Captain Kronos: Vampire Hunter (1974)

a.k.a. Kronos
Directed by: Brian Clemens

After having left the Karnstein Trilogy behind me I decided I just didn’t want to leave that universe just yet, so I popped Captain Kronos: Vampire Hunter in the DVD player last night. It’s not officially part of the Karnstein Trilogy, but as the vampire in this movie says “I’m a Karnstein by birth” it could be counted as an unofficial entry in the Hammer Karnstein movies. There’s no Carmilla to be found of course, but who needs her when you’ve got the swashbuckling hero Captain Kronos? And of course the lovely Caroline Munro…

Captain Kronos: Vampire Hunter was originally planned to be the first in a series of movies (or it might have been a TV series, I’m not 100% sure right now), but due to poor performance at the box office that never happened. And that’s a damn shame as it would have been really fun to follow Captain Kronos and his sidekick Professor Grost on their adventures through Europe killing vampires. But, at least we’ve got this flick and it’s a damn entertaining one – and unusually funny for a Hammer flick.


Captain Kronos (Horst Janson) and his hunchback sidekick Professor Hieronymous Grost (John Carter) are riding through 1800th century Europe to find and kill vampires. When riding through a small village they notice a young, beautiful gypsy girl, Carla (Caroline Munro), being stuck in a stockade (serves her right, she was dancing on a Sunday after all… that vile, wicked woman!). Not being able to leave a beautiful girl behind like that Captain Kronos frees her and invites her to come along… he works fast, that man!

Young girls have been found drained of life (turned into old women before dying) in the woods surrounding a small (English?) village by a black cloaked figure. Dr Marcus (John Carson), the local doctor, has sent for his old army buddy Captain Kronos, so all of this strange business should be dealt with swiftly. Kronos and his gang arrives and as Professor Grost is an expert on vampires (he’s apparently a black smith as well, which will come in handy later in the flick) he recognizes the dead girls as the work of a vampire. Here we learn that not all vampires suck blood and not all vampires die from a stake in their heart.


The vampire hunters immediately set out to find the vampire and one of the things they do is to bury dead toads in small boxes all over the forest. There is a belief that if a vampire passes a dead toad it will come back to life again, and wouldn’t you know it? It’s true!

In the area we also have the upper class family the Durwards (having a huge manor and everything of course), who seem to be right in the middle of the vampire’s coming and goings. Dr. Marcus starts to suspect that someone in that family might know more than he or she lets us belive and goes for a visit, he finds out nothing, but on his way from the manor he’s attacked by something, but left alive at least. Well, alive might not be entirely true as while shaving he notices he’s starting to look younger (and wasn’t there a girl attacked while he was out in the woods looking for the vampire and he blacked out for a short while?). While telling Kronos about this he also sports some fangs and it’s really time for him to get snuffed out… we can’t have more vampires making the area unsafe, now! It’s not as easy as it seems to kill a vampire, but after a couple of tries they manage to. But, now Kronos know that the vampire has something to do with the Durward family, and with the help of Carla he and Grost need to get inside their Manor to find out the truth about who the vampire is.


It’s strange that this flick didn’t do better with the moviegoers at the time it was released (two years after it was finished in 1972) as it’s a fun and very playful vampire movie that is quite different from the rest of Hammer’s vampire flicks. And that’s a good thing here, no matter how much I love the regular Hammer vampire movies, this one rises above them a little much due to it being so different in tone, the change in vampire lore (not just blood can be sucked from the victims and that different vampires die in different ways and a stake through the heart doesn’t always do the trick) and a great (pot smoking!) hero who knows how to handle his swords and hang out with the local lovelies…

The movie, by today’s standards, can be a bit slow at times, but to me it just builds up the atmosphere and I had no problem with that at all. It’s not as bloody as the other vampire flicks from Hammer had started to get by the time this one was made, we get a little blood, but mostly when it’s splattered onto something. There’s lot of black and dead pan humor in this flick as well, there’s a moment when Captain Kronos and Grost are trying to kill Dr. Marcus after he has turned into a vampire that made me laugh out loud. It’s not easy to kill a vampire when you don’t know exactly how this particular fanged fella can be killed – so, you try and try again!


