The Amityville Horror (1979)

Posted on January 19, 2014 at 12:19 pm by Jeff Kuykendall

True story. When I was a kid I had an imaginary friend named Jody. I have no idea where I got the name from, but for a few years – and while expanding my imaginary clan of friends and giving them different names like the Smurfs – Jody and I hung out and played with my Star Wars figures. Here is the difference between my imaginary friend Jody and the invisible character named Jody whom the little Lutz girl befriends in The Amityville Horror (1979): my Jody did not cause rocking chairs to rock, or instruct me to leave my babysitter locked in the bedroom closet, and – perhaps most critically – my Jody was not a giant purple pig with glowing red eyes. I would have remembered that. It is strange, though: not the coincidence that my imaginary friend shared a name with the one in accounts of the haunting of Amityville in Jay Anson’s 1977 book The Amityville Horror: A True Story, but that a child’s imagination would crave something to be there that isn’t. The child craves it to the extent of constructing an entire narrative about this friend, all the while holding in the head two conflicting facts without bothering to resolve them: this is not real and this is real. It’s the same, I suppose, with a child who plays with a doll, combing her hair, dressing her up, and bursting into tears when she’s accidentally dropped to the floor. This child knows the doll is not a real person, but it does not matter, because she would prefer to believe it. The lie is too appealing, so she holds the truth and the lie in her head like Orwellian doublethink. You know what, I just realized something as I wrote this. My imaginary friend was named Joby, not Jody. Look, it was a very long time ago, and maybe for a few minutes there – actually, for the duration of watching The Amityville Horror, when I had convinced myself that my friend was named Jody – the lie my brain was telling myself was simply too appealing. So, yeah, True Story, I had an imaginary friend. That’s not as interesting, so would this have been better if, soon as I remembered the facts properly, I’d just ignored them? Come to think of it, my friend was a giant purple pig with glowing red eyes. “Get out!” he’d tell me, and we’d laugh and play with my Star Wars toys.

The Amityville house as depicted in the film, with malevolent "eyes."

Truth and no consequences? The Amityville Horror: A True Story was a colossal bestseller. It relates the story of George and Kathy Lutz, who purchased a home in Amityville, Long Island, after the previous owner, Ronald “Butch” DeFeo Jr., murdered six members of his family with a .35 caliber rifle while they slept; the Lutz family only spent 28 days in the house before leaving, claiming eerie and frightening experiences within its walls forced them out. Flies manifested and clustered, even in the dead of winter. A crucifix inverted itself. Ectoplasm oozed out of keyholes. George Lutz would find himself consistently waking at 3:15 in the morning, the estimated time of the DeFeo murders. The Lutzes’ daughter acted peculiar with her imaginary friend. A priest visited the house to perform a blessing, and claimed a voice told him to “get out.” On their last day at the house, the apparition of a hooded figure was glimpsed on the upper landing. And so on, and so on. Anson relied upon the Lutzes’ tape-recorded testimonials about their supernatural experiences at 112 Ocean Avenue, packaging the facts into a page-turner, including applying a sensationalistic title borrowed from a classic H.P. Lovecraft story, “The Dunwich Horror” (about a corrupt family that breeds with an inter-dimensional cosmic being). Many of the details recall The Exorcist, both the 1971 book and the 1973 film, which were sensations in the years prior to the Lutzes moving to Amityville, and led to a revived interest in the occult and the Satanic – similarities which have led to skepticism.

George and Kathy Lutz (James Brolin and Margot Kidder) consider purchasing a new home.

