| The Vampire Happening | |
| Director: | Freddie Francis |
| Producer: | Pier A. Caminnecci |
| Music: | Jerry van Rooyen |
| Cinematography: | Gerard Vandenberg |
| Editing: | Alfred Srp |
| Runtime: | 102 minutes |
| Country: | West Germany |
| Language: | German |
The Vampire Happening (de|Gebissen wird nur nachts, They only bite at night) is a 1971 West German comedy horror film directed by Freddie Francis.[1]
An American film actress has inherited a castle in Transylvania. But what she doesn't know is that her ancestor, Baroness Clarimonde Catani is a vampire who has awakening from her tomb to cause mayham.
In the early 1970s, Italian producer Pier A. Caminnecci was looking for a film for his wife Pia Degermark whose previous film Elvira Madigan (1967) was a critical and financial success. Caminnecci set up an international production for her in West Germany directed by British director Freddie Francis and written by German screenwriters August Rieger and Karl-Heinz Hummel The script features a sub-plot based on Theophile Gautier's short story "La Morte Amoureuse."
Francis later stated:
I was aware from the start of the difficulties in shooting a horror parody. I really believed that I was working with normal people in the movie industry, and thought I could have made a decent film. With time, I became aware that the producer was an imbecile who treated the project like a home movie. He wanted to do the casting, make cameos in the film, and wanted his wife as an actress. It was a disaster which I can't say anything serious about.[2]
The film was not well received. Allmovie gave the film one and a half stars out of five, stating that it is "not considered to be one of the crown jewels of the genre" In his book Comedy-Horror Films:A Chronological History, author Bruce G. Hallenbeck referred to the film as "sort of a ripoff of Polanski's The Fearless Vampire Killers" and "doesn't come within lightyears of Polanski's vision".