Horst Janson and John Carter are really great together and even though Horst might come off as a bit stiff at times, Carter’s humoristic portrayal of professor Grost kinda makes it work. You need a straight man when you got a weirdo like Grost in the movie. Caroline Munro is also more than just a beautiful woman to drool over (although, I have to confess I did drool just a little bit), her character actually has something to do in the movie to help our hero to defeat the vampire. This movie is sure to make you have a great time if you have even the slightest of interest in Hammer flicks or vampire movies in general.


I’ve had such a great time watching all of these Hammer vampire movies these last nights I think I’ll continue doing so for a little while longer… I’m eyeing Vampire Circus right now in my collection, so I should return with a review of that flick in the not too distant future as well.

Twins of Evil (1971)

a.k.a. Twins of Dracula / The Virgin Vampires / The Evil Twins
Directed by: John Hough

Twins of Evil is the third flick in Hammer’s “Karnstein Trilogy” and by this time the trilogy really didn’t have anything to do with J. Sheridan Le Fanu’s novella “Carmilla” anymore, except for the name Karnstein and a very tiny cameo by Carmilla. There are no lesbian vampires to be found anywhere in the movie (damn you, Hammer!!!) and the nudity is even less than in Lust for a Vampire (strangely enough when the two main characters are being played by the first identical twin Playmates). But, apart from that this is Hammer showing that they’re back to good form again after Lust for a Vampire (which I didn’t care for that much, to be honest).

This movie is much more in the line of other Hammer vampire movies, like Vampire Circus (which feels like it is set in the same universe as the Karnstein flicks), Countess Dracula (yep, I know… not a vampire movie, but it has the same kind of vibe as this one) and Captain Kronos: Vampire Hunter (which I will return to on this blog in the next couple of days). But, they’ve also thrown in some influences from witch hunting movies like The Witchfinder General and Mark of the Devil as we have Peter Cushing playing a pretty vile fella that likes to burn women at the stake just for “living alone and not wanting a husband”, sure… that must mean they’re witches!


The film is set in the 1700’s (making it a prequel rather to the other Karnstein flicks) and in the small Styrian village of Karnstein, that lies in the shadow of Castle Karnstein, Gustav Weil (Peter Cushing) and his merry men of “The Brotherhood” are hunting witches like there’s no tomorrow and no accusation (which usually comes from a member of the Brotherhood) is small enough to not set off the guys to hunt down some sexy women in the village and burn them to save their souls. But, when they storm the cottage of a woman that is having some nooky with Count Karnstein (Damien Thomas) they are stopped and Gustav humiliated by the cocky Count.

In the meantime, the two twins Maria and Frieda (Mary and Madeleine Collinson) arrives in the village. Having just lost their parents they have been sent to live with their uncle Gustav and his wife, Katy (Kathleen Byron). Gustav, being the religious hard ass that he is immediately senses problems with the girls… I mean, to come here dressed as harlots!


Count Karnstein has his own problems, a fake satanic ritual in his castle just doesn’t do the trick so he decides to try it on his own, human sacrifice and all. The blood from the sacrifice resurrects an old ancestor of his, the vampire Mircalla Karnstein (Katya Wyeth), and after having slept together she makes him a vampire as well. As long as you open up your heart for Satan you won’t die by the vampire’s bite, you’ll turn into one yourself. So, here we get ourselves an satanic explanation of vampirism, pretty unusual…

Maria and Frieda really doesn’t enjoy staying with their strict uncle and especially Frieda does something about it. She’s the more adventurous one (read: wicked) and bullies her sister into covering for her when she leaves one night for Castle Karnstein, where she’s heard the real fun is to be had. And fun she has,so much fun that she’s turned into a vampire by the Count… Being a new vampire she messes up when she takes a bite out of a member of “The Brotherhood” and gets caught by her uncle and his cronies.