Facts are confused by countless allegations over the decades. Before contacting Anson about writing their story, the Lutzes had already reached out to William Weber, an attorney for the imprisoned killer Butch DeFeo, stating that the house was haunted and that DeFeo might have been so influenced to commit his crimes. Allegedly, Weber tried to have the Lutzes sign a contract to participate in his own planned book about the DeFeo case, but they grew squeamish for a number of reasons, including that they would need to participate in whatever publicity Weber and his associates arranged (they have frequently claimed they desired privacy), and that DeFeo himself would see financial gain from the book’s sales. The Lutzes proceeded to work with Anson on a writing project they could control, and sued Weber and his associates for invasion of privacy – and other concerns – after he commissioned a writer to produce an article on the Amityville haunting for a newspaper (one year ahead of the publication of the Amityville Horror book by the Lutz-approved author, Anson). Weber and his associates countersued, and ultimately Weber claimed that he collaborated with the Lutzes on the story of the hauntings, concocting their accounts “over many bottles of wine.” In this scenario, Weber wanted to get his client a retrial (DeFeo was claiming at one point that a figure with “black hands” passed him the rifle and coerced him into murdering his family), and the Lutzes would find an end to their financial worries. During a 1979 hearing, the Lutzes’ suit was dismissed, the judge stating his opinion that the book was largely a work of fiction and that Weber’s apparent involvement was troubling. This has been enough for some to close the case on the Amityville house, though others allege that Weber had every reason to lie, since he was claiming in his countersuit that the Lutzes broke an oral contract with him to participate in his own DeFeo book. With interest so high in the Amityville case, critics and skeptics went to work, and the foundation began to quake even further. The Anson book claimed the Lutzes discovered pig-like hoofprints in the snow outside their house, but records show there was no snow on the ground on that date. Subsequent owners of the house found no signs of the damage to doors and windows as indicated in the book, nor have they experienced anything supernatural. Books and documentaries have tried to dismantle the case and expose it as a hoax, but some have only spiraled the topic further into the bizarre: the recent My Amityville Horror (2012) limits its tale to the Lutzes’ grown son Daniel, who at one point claims that his father dabbled in the occult and is responsible for the subsequent hauntings. Rather than attempting an objective investigation of the events, it clouds them even further.

Father Delaney (Rod Steiger) witnesses a manifestation of flies in the Lutz home.

The film adaptation, unsurprisingly, adjusts the facts to tell its own version of the story, though not as much as its many sequels and spin-offs (and 2005 remake) would. Directed by Stuart Rosenberg (Cool Hand Luke) for American International Pictures at a budget of $4.7 million, it grossed in excess of $86 million, an unusual feat for a studio best known for exploitation fare like Blacula (1973), The Food of the Gods (1976), and, yes, The Dunwich Horror (1970) starring Sandra Dee and Dean Stockwell. James Brolin (Capricorn One) and Margot Kidder (Superman: The Movie) portray George and Kathy, an attractive pair who move into the Amityville house, built on a canal with a boathouse, because it’s a steal for the financially-strapped couple: the DeFeo murders – graphically depicted in the film’s opening minutes and frequently shown in flashback throughout – have sufficiently devalued the home to bring it within reach. Lalo Schifrin’s memorable score evokes an eerie lullaby somewhat reminiscent of Krzysztof Komeda’s for Rosemary’s Baby (1968) – so we know at once that this couple’s happiness will be undermined by something sinister. Soon enough, friend of the family Father Delaney (Rod Steiger, In the Heat of the Night, The Illustrated Man) finds himself trapped in an upstairs room where flies gather along the window and swarm over his face; a door finally swings open and a voice tells him to “Get out!” But all this happens without the Lutzes about, and when he subsequently tries to call and warn them, the line goes to static.

George Lutz begins behaving erratically during his stay in the house.

The film implies that George Lutz, who is revealed to bear an uncanny resemblance to DeFeo, is becoming influenced, if not possessed, by the house. Increasingly shaggy and wild-eyed, he begins to snap at Kathy and the kids, as his finances begin to unravel and his checks bounce. He aggressively chops up firewood in the yard, at one point hurls his axe long-distance into a tree trunk, and finally turns on his family, swinging the axe at a barricaded door in a scene that anticipates the following year’s The Shining (1980). Other disturbing events have been occurring, including a babysitter becoming trapped inside their daughter’s bedroom closet – even though the door has no lock – while the girl simply stares forward, later claiming that she was only doing what “Jody” demanded. Kathy walks into her daughter’s bedroom where her girl is playing with Jody, an empty chair rocking of its own accord, and when she claims that Jody was frightened and fled out the window, Kathy looks – and sees red eyes glowing back at her from behind the glass (a scene reminiscent of Suspiria). Tar-like black sewage overflows from the toilet. The family dog claws obsessively at a wall in the basement, and when George breaks through it, he finds a secret room with walls painted red, and glimpses the ghostly image of his own face staring back at him. He comes to believe that a tribe of Indians buried their mentally ill on the grounds where this house was built. Later he sees a giant pig with red eyes in the upstairs window. Finally, on the last night, the walls begin to bleed.

Bleeding walls and stairs.

