The Fearless Vampire Killers - Production

Production

Coming straight on the heels of Polanski's international success with Repulsion, the film was mounted on a lavish scale - color cinematography, huge sets in England, location filming in the Alps, elaborate costumes and choreography suitable for a period epic. Previously accustomed only to extremely low budgets, Polanski chose some of the finest English cinema craft artists to work on the film: cameraman Douglas Slocombe, production designer Wilfrid Shingleton. Polanski engaged noted choreographer Tutte Lemkow, who played the titular musician in Fiddler on the Roof, for the film's climactic danse macabre minuet.

During filming the director decided to switch formats to anamorphic while filming on location. Flat scenes already filmed were optically converted to match.

In his autobiography, Roman Polanski discusses some of the difficulties in filming The Fearless Vampire Killers: "Our first month's outdoor filming became a series of ingenious improvisations, mainly because the last-minute switch from one location (Austria) to another (Urtijëi, an Italian ski resort in the Dolomites) had left us so little time to revise our shooting schedules. The fact that we were filming in Italy entailed the employment of a certain number of Italian technicians, and that, in turn, bred some international friction. Gene Gutowski (the film's European producer) rightly suspected that the Italians were robbing us blind."

Despite numerous production headaches, Polanski is said to have enjoyed making the film. His cinematographer, Douglas Slocombe, was quoted by Ivan Butler in his book, The Cinema of Roman Polanski, as saying, "I think he (Roman) put more of himself into Dance of the Vampires than into another film. It brought to light the fairy-tale interest that he has. One was conscious all along when making the picture of a Central European background to the story. Very few of the crew could see anything in it - they thought it old-fashioned nonsense. But I could see this background....I have a French background myself, and could sense the Central European atmosphere that surrounds it. The figure of Alfred is very much like Roman himself - a slight figure, young and a little defenseless - a touch of Kafka. It is very much a personal statement of his own humour. He used to chuckle all the way through."

When the film was first released in the United States, MGM wanted to market it as a farce, and gave it the title The Fearless Vampire Killers, or Pardon Me, But Your Teeth Are in My Neck. The director was less than pleased. Over the years it has been reported in most sources that studio head Martin Ransohoff cut Dance of the Vampires for the American release. In fact, MGM Supervising Editor Margaret Booth and Head of Theatrical Post Production, Merle Chamberlain, made the cuts and remixed the film in an attempt to make it 'kooky and cartoony.'

Though it was critically panned on its initial release, The Fearless Vampire Killers has garnered latter-day praise for its vivid atmosphere and audacious balance of broad comedy with Hammer Films-style horror.

This film was the source material for the wildly popular European stage musical Tanz der Vampire. It is peppered with numerous references to King Richard III of England, who even appears in the ball scene.

Director of Photography Douglas Slocombe would work with actor Ronald Lacey, who plays one of the villagers, again in the epic blockbuster film Raiders of the Lost Ark in 1981.