Instead of immediately burning her at the stake they throw her in a jail cell while the rest of the Brotherhood decides what to do with her, she’s Gustav’s niece after all… Well, they decide on how to kill her and who will do it, niece or no niece, something as wicked as her must die. This gives the Count time enough to pick up a drugged Maria and have her trade place with her sister in the cell… Frieda, being the wicked wench that she is, really doesn’t care if her sister dies or not. But, the local school teacher who has the hots for the sisters finds out and it’s up to him to rescue Maria and persuade the Brotherhood to stand up against the evil Count.

Well, this is more like it! After the drop in quality with Lust for a Vampire, this flick ends the Trilogy with a bang. This is classic Hammer and when you have Peter Cushing back in the series you know something good will come out of it. And talking about Mr. Cushing, it was quite refreshing to see him play a character that wasn’t really a good guy (even though he believed so himself). Hell, when it comes to this movie, the evil vampire Count was probably more of a good guy than the self righteous and holier than thou Gustav Weil. And I also have to say that the twins Mary and Madeleine are pretty damn easy on the eyes… no wonder they were Playmates of the year (in 1967 I think…). And even though glamour models turned actresses usually doesn’t act that well I felt they did good here.


It was nice to see some gory effects in this flick as well, nothing much, but what was there was pretty effective. There’s a decapitation near the end of the movie that felt unusually brutal and I love that! Some nekkidness was in there as well (of course, with Playboy Playmates in the movie there have to be some nudity at least), and being a guy I really didn’t have any problem with that either… The satanic touch on the vampire stuff was nice (and it would explain the satanic ritual that Lust for a Vampire started with), I would like to see more of that.

When compared to the other flicks in the “Karnstein Trilogy” it doesn’t have anything on The Vampire Lovers (that one is hard to beat), but it’s by far greater and more entertaining than Lust for a Vampire. So, all in all a great ending to the “Karnstein Trilogy”.

Lust for a Vampire (1971)

a.k.a. Love for a Vampire / To Love a Vampire
Directed by: Jimmy Sangster

I started my little Carmilla-marathon yesterday with The Vampire Lovers and tonight it’s time for the second movie in Hammer’s Karnstein Trilogy: Lust for a Vampire. Where The Vampire Lovers actually lifted a lot of the story from J. Sheridan Le Fanu’s novella, this one has really nothing at all to do with it. We get Carmilla, and that’s all… What we didn’t get is Ingrid Pitt reprising her role as Carmilla, the luscious lesbian vampire. Instead we got the Danish actress Yutte Stensgaard and, not that I wanna be an asshole towards Yutte, that’s just not good enough. Where Ingrid’s Carmilla was an ferocious creature if needed, Yutte’s Carmilla feels much more weaker and not at all that dangerous.

When it comes to sequels the film companies usually throw in more of the stuff that made the first flick a success… if it was bloody, more blood! If it had nudity, more boobs! Yeah, you know what I mean. It probably has a lot to do with the british censors sticking their damn noses into the production, but this flick is definitely tamer than The Vampire Lovers. Sure, we get some nudity (courtesy of English school girls apparently always walk around topless in their rooms at school), a tiny bit of blood (the tagline “Ghoulish! Gory! Ghastly!” is pretty misleading as you don’t get much of any of it) and this time around Carmilla isn’t that much into girl on girl action as she was in the first flick… shit, her love interest in this movie is a dude. For shame! For shame, Hammer!!!


The film is set in 1830’s Styria and starts with a satanic ritual sacrifice of a blonde peasant girl (and maybe I’m so wrong now, but that girl sure looked like the blonde vampire that got decapitated in the opening scene of The Vampire Lovers… could be her, there are at least two more actors from that movie in prominent roles in this one as well), the girl’s blood is used to resurrect Carmilla herself. The dude doing the satanic stuff does his best to look like Christopher Lee, and they even used some close up shots of Christopher Lee’s red eyes from Scars of Dracula during the ritual. Always nice to save a penny or two and use shots from other movies…

Then we meet the novelist Richard Lestrange (Michael Johnson), who decides to visit the ruins of Castle Karnstein, even after having been warned at the local pub about the vampires still being around up there… even though they were killed 40 years ago (that’s Baron Hartog’s doing from the first flick), the vampires know how to resurrect themselves (and that’s no lie as we saw that ourselves in the opening scenes of this movie!). While Lestrange visits the castle he runs into some young women in capes that he mistakes for being vampires, only to discover they are part of a field trip from the nearby young women’s finishing school… After having been invited to come and visit the school by the teacher Giles Barton (Ralph Bates) he ends up there when Countess Herritzen (Barbara Jefford) and her young niece Mircalla (Yutte Stensgaard) arrives.