The truth, the truth – the truth is that The Amityville Horror is an inferior haunted house film, and although it’s competently made, there is little here to distinguish it apart from Schifrin’s score and the well-cast leads. It’s justified in building slowly to its supernatural events, but when those events are disappointing and not particularly scary, the entire framework crumbles. Take, for example, the first major scare of the film: Father Delaney’s encounter with the flies in the locked room. Director Rosenberg spends a long time showing the flies accumulate, while Steiger simply sits there, dabbing at sweat. He doesn’t seem particularly concerned, probably because he needs to remain very still so the flies can be arranged on his face. The scene seems to take an eternity. So, too, do all subsequent scenes with Father Delaney, which mostly involve him staring lethargically at ringing phones or screaming at the top of his lungs at young Father Bolen (Don Stroud, The Buddy Holly Story); though notably Murray Hamilton (Jaws) turns up to lecture him, and seems as though he’s about to explain why the beaches of Amity(ville) must remain open. Although the scene with the babysitter invokes some chills, and the appearance of the pig is memorably bizarre, most of the film fails to connect with the necessary impact, and one simply waits for the family to wise up and get out.

"Jody" in the bedroom window.

The problem with The Amityville Horror may not lie in how it strays from the book, but actually its adherence to it. Most of the key events originate, in some form or another, with its source material, and like the dutiful, obligatory bestseller adaptation that it is, it serves up those key moments so the audience can recognize them. It would have been a scarier film if it strayed, if it invented. The red room in the basement is not adequately exploited. The actual red room is a bit of a non-starter: subsequent owners have pointed out that it’s just a small closet in the basement, not hidden in any way. But the premise is eerie enough that a good storyteller wouldn’t be able to resist; this should be the portal to Hell that the film briefly claims it to be. And the disconnected theories about what is haunting the house – mentally ill Indians, a ghost pig, Satan – ought to be brought together into a single cohesive theory. (If the hooded figure had been imported, the story would have been even more confused.) The film tells us it’s based on a true story, and audiences flocked to it for its “truthism.” A bald-faced lie might have told an even better yarn, maybe one that would have been a significant film for the horror genre rather than just a hit movie that spawned lots of sequels. The Shining is based on a novel, not a true story, but it has a story to tell and tells it well. The film resonates more deeply because it doesn’t hitch itself to something artificial that would hinder its storytelling.

George sees an apparition when he uncovers the "red room."

I had an imaginary friend named Joby. Joby did not talk to me, unless I put the words in his mouth. Joby didn’t make rocking chairs rock. But if I’m at a campfire with some friends telling stories, Joby is going to be Jody, the Amityville Horror ghost, dammit. (Granted, I would have to make up a lot of facts to make that lie work. Perhaps I should just come up with something else.) The recent film The Conjuring (2013), which deliberately invokes The Amityville Horror and its surrounding, 70’s-era phenomenon, is “based on a true story” from the files of Ed and Lorraine Warren, a demonologist and a psychic who investigated a number of supernatural events, including, famously, the Lutz case. I really enjoyed The Conjuring, but when it was over, I took the “based on a true story” about as seriously as I did the claims of the Coens’ at the start of the fictional Fargo (1996). While watching the film, I rarely thought to myself, “Oh, this happened, this is true, apparently.” What was important to me was the story was well-told and genuinely scary. When it comes to the importance of the Truth, it only depends on why you think you need it.

Posted in Theater Caligari | Tagged , , , , , , , | 1 Comment

Double Feature: The Golden Voyage of Sinbad (1973)/Sinbad and the Eye of the Tiger (1977)

Posted on December 22, 2013 at 1:33 pm by Jeff Kuykendall

When I was a child, The Golden Voyage of Sinbad (1973) and Sinbad and the Eye of the Tiger (1977) were one and the same – a four-hour Sinbad miniseries, with all the islands, wizards, beautiful girls, and Ray Harryhausen monsters randomly distributed so that I wasn’t exactly sure which belonged to which. Understand that every trip to the video store meant that I would stand there, staring at all the boxes, ruling out the R-rated films or anything that looked remotely adult (verboten when I was a child), and eventually, inevitably, I would grab a Ray Harryhausen movie and hand it to my mother or father, who would just say, “This one, again?” Jason and the Argonauts (1963), Mysterious Island (1961), or a Sinbad movie. These films were the foundation stones upon which my imagination was built. Even though the early 80’s belonged to George Lucas and Steven Spielberg, I always held the Harryhausen films in special regard. Before I even learned his name, I knew these films were connected – I recognized the stop-motion animation and the look of the monsters. (Of course that centaur only has one eye. He’s probably related to those cyclopes in The 7th Voyage of Sinbad.) These films had special special effects. Having watched just about every non-R-rated fantasy movie on the video store shelves, I knew there was a significant difference between One Million B.C. (1940), the Victor Mature movie with lizards and armadillos posing as dinosaurs, and One Million Years B.C. (1966), the remake with Harryhausen’s pterodactyls lifting Raquel Welch off the ground. You can’t dress a lizard up to look like a pterodactyl. The funny thing is that I was appreciating the films from a point-of-view that was already becoming outdated. The days of stop-motion were coming to an end, with his swan song, Clash of the Titans (1981), released around the time that I was just beginning to appreciate his films. Though both Lucas and Spielberg used stop-motion effects in Star Wars (1977) and Raiders of the Lost Ark (1981), by the end of the decade The Abyss (1989) would announce a new direction for cinema tricks.

