(Yeah, like the evil of this movie has spread, Narrator Guy!)

The Fearless Vampire Killers. The very title of this film begs ridicule. For a start, everyone knows that vampires are not killed, they are slain. Also, the "fearless" proclamation seems not only unnecessary, but boastful as well. Of course, if they mean that it is the vampires who are fearless and killers... well, yeah. Duh.

But the idiocy of this film's title pales in comparison to the rampant stupidity of the film itself.

The mind-numbingly tedious tale of Professor Abronsius (Jack MacGowran) and his assistant, the lovely Arthur (Roman Polanski), begins with a voice over. This is never good. It's almost as scary as a movie that begins with a Bible quote. We are informed by the disembodied voice of the narrator that the Prof, a former chair of Bat-ology or some such at a University of some kind, is fixated on the idea of tracking down the reality of vampires so clouded in myth and superstition. This leads him to a garlic-festooned, snowbound Inn in -- you guessed it -- Transylvania, at which many events both confounding and sinister abound. Midnight rendezvous. Mysterious noises. Big-toothed hunchbacks. Terrible acting.

And that's just the beginning.

When the voluptuous Sarah (Sharon Tate), luxuriantly-tressed daughter of the town Innkeeper, is abducted by a flying man in a cape, the smitten Arthur and his employer begin their hunt for the evil creatures that infest the neighborhood. Thence to Castle Dark and Foreboding, where His Excellency, Count Dracula-wannabe (Ferdy Mayne), makes his home. It is here that we see again the Hunchback, meet the Count's son Herbert (Iain Quarrier -- who is totally coming on to Arthur), and see the one high point in the movie: the beautiful long red velvet coat His Ex apparently gets about the house in. I want it!

Bath-obsessed Sarah is also there (we see her covered in bubbles in two separate scenes), well on her way to becoming fodder for the have-stake, will-travel crowd. Arthur is so distracted by his worry for her that he is unable to finish off the vampires -- by this point, we all know that they're vampires -- while they sleep the day away in their cardboard coffins. (Either that, or he's just a big baby. But how can that be? Isn't he fearless?)

Later, he must really wish he'd driven in the stakes when he had the chance. 'Cause the ruffled shirt-wearing, harpsichord-playing popinjay that is the Count's son makes a move on him, before moving in for the long kiss good-unlife. Alfred is having none of that, however, and runs away in an oh-so-fearless manner. Gathering up the Professor, escape is attempted, only to be thwarted by the Count -- looking like a demonic Captain von Trapp -- who has quite other plans for the duo. One of which is to make Alfred into Herbert's love slave. (Aw. The Count loves his undead gay son.)

As an army of darkness arises from its collective tomb for an anniversary ball at which not one, not two, but four humans will be inducted into the Creature-of-the-Night Club, the Count locks the Prof and Alfred up... in what appears to be the armory. (Oh, clever master-villain plan, there. Even Harmony would never have done that!) Escaping once more, the prisoners go to rescue the lovely Sara from the clutches of the vampires by masquerading as vampires themselves, only to be caught by the ol' can-be-seen-in-a-mirror trick.
 
And yet the Professor (looks of Einstein, brain of Keanu) manages to flee the scene with Gilligan and Ginger in tow, in order to fearlessly not-kill vampires another day. But just as we're thinking it's all going to be okay for our little crew... oh, my! Sarah's suddenly a vamp. And as she puts the bite on poor Alfred, we see why, as vampires begat vampires all over town, we were ever on the side of the devils. At least the vamps were mildly entertaining. (And I don't think it's possible, here, to emphasise the word "mildly" enough.)

What this movie is supposed to be, I do not know. With Roman Polanski, a legitimate, y'know, director, at the helm, one can only suppose that it was intended to be an homage, a parody, perhaps even a pastiche -- or some other film school-sounding word. (I have to guess parody, since the alternate title is Pardon Me, But Your Teeth Are in My Neck, and is so much funnier than anything in the film itself.) I do, however, know what this movie is. Sucky. One of the suckiest it has ever been my misfortune to encounter. And, me being a genre fan and all, there have been more than a few of those.

It really is appalling. Who'd have imagined that a film called Lesbian Vampire Killers would turn out to be so many times better? The score, at times, is blessedly absent, but is at all times absurd; the performances are not even close to being adequate; the make-up is laughable; the direction shoddy and inept. The script could only have been worse if subjected to a re-write by Michael Bay.

How dare they? Vampire killers, hunters and slayers have become something of an addiction of mine since, oh, about 1996. Blade, Anita Blake, Mulder that one time, Buffy and the gang, and more recently, Abraham Lincoln and Pinocchio have gotten in on the act. All have won my heart with their vampire destroying -- and, often, it must be said, sleeping-with. But this pathetic vampire hunter tale... well, despite its much earlier appearance (in 1967 -- a mere year before the Polanski classic Rosemary's Baby), I still cannot help but feel that it has somehow sullied those that have come after it.

All the way through the movie, the Professor's enthusiasm for finding a vampire was a wonder to me, but I understand it now. This interminable film made me long for a soulless blood-sucker to come and pay me a visit, too. Death would at least have been swift and sure -- while this movie seemed to last forever.

"I get so bored. You can't imagine how bored I get," ingenue-in-training Sarah tells us early in the film. I dunno about that, m'dear vamp-bait. I think you'd be surprised.

  -- Rachel Hyland