Being the horndog that he is he immediately have the hots for Mircalla and even manages to elbow his way into a job at the school… anything to be close to this blonde hottie, I guess. Meanwhile, Mircalla is getting friendly with an American girl at the school, Susan (Pippa Steel, who just happened to play Laura, the first girl killed by Carmilla, in The Vampire Lovers), but after a midnight skinny dip Mircalla sinks her teeth into Susan’s neck and she’s done with. She’s unceremoniously dumped down a well, but someone saw her…

Giles Barton (he's the one who saw Mircalla kill Susan and dump her body) has been studying the history of the Karnsteins and the local histories of vampires, and after having found a picture in one of the books of Mircalla where she is named Carmilla Karnstein he puts two and two together. He confronts Mircalla, begging to be turned into a vampire as well, but the Karnstein family doesn’t need sniveling idiots like him so Mircalla sinks her fangs into his neck as well and it’s bye bye, creepy teacher. Barton’s body is found by some students the next day and instead of immediately calling for the police the headmistress of the school (Helen Christie) decides to keep this a secret with the help of Countess Herritzen… just imagine the scandal if people knew that students and teachers disappear or end up dead at the school!


Susan (the American girl) is still considered missing and thanks to a teacher, Janet Playfair (Suzanna Leigh), who think the girl’s father and the police should be contacted, Susan’s father is now on his way to find out what’s going on at the school and what has happened to his daughter… and if that wasn’t bad enough for the school and the Karnstein vampires, the villagers are getting restless preparing their pitchforks, rakes and lighting up their torches…

After The Vampire Lovers I suspect that any movie would feel like a letdown, but this really is sub par Hammer horror. At times it felt like I was watching a period drama more than a horror flick as the love story between Lestrange and Mircalla took up too much time. Time that Mircalla should have been spent with more blood sucking and more frolicking around together with nude chicks… Yeah, when you have the original lesbian vampire, why the hell have her fall in love with a man??? Stupid, stupid…


I also feel that unusually many actors/actresses in this flick did a really bad job with stiff acting, non-acting (it’s hard to act probably when you’re really a model and got the job only because of your looks) or just looked tired. Ralph Bates as the creepy teacher Giles Barton was damn great though, a bit campy probably, but the one that stood out in this movie. The scene where he tries to persuade Mircalla to turn him into a vampire, by first shoving a cross in her face and then slowly turn it upside down to show her that he’s evil as well is my favorite in the film…

Now it’s time to check out the third flick in the Karnstein Trilogy: Twins of Evil for the first time in many years, but from what I remember that one was better than this one… anyway, stick with The Vampire Lovers if you want some great Hammer vampire/Carmilla action.

The Vampire Lovers (1970)

Directed by: Roy Ward Baker

I'm not sure why I love these old vampire movies as much as I do, but I do know why I love the ones with lesbian vampires in them a little bit more than the rest of them... I'm a man after all! This is by far not the first movie with lesbian vampires in it, it's not even the first movie adaption of J. Sheridan Le Fanu's 1872 novella "Carmilla" (published 25 years before Dracula), but it's without a doubt my favorite adaption. And the reason is of course the über lovely Ingrid Pitt playing Carmilla/Marcilla/Mircalla... Holy hell, she's hotter than a sunny day in the Sahara desert!

This is the first movie in Hammer's "Karnstein trilogy" (although "Captain Kronos - Vampire Hunter" also has a female vampire from the Karnstein family, so it should probably be added to those films) and without a doubt the best one. Not only because of Ingrid Pitt, but god damn, when you've seen her playing Carmilla you don't want anyone else taking over that role... This film was followed by "Lust for a Vampire" and "Twins of Evil" and with each movie the lesbian vampire stuff became less and less thanks due to the british film censors (fucking morons!). I'll go through them as well in the coming week, so expect more Hammer vampire "reviews" on this page a.s.a.p.

