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The toothy smile of Roman Polanski's early short is here a fanged one, the auteur himself peeps through the keyhole and pulls an "eek!" face for the camera. A moonstruck note kicks off the lustrous caricature of Vampyr via Hammer, the sleigh carrying the batty old scholar (Jack MacGowran) and his timorous assistant into Transylvania comes with wolves snapping at their heels. (One of the lupine beasts is later chased by a vexed hunchback, who returns with blood on his gnarled choppers.) A Jewish lecher (Alfie Bass) runs the local tavern, his ravishing young daughter (Sharon Tate) might be Dumas' Gregoriska—she medicates her boredom with warm baths until she's abducted by Count von Krolock (Ferdy Mayne), who descends in a flurry of snowflakes and leaves a gory mark on the foam à la Repulsion. Off to the tenebrous manor: "A castle without a crypt is like a unicorn without a horn!" Spoofs are a serious matter, the lore of old avails the heroes no more in the face of proliferating terror, heroism itself is a pallid notion in this "sacred mission." (The undead Bass laughingly waves off a crucifix, the sidekick's romanticism is catnip for the Count's swishy son.) Polanski's meticulous study of silent comedy even encompasses shifting skin colors (a Bruegel winter turns it blue, haughty vampires turn it white), building to the harpsichord tinkling of an impeccably deadpan Danse Macabre. The bludgeoning sausage and the toboggan-coffin, an addled Einstein unconsciously kindling the apocalypse, the trembling hand holding mallet and stake. "Dear boy, all these signs! All these signs!" Rosemary's Baby is an urbane refinement, Blood for Dracula a salacious riposte. With Jessie Robins, Iain Quarrier, Terry Downes, Fiona Lewis, Ronald Lacey, and Sydney Bromley.
--- Fernando F. Croce |