Cinefantastique back cover, Fall 1973 issue.

Twilight Time has just released The Golden Voyage of Sinbad and Sinbad and the Eye of the Tiger on Blu-Ray, following their standard model of limiting the number of units produced (in this case, 3,000, so grab them now, before they go for exorbitant sums on eBay). It’s appropriate that they’re releasing both at the same time, so you can program your own four-hour marathon, letting all the adventures pleasurably blur together. But Golden Voyage is the more popular of the films by far, fondly remembered by monster-kids who saw it in theaters. I suspect part of this is timing. The film was released in 1973, and was a nostalgic throwback to matinee movies of the 50’s and early 60’s, in particular, of course, Harryhausen’s own The 7th Voyage of Sinbad (1958). His output was beginning to slow a bit, attributable to difficulties in securing financing for the latest “Dynamation” feature; so Golden Voyage, to a certain set, was an event picture. (Cinefantastique wrote in advance of the film’s Christmas premiere, “This could be the runaway success that the [stop-motion] animation genre so badly needs to survive and flourish.”) It was also released during a rather dire period for fantasy pictures, most of which were low-budget, with cheap-looking FX and limited imagination. Golden Voyage had a slim budget (the final cost was $982,351), but features some fantastic stop-motion work to prove that Harryhausen’s energies hadn’t flagged. It also boasts a cult-film dream cast of John Phillip Law (Barbarella, Diabolik) as Sinbad, Tom Baker (soon to be starring in Doctor Who) as the villain Koura, Caroline Munro (Captain Kronos – Vampire Hunter) as the voluptuous Margiana, and Martin Shaw (currently starring in the Inspector George Gently series) as Rachid, with an uncredited cameo by Robert Shaw (From Russia with Love, Jaws), deep inside grotesque makeup playing the Oracle of All Knowledge. There’s really nothing here to dislike, and critics and audiences greeted the film warmly, ensuring a sequel.

Sinbad (John Phillip Law) and his crew, including the Vizier in his golden mask (Douglas Wilmer) and Margiana (Caroline Munro), arrive at the lost island of Lemuria in "The Golden Voyage of Sinbad."

Harryhausen, who made this film with his longtime collaborator and co-producer Charles H. Schneer, was careful to separate this film from 7th Voyage; he seemed to dislike the label of “sequel.” (In his 2003 book An Animated Life, Harryhausen states that he and Schneer even “strenuously” tried to avoid the term regarding Eye of the Tiger, curiously enough.) Indeed, the viewer need not have seen the former film, though naturally it exists in its shadow. The 7th Voyage of Sinbad is a classic of fantasy filmmaking to stand beside its chief inspiration, The Thief of Bagdad (1940). Golden Voyage is just another fun Harryhausen movie, the perfect way to pass a Saturday afternoon. Law does a credible job as our new Sinbad (replacing 7th Voyage‘s Kerwin Mathews), embodying Harryhausen’s image of the Arabian Nights hero: handsome, athletic, but not a bodybuilder. The story, conceived by Harryhausen and revised, polished, and scripted by Brian Clemens (of the TV series The Avengers, as well as Captain Kronos, which also featured Caroline Munro), sends Sinbad on a treasure hunt on behalf of a disfigured Vizier in a golden mask (Douglas Wilmer, Jason and the Argonauts). Their quest involves retrieving the lost pieces of an amulet, which will point the way to an ancient, magical source of great knowledge and power. There’s always an evil magician in pursuit, of course, and in this case it’s Baker’s Prince Koura, who controls gargoyle-like homunculi and lusts after the same prize. The story might be perfunctory, but it’s well-paced, with attractive location shooting in Spain to stand in for both the fictionalized Middle East and Lemuria. (Plans to shoot in India – which would have provided a wonderful look to the film – were discarded after hearing horror stories about “appalling red tape and bureaucracy” encountered by other Hollywood productions shooting there.) Composer Miklós Rózsa (The Thief of Bagdad, Ben-Hur) is the ideal stand-in for 7th Voyage‘s Bernard Herrmann, capturing the appropriate “Orientalist” feel.

A statue of Kali comes to life to attack Sinbad.