The film starts off in late 1700's Styria (part of Austria) and Baron Hartog's (Douglas Wilmer) hunt for the vampire family, the Karnsteins, that killed his sister. He manages to find the crypt of the vampires and starts to kill 'em off one by one. We only get to see the first killing, but are being told later in the movie about his manly work killing sleeping vampires... Then we jump forward a couple of decades to a ball held by General von Spielsdorf (Peter Cushing) where the mysterious Countess Karnstein and daughter arrives... When the countess is quickly called away (something about a dying friend), she asks if it's possible for her daughter, Marcilla (Ingrid Pitt), to stay with the general and his daughter, Laura (Pippa Steel), while she visits her friend.

Being the gentleman that he is the General of course invites Marcilla to stay with them for as long as she needs to... Hindsight is 50/50 I guess, but boy was that a big mistake... Marcilla and Laura quickly become close friends, but Laura also starts to feel ill. She becomes weaker and weaker by the day and paler and paler... She doesn't sleep much, and when she does she dreams of a big strange cat sitting on her, almost suffocating her. And strangely enough Marcilla is in the dreams as well. It doesn't take long before Laura is found dead in her bed, and when the doctor examines her body he finds two puncture marks on her breast... and all of a sudden Marcilla is gone.

Not long after these happenings Marcilla (now calling herself Carmilla) and her mother is at it again... This time faking a couch accident in front of a Mr. Morton (George Cole), the countess needs to get on with her journey, but poor little Carmilla is just too weak to travel... Could maybe Mr. Morton let her stay at his house? Yep, it all starts again and good thing Mr. Morton has a beautiful daughter, Emma (Madeline Smith), so Carmilla will have someone to spend her time with...

It doesn't take long before Emma starts to feel weaker and she does look a little paler by each day... and those dreams, a big cat sitting on her and why is Carmilla in those dreams???

Most people seem to consider the late 50's and early to mid 60's as Hammer's high point, but for me it has always been their movies from the late 60's and up until when they had to call it quits that are my favorites. Maybe it's because they added more gore and nudity (yes, I am that shallow and I don't need more than that to be happy) into the mix, but they did keep that gothic atmosphere even though it was probably getting out of date at the time. This flick is among my favorite Hammer flicks and it has it all, foggy cemeteries, hot lesbian vampires, some nice (albeit very much blink and you'll miss it) gore, quite a lot of nudity and the great Peter Cushing (in a small role, but still... it's Peter fucking Cushing!!!).

I mentioned it earlier, and I will mention it again... Ingrid Pitt is to die for in this flick, and it's nice to be able to hear her real voice (she was dubbed in Countess Dracula) which is as sultry as they come and she has the accent already to fit a vampire. She's not just sweet to rest your eyes upon, she does bring some menace into the movie as she does feel more than just a beautiful woman made up to be a vampire, she really feel like she could kill anyone that stands in her way as she possesses some serious strength in her portrayal of Carmilla (or Marcilla or Mircalla or whatever...). And I just can't be too unhappy with her scenes together with Madeline Smith where both end up undressed in a bed frolicking around... *sigh* ;-)

If you have even the slightest of interest in vampire movies this is a must see... so what are you waiting for?!?!

Q (1982)

a.k.a. Q - The Winged Serpent / The Winged Serpent
Directed by: Larry Cohen

I don't know what it is about giant monster movies that I love so much, but love them I most definitely do. This goes back to me when I was very young and loved anything about dinosaurs, I couldn't get enough of dinosaur action and if I was lucky enough to get to see some black and white stop-motion dinosaurs in a movie I was happy as I ever could be. More than 30 years later I'm still pretty much the same... give me some Harryhausen creatures, the original King Kong, Godzilla, Gorgo... hell, anything bigger than a house and I am back feeling the same thing I did all those years ago: total happiness. Giant monsters rule and if you don't think the same you are wrong and should be ashamed of yourself!

