusual and compelling sense of poetry. The thread of tears – Rachael’s gentle weeping as she is rebuffed by Deckard’s initial rejection of her ‘humanity’, the constant refrain of rainfall, and Roy’s dying ‘tears in the rain’ metaphor; and the recurring imagery of eyes (traditionally proffered as the window to the soul) – The extreme close-ups of eyes that open the film, the iris scans of the ‘Voigt-Kampf test’, Pris’ shamanesque eye makeup, the artificial owl that glides though the hallways of the Tyrell corporation, impassively peering at its creators; even the method of Roy’s killing his creator – all hauntingly suggest the central questions of Blade Runner: What makes up a soul? How do we access that soul? What makes us ‘human’? And who decides? Key also are the origami figures left everywhere by the seemingly callous cop Gaff (Olmos), and the fake family photos to which the replicants cling so dearly (even Deckard’s second victim, the brutish Leon [Bryon James] is obsessed with retrieving his snapshots). Much has been made of Blade Runner’s metaphorical evocations of social ills, from racial and sexual prejudice to the then nascent AIDS crisis; today, in the wake of our increased awareness of the tragic dilemma of Alzheimer’s, Runner, with its central emphasis on the crucial importance of memory in the human makeup, is newly and poignantly relevant.

In the age of DVD, ‘Director’s Cut’ has come to be associated with self-serving assertions of studio interference with the creative vision, accompanied by the equally self-indulgent addition of bloated, often gratuitous material better left on the cutting room floor. In the case of Blade Runner however, a few simple but crucial changes (along with a newly minted print) have rendered perfect an already powerful and nearly perfect film. The addition of the brief but all-important ‘unicorn’ shot in the film’s first third, the removal of the silly ‘happy ending’ shot at its conclusion (the ending actually still remains very cautiously hopeful), and the excision of that hamhandedly obvious and completely unnecessary narration, have restored Ridley Scott’s ambitiously thoughtful and completely thrilling meditation on no less than the nature of consciousness itself, to its highly original and riveting self.

The Fearless Vampire Killers (aka Dance of The Vampires) • 1967 • Directed by Roman Polanski

Herbert von Krolock: Someone’s heart is beating around in their bosom… pitter pat… pitter pat… 
like a rat in a cage…
— Iain Quarrier to Roman Polanski in The Fearless Vampire Killers

French Poster for "Bal Des Vampires"

From the beginning of the long and winding road that has been the film career of Roman Polanski, the Polish-born director’s films have been judged not only by their often considerable merit, but as a kind of post facto barometer of his tragedy-haunted, scandal ridden life. The corrosive alienation and jaundiced world view of his early successes Knife in the Water (1962), Repulsion (1965) and Cul-de-Sac (1966)) taken as a reflection of his being left alone to escape the horrors of the Warsaw Ghetto and survive the war in the Polish countryside at the tender age of nine; the pessimistic, paranoid (and brilliant) Rosemary’s Baby of the fears of a successful young director dependent on strangers in a foreign environment; the brutal, feral violence of Macbeth redolent of the horrific murder of his wife, unborn baby and 4 friends at the hands of the Manson family; his whole post-exile career seen as a long string of reflections on personal morality, corruption, and a string of artistic missteps and/or commercial failures

viewed as some sort of karmic/filmic comeuppance. All this ephemera was, happily, put to rest (at least for a bit) with the commercial and critical success of the Oscar/Cannes Prize-winning The Pianist and the equally well received The Ghost Writer, and the presumably healing effect of the 2008 documentary Roman Polanski: Wanted and Desired; a good time, perhaps, to revisit the one Polanski film that can truly be enjoyed completely on its own, the light-hearted and baggage-free The Fearless Vampire Killers, an affectionate, charming homage to the Golden Age of Gothic Cinema in general, and 60’s Hammer vampire films in particular.

The plot is, in fact, classic Hammer: Dedicated vampire hunter Professor Abronsius (Jack MacGowran), accompanied by his naïve assistant Alfred (Roman Polanski), is hot on the trail of master vampire Count Korlock (Ferdy Mayne), who is terrorizing a small

Art imitates Life: Alfred falls instantly for the Innkeeper's radiant
daughter, and who could blame him? or Roman...

Balkan village from a perch in his standard-issue forbidding castle in the surrounding foothills. After receiving the requisite “Vampires? What vampires?” response from the cowering villagers, Abronsius and Alfred settle down for a decidedly uncozy night in which Alfred falls instantly in love with the innkeeper’s ravishing daughter Sarah (Sharon Tate) only to witness her violation and abduction by Korlock and his minion, hunchback-from-central-casting Koukol (Terry Downes). Determined to eradicate the scourge of Korlock’s iron grip of fear and rescue the somewhat less-than-innocent Sarah, Abronsius and Alfred head for Castle Korlock, armed only with the Professor’s encyclopedic knowledge of bats, and a bag of antique vampire killing tools which the lovestruck, albeit terrified Alfred is far too squeamish to actually use…