Harryhausen’s creations include the winged, miniature homunculus; an ensorcelled figurehead that tears itself loose from Sinbad’s ship; a one-eyed centaur; a gryphon that guards the Fountain of Destiny; and, most impressively, a six-armed statue of Kali which performs an Indian dance before dueling against Sinbad’s men with six swords. It’s really the Kali sequence that makes this such a memorable film. With his typical attention to detail, Harryhausen hired an Indian dancer (Surya Kumari, also a noted actress and singer) to choreograph and perform as Kali with one of her students strapped to her back. The dance was then scored with Indian musicians, and the sudden switch in flavor (as our ears have already been conditioned to an hour or so of Rózsa’s romantic adventure music) is in synch with the charged, magical atmosphere of the statue coming to life. For the swordfight, nearly as elaborate as the celebrated skeleton battle in Jason and the Argonauts, stunt choreographer Fernando Poggi tied three of his men together to rehearse the action with the actors, then removed themselves and let the actors shadow-box before the cameras, with Harryhausen’s Kali to be added later. It’s a showstopping fight and, it must be said, far more rousing than the typical poke-with-spears action that so many Harryhausen action scenes become (or, in fact, the earlier scene with the ship’s figurehead). It’s one for the highlight reels.

Publicity stills for "Sinbad and the Eye of the Tiger": (L) Ray Harryhausen with his menagerie; (R) Taryn Power as Dione. (Click to enlarge.)

In An Animated Life, Harryhausen wrote about those directors who failed to understand his role in developing the film and directing its effects sequences: “Because the director didn’t fully realize my overall input or was used to ‘effects’ technicians only coming onto a picture toward the end of live-action photography, my involvement sometimes caused friction. The result was that one or two of them tried desperately to assert their authority, and at times it would seem as if we were shooting two different productions.” He proceeds to insist that Gordon Hessler, the director of Golden Voyage, was not one of those directors, and that the film was a happy experience. But such was not the case with Sinbad and the Eye of the Tiger and its director, Sam Wanamaker. “Regretfully, he was probably not the ideal choice for a fantasy adventure, especially one in which he wouldn’t have complete control.” In The Art of Ray Harryhausen (2006), the artist says the film seems “tired and uninspiring,” that it was “put together too quickly,” and that it’s “the least satisfying of the three Sinbad movies.” Anyone who has read about Harryhausen’s method knows that he largely directed his own special effects scenes, as he had to: he needed to match what was in the camera with what he created in miniature in his studio, allowing the two worlds to be matted together as seamlessly as possible. This extended to dictating precise camera angles to create the illusion of his stop-motion figures interacting with the actors and set. If Wanamaker did not see to eye-to-eye with Harryhausen’s goals, as it’s inferred, the unfortunate decision to shoot most of the locations without the actors present – to keep the budget down – only made matters worse. It’s evident in too many of the scenes that the actors are in a studio far away. Some of the second unit location shooting, which included Jordan’s ancient city of Petra and the snowy Pyrenees, took place even before the casting had been completed.

Sinbad (Patrick Wayne) and his companions (including Jane Seymour, Patrick Troughton, and Taryn Power) discover Hyperborea.

Despite these flaws and others, the unkind reviews it received, and its poor reputation among Harryhausen fans, I still like this movie. The story, by mythology expert Beverley Cross (who wrote Jason and the Argonauts and would go on to write Clash of the Titans), is a lot of fun, taking Sinbad (Patrick Wayne, son of John Wayne) north to polar climes, and the legendary land of Hyperborea, here depicted as a prehistoric realm with a mystical pyramid at its center. Let’s focus on the positives. Although I’m not enamored of Wayne’s Sinbad (he may look the part, but that’s about it), the supporting cast is very good. Patrick Troughton, another Doctor from Doctor Who, is excellent as the wise alchemist Melanthius; British actress Margaret Whiting makes a strong female villain as Zenobia, a “wicked stepmother” plotting to replace the Caliph with her own son; and Jane Seymour and Taryn Power (daughter of Tyrone Power, and curiously getting higher billing than a former Bond girl) provide eye candy that seriously pushes the G-rating when they sunbathe in the nude before a startled Harryhausen creation, the Troglodyte (“Trog”). Trog himself is a very notable stop-motion creature – even if the horn in the center of his forehead is nonsensical – sympathetic with his fully-articulated face and expressive movements, and a subtle indication of how far Harryhausen’s art had advanced. But maybe his achievements here are too subtle, including the stop-motion baboon, the transformed Prince Kassim, that plays chess with Princess Farah (Seymour). What the film lacks is a tour de force moment like the Kali sequence in Golden Voyage, or the Medusa confrontation in Clash of the Titans. His intricate animation on Kassim the baboon – who begins to lose his humanity and resort to the nature of a beast – and Trog – who is more human than the beast he appears to be – is often overlooked by those who would rather see more spectacle-driven Dynamation.

