The Fearless Vampire Killers (1967) from Johnny Web (Uncle Scoopy; Greg Wroblewski)

I reacted to The Fearless Vampire Killers about the same way that I did to Ace Ventura, Pet Detective. For the first half hour, I found myself thinking "geez, this is dumb. It's just unsophisticated, slapstick, Catskills-style comedy performed in dime-store Halloween costumes. It's the same humor as Gilligan's Island". As the film progressed, however, I found the film ever more dumb until it broke through my barriers and I started smiling at the sheer exhuberant stupidity of it. After a while, I was actually laughing out loud in a couple of places. Yes, the humor is sophomoric, but it's winning - in a way.

In some ways it's a great shame that Roman Polanski didn't become a director of comedies. Of course, if he had done that we might have lost all of his dark masterpieces like Chinatown and The Pianist, but Polanski showed some signs in this film that he might have been the greatest director ever to create comedies. He obviously has great comic timing, as he demonstrated in his writing and direction as well as in his starring performance in this crazy parody of the Dracula/Von Helsing battles. (Amazingly, Polanski was the best performer in the film, playing the Gilligan role as the bungling, likeable assistant.) In addition to his comic gifts, he has the well recognized sensibility of Roman Polanski. He has an outstanding eye for set design, editing, color, and scene composition. Therefore, he might have become the greatest director to dedicate himself to comedies in the past four decades.

Think about the direction in comedy films since the 60s. Terry Gilliam's direction kept getting better and better and Woody Allen became a good director, but Mel Brooks was just serviceable, a bit above the TV sitcom level, and Kevin Smith barely knows how to remove the lens cap. Imagine if someone with the filmmaking sense of Tarkovsky had the humor of Mel Brooks. Could those characteristics co-exist, possibly even blend amicably into something truly wonderful? I guess we are not destined to find out. This film wasn't anywhere near the "wonderful" stage, but it did occasionally show the possibilities inherent in Polanski's unique combination of talents. It showed that he might have made great comedies. Of course, he never did.

But I guess you don't need me to tell you that Polanski did not go on to become the Shakespeare of wacky cinema pratfalls.

What happened?

In 1969, his beautiful, sweet, adoring, pregnant wife was brutally murdered by the so-called "Manson family" during a deranged orgy of violence which may be the most famous murder case of the 20th century. Polanski's wife was Sharon Tate, the model and actress who was also his co-star in this film. Many people have speculated that Sharon's murder changed Polanski so profoundly that he could never again find the light side of his nature, driving him ever deeper into the darkest corners of his personality. I don't know if any of that is true, although it seems to make sense, but I do know that he never made another film with the warmth and humor and sweetness he exhibited here.