The special magic of Vampire Killers, is, of course, its loving evocation of the mood and visual splendor of Hammer classics such as Brides of Dracula and a long line of Christopher Lee Dracula vehicles stretching over 15 years (Horror of Dracula, Dracula Has Risen from The Grave); as well as Roger Corman’s seminal Poe series (Fall of The House of Usher, Pit and the Pendulum); and while the first third of Vampire Killers evokes an almost slapstick, spoofy (and even occasionally lame) ambiance, once our intrepid vampire hunters head for the castle, the extraordinary team of Production Designer Wilfred Shingleton and Art Director Fred Carter go into overdrive, riffing on the great production designs of Hammer’s Bernard Robinson and American International’s Daniel Haller with ten times their budget; transforming Vampire Killers into an eerily whimsical adult fairy tale, replete with moonlit mountain vistas, snow-covered parapets and a sensual,

The Vampire Saga as Fairy Tale: The extraordinary production design of Wlifred Shingleton and Fred Carter

if musty decadence. Quotations abound from its sources: the vampire aristocracy and midnight ball from Don Sharp’s Kiss of the Vampire, the hall full of leeringly evil family portraits from House of Usher, and even a sly nod to Nosferatu in a vampire’s fast-motion skittering across a rooftop. Vampire Killers

Polanski's shout-out to Hammer in general, and Don Sharp's Kiss of the Vampire in particular

even 

occasionally rises to the poetic, as with a shot of our heroes’ skis drifting, dreamlike, into the darkened forest, leaving them stranded at Korlock’s castle. All this ethereal atmosphere is aptly coloured by the sly, provocative score of Polanski's favourite musical collaborator, Polish Jazz composer Christopher Komeda, who died in a tragic skiing accident months after completing Rosemary’s Baby (whose score essentially invented the now common horror-movie trope of the sinister children’s voices ‘la-laa-laaa’ theme).

Vampire Killers is, admittedly, not without its faults, and, notwithstanding an only sporadically clever script, the film’s main problem lies primarily with its two protagonists. Savvy enough to know he wasn’t stalwart hero material, Polanski makes of Alfred a timid, simple sort, but lacks the skill of a great clown necessary to make him a believable hero as well. And, despite terrific character performances in many a European film, and a brilliant turn in his own masterpiece Chinatown, here Polanski is reticent and hard to understand, and just, well, Not Quite Right For The Part. And frequent Samuel Beckett interpreter Jack MacGowran,

while lovable enough (in

The Vampire Saga as Slapstick: The Professor and Alfred gallantly Bumble Against Evil...

slightly hammy, theater-y way), seems to be channeling not a brilliant, courageous Van Helsing type (Peter Cushing’s pivotal Hammer role) but rather the sort of local color, comic-relief-in-a-bad-wig usually provided by the equally hammy and lovable Michel Ripper. Still, however ‘slightly off’ Polanski and MacGowran may be, they grow on us; and the rest of the cast is wonderful, starting with the great Ferdy Mayne as Count Korlock. All sneering suaveté and deadly menace, Mayne

The great character actor Ferdy Mayne in the role of a lifetime as the charismatic Count Korlock

walks the fine line between dead sincerity and parody with just the right tone: Gently tongue-in-cheek enough to fit perfectly into the movie he’s in, but commanding and charismatic enough for us to wish there had been an equally deft Van Helsing stand-in for Korlock to confront, and to fantasize about a non-existent, never-to-be, ‘serious’ Hammer vampire film led by Mayne as Dracula. While Mayne carries the film’s delicious last third, the whole structure and playful, saucy tone of Vampire Killers is woven around the wonderful Tevye-esque innkeeper Shagal, played by veteran British comic actor Alfie Bass (best known to Americans as Harry on Are You Being Served?). Incorrigibly lecherous yet adorable while human, and completely amoral yet still adorable as a vampire (though one of the kvetchiest vampires on record!) Bass utters (when confronted with a cross) the film’s most famous line — ‘Oy, have you got the wrong vampire’ — and dominates the film when Mayne is not on screen. Equally good are Sharon Tate as the purring semi-virginal Sarah (fresh from a turn on The Beverly Hillbillies as Miss Hathaway’s secretary [!],
Tate is not only luminously, ingenuously beautiful, but touched by a canny intelligence not generally found in the average amply-bodiced Hammer Heroine; (it is impossible not to imagine the crushing blow her death
must have been to Polanski); and actor-producer (Godard’s Symapthy for the Devil) Iain Currier, who turns what might have been a silly, stereotypical Gay Vampire bit into a genuinely sensual and sexy foe, seemingly on loan from Andy Warhol’s Dracula: we are tempted to wonder whether the flummoxed Alfred is recoiling in horror from the foulness of vampirism or the fact that Quarrier is turning him on.

The vampire saga as gender confusion? 'Shall we allow an Angel to pass'?

One last fleeting glimpse of Sharon Tate for
the road...Why? Because we said so...

It is interesting to note that this spot-on synthesis of 60’s Horror Style was made, not with the foreshortened, nostalgic hindsight of a Quentin Tarantino tribute, but at the height of the genre’s cycle, and, despite the fact that Polanski (semi spoiler alert!) cannot resist a typically mordant (and genuinely surprising) twist at film’s end, The Fearless Vampire Killers/Dance of the Vampires remains Polanski’s most innocent and purely ‘enjoyable’ film. Shall we ‘Dance’?

Interested readers are encouraged to track down issue # 27 of the superb Hammer Fanzine Little Shoppe of Horrors, which Is entirely dedicated to Fearless Vampire Killers; containing, among many wonders, much information on the criminal hacking apart of the American release by Martin Ransohoff and Filmways, and the many differences between it and Polanski's complete European cut, which we now enjoy on cable and DVD.