Princess Farah (Jane Seymour) plays chess with her brother, who has been transformed into a baboon, in a scene inspired by a tale in "Arabian Nights."

But it’s hard to ignore that the story misses a very big opportunity by killing off the Minaton too soon. The creature is an eight-foot-tall bronze minotaur that single-handedly rows Zenobia’s ship to Hyperborea, only to meet his end when he’s crushed beneath a block that he’s pulled loose to gain access to the pyramid temple. Outside of Boba Fett, has any villain ever met such an abrupt and ignominious end? The natural resolution, and one the audience has every right to expect, is a climactic battle between the Minaton and Trog. This didn’t occur to Harryhausen until too late (as he laments in An Animated Life) – but it’s not like his other films are free of strange plot holes and missed opportunities. (I’m still waiting for Jason to kill King Pelias, a villain that the first half-hour of Jason and the Argonauts is spent establishing.) Ultimately, the big problems in Sinbad and the Eye of the Tiger don’t really concern me all that much; I don’t find this to be as great a step down in quality as others argue, and there’s a lot in the film to enjoy. Just as nostalgia played a certain role in monster-kids loving Golden Voyage when it was released, so too does nostalgia allow me to see well past the faults of either film. The new Blu-Rays allow you to embark on one long wondrous voyage through Harryhausen’s imagination, with regular stops for secluded islands, ancient temples, ice-breaking walruses, green-skinned natives, bug-eyed ghouls, and chess-playing baboons.

Posted in Double Feature, Theater Fantastique | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , | 3 Comments

The Fearless Vampire Killers (1967)

Posted on December 15, 2013 at 12:34 pm by Jeff Kuykendall

Roman Polanski had, over the course of four years and a trilogy of taut psychodramas, Knife in the Water (1962), Repulsion (1965), and Cul-de-sac (1966), established himself as one of the most exciting young directors to emerge from Europe – but despite his proven versatility and quick transition from Polish to English-language films, he hadn’t yet cracked Hollywood. When Polanski and screenwriter Gérard Brach, his collaborator on Repulsion and Cul-de-sac, conceived the idea of a Hammer horror spoof to be called Dance of the Vampires, they attracted the attention of an American producer, Martin Ransohoff (The Americanization of Emily). Polanski was excited at the idea of making a film for Ransohoff and his production company Filmways, which had a distribution deal in place with MGM. It seemed to be a gateway to Hollywood. Ransohoff saw Cul-de-sac and said he loved it, securing the American distribution rights. Polanski, won over, placed his trust in the man. He agreed to give Ransohoff and Filmways final cut of Dance of the Vampires in the States, as long as he could retain final cut in all other territories. He might as well have made a pact with Dance of the Vampires‘ Count von Krolock; Ransohoff passed the film into the hands of MGM’s Supervising Editor Margaret Booth, who would suck the film bloodless. Released in 1967, the film was renamed The Fearless Vampire Killers, or: Pardon Me, But Your Teeth Are in My Neck. Tacked on before the opening credits is a crudely-made, two-minute-long cartoon that doesn’t match the tone of the film (even if it does use the waltz music from the film’s climax). As Glenn Erickson has outlined in his DVD Savant column, the film was shortened by about twelve minutes and Professor Abronsius (Jack MacGowran, Cul-de-sac, Doctor Zhivago) was redubbed with a more intelligible but cartoonish voice. In his 1984 autobiography, Roman, Polanski was still fuming – at Filmways and his producer, not MGM. “He was a compulsive butcher of other people’s work. ‘Let him finish the picture,’ he used to tell his associates, ‘then I’ll do my number.’ It was hardly surprising that no directors lasted long with Filmways, even when – like Norman Jewison, J. Lee Thompson, and Arthur Hiller – they had multiple-film contracts.”

Roman Polanski and Jack MacGowran as the vampire hunters, assistant Alfred and Professor Abronsius.

