The Fearless Vampire Killers are anything but fearless or even effective vampire killers though they believe that they are. Roman Polanski directs and stars in the film as an elderly professor’s assistant. His assistant, who is more like a glorified servant, and the professor are researching vampires in Transylvania. The villagers are clearly hiding something and are possibly collaborators in their destruction. There are only three women, but not for long. The two attempt to rescue her, but their goal is disproportionate to their skill.
The Fearless Vampire Killers is not funny. If you know a little bit about Polanski’s life, it almost seems autobiographical. It takes place in Eastern Europe, which is the region where Polanski is from. There are no heroes in this movie, but there is a literal threat to all humanity—like the Nazis who invaded his country. The vampires are blond and dream of a future where they will be great again. They exploit the villagers, and their attacks are framed as sexual assaults regardless of the gender of the victims, the assistant and Polanski’s future wife, Sharon Tate. Tate’s character is snatched while taking a bath, which is eerily prophetic of Polanski’s future rape of a thirteen-year old girl in a swimming pool. The Count’s son stares at Polanski’s eyelashes, tries to sling his arm over Polanski’s shoulders to show him a book, ultimately gives up the pretense and attacks him in bed. Polanski’s character narrowly escapes. The Professor even asks, “Did you provoke him,” i.e. what were you wearing? When Polanski was young, he was almost caught by a serial killer. Sometimes victims of sexual assault, which I am not saying Polanski is, go on to abuse others, and others who are artists are compelled to revisit these traumatic moments in their creative endeavors.
There are plenty of other types of vampires. Those who are aware of this threat, collaborate with and strive to ascend to the same level as their oppressors. Polanski reserves the bulk of his disgust for the innkeeper, who is Jewish, financially exploits his guests, sexually harasses a servant girl and hypocritically physically abuses his guests and his daughter to keep her safe from the sexual threat posed by the vampires and the visitors. Even though I am not Jewish, and Polanski is, I fear that his depiction of the innkeeper is anti-Semitic. Ultimately, he never belongs. He is not like them. They will never accept him, show him hospitality or protect him. He will not be exempt from their destruction.
There are also those who are aware of the threat and want to stop it: the professor and his assistant. To name evil and face it, one must leave the comfort and safety of academia, but also face disgrace and sacrifice his reputation. The intellectual understands the threat, but is largely ineffectual and nearly dies a number of times before even facing the threat. He is all theory and has no practical experience. His assistant is servile and only slightly less ineffectual, but his character flaw is his obedience to someone so inept. Their biggest error is that once faced with the threat, they are unable to confront and stop evil. Instead they fall into well-established societal roles and engage in polite conversation with the Count. Anything else is classified as “bad tactics.” They cosign and uphold a hierarchy that will ultimately lead to destruction. They are more willing to defer to power and status than puncture the illusion and act as if they are in danger. They decry the collaborators for being cowards, but are no better. They don’t see the women as people, but sexual objects and ogle them as much as the vampires.
The Fearless Vampire Killers is a portrait of self-loathing and anger directed at himself and his fellow countrymen. Polanski basically raised himself and could not rely on adults to protect him from the Nazis so when the Nazis were finally defeated, and his family tried to reinstate the hierarchy, he rejected their attempt to recreate the illusion of order. This film cynically shows a truth that most movies reject. In the face of great evil, only the innate vulnerability of the evil force will arrest its ability to envelope the world. Most people, even those who oppose it, will not fight, not fight effectively, strive to be a part of it and intentionally or not, aid in its spread. He uses symmetrical scenes of escape and a failure to escape by the assistant, the servant girl and the innkeeper’s daughter to teach a cruel lesson. History not only repeats itself, but things usually get worse so it is best not to get used to the habits of living: taking the same road, having the same routine, staying in a place of peril. In contrast, the camera angles are distorted and cut people off at odd angles. Relationships are impossible since every thing is skewed. Our way of seeing the world is perverted.
Polanski also does not deceive himself that he did anything but survive or exempt himself from the consequences of this infection. Based on the ending of this film and many of his others such as The Ghost Writer, The Ninth Gate, The Tenant, Chinatown and Rosemary’s Baby, his survival is ambiguous. He does not really survive although his specter may still walk among us. His real self died, and his undead self is corrupted. The Fearless Vampire Killers is a cynical tale of upholding a system even if it means deference to evil and the apocalypse by failure to revolt or reject deference to power.