The thing is that I can stand a lot of boring stuff in a movie just for those scenes of the monster doing his (or her) thing... I'm not gonna go so far to say that this movie bored me, but there were quite long parts that I just didn't really care for - I wanted to see some monster action and here we were stuck in something that felt more like a B-movie cop thriller with some drama touches. A lot of the old Godzilla movies were like that as well, the b-plot with criminals trying to take over the world, aliens trying to take over the world or just about anyone trying to take over the world took up more space in the movie than Godzilla himself, but that was easier to take as those weird b-plots were usually so damn over the top they were just as fun to watch as the monster mayhem that always broke lose at the end of the movies.


The cops of New York city are baffled when first a window cleaner gets his head chopped off while hanging on the outside of a big office building. It doesn't get better when a woman who's sunbathing on top of a skyscraper is picked up by something big that can fly and disappears, and if that wasn't bad enough, a construction worker is also snatched from the top of a building and pieces of him are plopping down on the streets below... At the same time the two cops Shepard (David Carradine) and Powell (Richard Roundtree) are working on a case with dead bodies that has been ritually sacrificed (flayed alive and hearts cut out).

The good thing about detective Shepard is that he's pretty open minded and with the help of a museum curator he starts to suspect the killings are made by a cult worshipping the Aztec god Quetzalcoatl. And wouldn't you know it, good old Quetzalcoatl is a flying serpent... could he be the reason people disappear from high buildings?

At the same time we get to spend a lot of time with the loser Jimmy Quinn (Michael Moriarty) who manages to get involved in a diamond robbery that goes really wrong. While fleeing from the scene he hides out in the top of the Chrysler building, and there he discovers a big nest with a huge ass egg in it. The cops are now believing there is a big flying creature terrorizing New York City, but no one knows where it hides out between his afternoon flights to find people to munch on...

This is where Jimmy manages to get arrested by the cops and find himself in the middle of the search... He knows where the creature is hiding out, but demands a pardon for any crimes he might have commited as well as a million dollars before he tells the cops anything about the nest he have found... The money is delivered and he takes the cops to the Chrysler building where they get involved in a machine gun fight with the creature, who finally crashes into another building and dies... but, is this the end? What about the cult that brought Quetzalcoatl to New York and who has been sacrificing people to this ancient god? I can tell you that the use of the word "cult" is quite wrong here, it's one guy and one guy alone who's responsible and he'll get what he deserves...

If I'm not totally mistaken, this is a movie Larry Cohen threw together fast when another movie fell through... he had some money and wrote a script in a week or so. And that shows... this is a pure B-grade movie, but it never takes itself serious and the actors seem to have fun with their roles. Michael Moriarty does a good job at playing the loser Quinn so much that I really started to get extremely annoyed every time he was on screen (and that is a lot in this movie), it takes a good actor to conjure up those kind of feelings for a damn character in a silly movie. It was also cool to see David Carradine playing a good guy (maybe it's because I first saw him in the TV show "North and South" back in the 80's that I always seem to think of him always playing assholes) that actually did some police work in the movie rather than the usual refusal of believing anything anyone says...

I can't say that I loved the movie, too much downtime between anything really happening for me to love it, but either way it was an ok movie. I would have loved some more monster action, but with a budget this low (I read somewhere that it cost 1,1 million dollars to make) it's understandable that they couldn't have more than they had. It was fun to see some good old stop-motion action with Q though, or was that claymation? Who cares! If you're only looking for an insane giant monster battle this is not a movie for you, but if you're looking for a cheap looking b-movie where at least a giant monster appears now and then you should check it out.

Love Camp 7 (1969)

Directed by: Lee Frost

There's probably no film genre that is more sleazy than Nazisploitation, so of course I love the hell out of this genre. Not just because there's always lots of nudity and weird shit going on, you have the best bad guys you ever could have in a movie: the nazis! Just look at the Indiana Jones movies, the first one was great, the second shit, the third one the best and the fourth one was just a big snooze fest... one and three had nazis in them, nuff said! There are seldom grey areas when it comes to nazis, they are evil and they will do evil things.