Yet flash-forward decades later and that American cut is hard to find. Polanski’s version has become the only one that’s widely available on home video, even if it’s under the Fearless Vampire Killers title, the most harmless of the alterations. Naturally his is the most satisfying viewing experience. What MGM failed to realize is that the film is so distinct and unique that no one is going to like it more with a few scenes excised and a short cartoon and some wacky dubbing added; for those not on board, it’s still a very strange and very dark “comedy.” And those who count themselves as fans, myself included, love it as much for the chilly Eastern European atmosphere and bleak tone as much as the absurdist humor. About his and Brach’s screenplay, Polanski wrote, “Our basic aim was to parody the genre in every way possible while making a picture that would, at the same time, be witty, elegant, and visually pleasing. The script was a joy to write; Gérard and I spent much of the time in fits of laughter.” But The Pink Panther this is not. There’s blood and a pervasive feeling of impending doom. The film’s heroes, Professor Abronsius and his assistant Alfred (Polanski), are so hapless and incompetent that they don’t stand a chance against the wicked Count von Krolock (Ferdy Mayne, The Vampire Lovers), his son Herbert (Iain Quarrier, Cul-de-sac, Wonderwall), and their undead minions. Because of these two – the only two standing in the way of the vampire plague spreading beyond Transylvania – all humanity is doomed. We know this because the narrator tells us so.

Alfred interrupts Sarah (Sharon Tate) during her bath.

Shot around a ski resort in Valgardena in the province of South Tyrol, far up in the mountains of northern Italy, Fearless Vampire Killers boasts an authentic snowed-in look for its small Transylvanian village. The chief attraction in this little village is an inn where the residents gather to drink, their frostbitten faces puffy and red from long walks through the snow. In the month of December, Abronsius and Alfred arrive through the snowy slopes with sleigh bells ringing, but their sleigh is assaulted by a pack of biting wolves, which Alfred beats at impotently with his umbrella. The wolves carry it off with them as a prize. (Note how the final scene in the film echoes this one, only it’s a slipper Alfred loses to the snowy road, and something within the sleigh is baring teeth at him.) Abronsius, whose chief weapon against vampires is that he doesn’t have enough blood in him to fill a cup, is already frozen stiff, and apparently dead, until they’re brought into the inn and warmed up. Polanski symbolizes the warmth of the inn with two images: their bare feet stuck into buckets of steaming water, and the bountiful cleavage of Magda (Fiona Lewis, Lisztomania), the blonde maid who scrubs their feet. (When he stirs, Abronsius is looking in the opposite direction, at the ceiling, and immediately points out the garlic strung up like mistletoe.) The amorous, innocent Alfred also finds inviting the beautiful, freckle-faced, red-headed Sarah (Sharon Tate, Valley of the Dolls, Eye of the Devil), daughter of the innkeeper Shagal (Alfie Bass, A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum). He and Abronsius first lay eyes on her by accident, when Shagal opens the door to the bath, revealing Sarah dressed only in soap bubbles.

Sarah watches from above as Alfred builds a snowman.

This blend of realistic, highly detailed earthiness and overt sensuality are typical of Polanski’s style, though in Fearless Vampire Killers the sensual and human are a dwindling commodity – one prized by both the half-dead villagers and the undead vampires who threaten them from the nearby castle. Just as Shagal lusts after Magda, sneaking out of his wife’s bed every night to visit the maid’s bedroom, the pale and gaunt von Krolock lusts for Sarah’s youthful health, stealing her straight out of her bath – in one of the film’s most poetic nightmare images, the snow drifting down through the open windowpane above her just before the vampire descends in his fluttering cape – and eventually displaying her before his vampire brethren like some choice cut of meat. In the castle ballroom, the bright reds of her hair and flamboyant dress are vividly contrasted with the washed-out 18th-century wardrobe and gray faces of the vampires. She is life, and it’s Alfred who’s racing to preserve what’s left of it. Professor Abronsius could care less; he’s continually dismissive of the idea of rescue: when Alfred asks for whom the woodcarving hunchback Koukol (Terry Downes) is building a coffin, Abronsius shrugs as he surmises that it could be for Sarah or either one of them. Alfred, meanwhile, finds himself locked in the hungry gaze of von Krolock’s “gentle, sensitive” son Herbert. “Did you provoke him?” asks Abronsius after Herbert chases Alfred throughout the castle. “No, he got excited all on his own!” Alfred protests, choking on the garlic that he’s pulled out of his pocket.

Count von Krolock (Ferdy Mayne) greets the vampire hunters.

If the jokes about Herbert’s sexuality seem a little politically incorrect by today’s standards, the staging is so brilliant and funny that they do not feel dated or insulting. The emphasis is on elegant farce, not camp. Herbert’s attempted seduction of Alfred (“Shall we let an angel pass?”) and his subsequent pursuit through the castle’s Escher-esque hallways – while Herbert waits patiently, Alfred runs a full circuit, down and up stairs, until he’s back where he’d begun, standing side-by-side with the vampire – provide some of the film’s most effective moments of pure comedy. One could also argue that the film’s Jewish characterizations of Shagal and his wife are borderline problematic (“Oy, oy, oy,” they constantly moan), but, although not every gag lands, the Jewish Polanski was drawing an affectionate portrait, just as he affectionately modeled his Abronsius after Albert Einstein. As F. X. Feeney writes in his 2006 book Roman Polanski, “a joke about Jewish vampires and their indifference to crosses would only occur to one for whom being Jewish in a world of Christian mythologies is a matter of life and death. Professor Abronsius and young Alfred notice the inn is encrusted with garlic. ‘Is there a castle in the district?’ the professor asks, and his hosts gasp, refusing to answer. To not only bow to a tyrant but deny his existence is a ghoulish paradox so human one cannot help but feel hints of life under the Nazis intruding, like a ghostly chill.” This too is felt in Shagal’s constantly addressing von Krolock as “Your Excellency,” bowing to authority, but also pleading to it when Sarah is stolen. “Your Excellency! Give me back my daughter!” he screams, clutching to the ceiling window out of which she was stolen. There is something heartbreaking about his marching off into the snow with garlic and to his wife’s tearful goodbyes, setting out for the castle and his certain doom. This isn’t just a spoof of vampire movies. Polanski, who had spent his youth on the run from Nazis, had internalized this tragic tone that constantly threatens to undercut the slapstick of Fearless Vampire Killers.

Count von Krolock offers Sarah as a gift to his vampire followers.

The film is imperfect; it can be lumpy, and would justify some editing, albeit not of the sort MGM provided. It really takes off about 45 minutes in. Once we arrive at the castle (a very memorable set, built at the MGM studios in England), and Abronsius and Alfred try to get on with the business of vampire killing, the blend of comedy and horror are in perfect balance. A perilous, vertigo-inducing trip to the Count’s crypt leads to the professor getting stuck in the window, and a terrified Alfred holding his stake in the wrong direction. The actual “dance of the vampires” – which seems at least partly inspired by Hammer’s Kiss of the Vampire (1963) – demonstrates how sophisticated a filmmaker the young Polanski had already become. He was given to tour-de-force moments of pure cinema; think of the long take in Cul-de-sac in which a plane flies overhead right on cue with the performance of the actors. Here, our vampire killers don disguises to infiltrate the grand ball and attempt to steal Sarah out of the clutches of von Krolock, and Polanski uses the choreography of the dance – set to a harpsichord waltz by his favored composer, Krzysztof Komeda – to allow our three players to swing in and out of view as the dancers move about the floor, brief snatches of sentences hastily exchanged among them, doused with unearned optimism. (My favorite line goes to Alfred, as he tells Sarah: “It is I. Life has a meaning once more.”) The impeccable farce climaxes as the three find themselves accidentally standing before a giant mirror, immediately foiling their subterfuge. A few scenes later, the hunchback attempts to pursue the fugitives by using a coffin as a sled, leading to more painstakingly precise choreography. The scene required the coffin to slide down the hill and miss the fleeing sleigh by inches. “On the fourth take I overdid it,” Polanski wrote. “Hans [Möllinger, the stuntman] shot across our front, shaving the shaft of the sleigh with his head and only narrowly missing the horses’ hooves. That, needless to say, was the take I used.”

A flaw in the vampire killers' plan: there's a mirror in the ballroom.

The film was a success everywhere but the U.S., where it had been sliced and mangled. Polanski, who had greatly enjoyed the shooting (he would glide across the set on skis), now found the film’s treatment by Filmways and MGM depressing. He’d learned his first lesson of Hollywood: “The whole atmosphere was symptomatic of the situation that arises when a major studio invests heavily in a picture and then loses interest in it. Hollywood is like that: a spoiled brat that screams for possession of a toy and then tosses it out of the baby buggy.” A phone call from Robert Evans at Paramount led to events that would lift his spirits. Evans strongly believed that Polanski was the only man to be behind the camera for this property of William Castle’s called Rosemary’s Baby. Soon Polanski would be flying to the States, having been handed the keys to the kingdom at last, with an opportunity to demonstrate his talent on a much larger scale. But Fearless Vampire Killers would prove to be a significant moment in his life nonetheless. Originally he had intended to feature Jill St. John in the role of Sarah, and when the studio insisted he hire Sharon Tate, he was skeptical. She looked too American. Not Jewish enough. And he’d have to put a wig on her to give her the red hair he wanted. But he quickly realized he’d found his Sarah, and it was on set, and on film, that they fell in love. Come 1968, the year of his breakthrough adaptation of Rosemary’s Baby, they would be married.

Posted in Theater Caligari | Tagged , , , , , , , | Comments Off on The Fearless Vampire Killers (1967)