When it comes to Nazisploitation movies Ilsa - She Wolf of the SS is probably the best known, but this one came 5 years before Ilsa became the baddie we all love to hate. This is the flick that set the standards for both Nazisploitation as well as regular W.I.P. movies and it's so god damn strange that this is such a boring turd of a movie...


It's hard to write about the plot as there aren't that much of it going on... But, I'll give it a try. Two female WAC officers, Linda Harman (Maria Lease) and Grace Freeman (Kathy Williams), are sent to infiltrate "Love Camp 7", a camp where jewish women are sent to pleasure german front line officers on leave. A female scientist has been sent to the camp and she still has information about jet fighters that the allies need to beat Adolf and his gang, so it's up to Grace and Linda to find the scientist and help her escape, or at least learn the secrets before getting the hell outta the camp themselves.

So, with the help of the french resistance (Wait a minute... the camp is located in Germany and it's the french resistance that is helping them?!?!?! What is this? The movie Top Secret???) Grace and Linda are caught and taken to the camp. They are subjected to a degrading welcome by the camp's commander (played by Bob Cresse - who apparently was a closet nazi, so this must have been the role of a lifetime for him), where they are first sprayed with water and then subjected to a very intimate examination by the camp's female doctor (who sports the most unconvincing scar on her face that I've ever seen).


The women are sent to their living barracks and there they find out that the scientist they are looking for have been sent to the Detention cell. So, it's up to Grace and Linda to find a way to get sent there as well... but, first we have a shit load of nudity, degradation, rape, nudity, violence, nudity and some nudity... Yep, that's pretty much it, really. I will spoil the ending of the movie though... the allies won the war.

Ugh, I usually don't care at all when a movie is obviously done on almost no budget at all, but in this one it's hard to not see it in every damn scene. You really don't get to see much of the camp, what you get to see are some small rooms with what looks like cement walls that could be just anything... I suspect that this movie cost less to make than what I got for my weekly pocket money when I was a kid as it reeks of being cheap. And it also reeks of extremely bad acting... there are times I wonder if I'm watching an old episode of Hogan's Heroes rather than an exploitation movie as there are some seriously bad german accents going on here. I half expect to see Colonel Klink walking into a scene most of the time...

If there's something a movie like this never should be it's boring, but god damn this is a boring movie... it's 90 minutes long, but at times it felt like the double and I even had to get through it in two takes as I just couldn't sit there for 90 straight minutes and watch this dreck. Even with all the nudity (and there's a lot of it) and all the sex scenes (which are beyond dull) this is a very tame movie, especially if you compare it to the rest of the movies in the genre it spawned. No, if you want to watch a Nazisploitation movie that has some class (um, if we can call it that) I rather think you should watch Ilsa - She Wolf of the SS than this one. And if you wanna see something even more over the top and sleazy you should check out the italian Nazisploitation movies that came in the latter half of the 70's. Now there we can talk about sleazy shit that's never boring! (I'll bring up a bunch of those movies later on in this blog as well)

I couldn't find any trailer for this flick, but that's probably for the best...

The Skull (1965)

Directed by: Freddie Francis

Even though Christopher Lee and Peter Cushing made a lot of movies together for Hammer Films my favorites are the ones that was made for other companies. Their best, in my opinion, is Horror Express, but this might just be my second favorite with the gruesome twosome that was Lee and Cushing. The Skull was made by Amicus and the more I watch the Amicus movies the more I feel that they were really up there with Hammer when it comes to making great atmospheric horror movies. I've always held Hammer as the best by far and then Amicus and Tigon and companies like that... nah, screw that, Amicus were just as good as Hammer and this movie is one of many proofs of that.

The DVD (released by Paramount / Legend Films) lacks when it comes to extras and this is not really a review of the DVD, but I just wish that they could drag Christopher Lee into a studio and have him record commentary tracks for every damn movie he's made while there's still time. Even though his part in this movie is pretty small (he's billed as a guest star) I would have loved to listen to him talk about the movie and his work with Peter Cushing... well, a guy can dream, can't he?


The film starts in the 1800's and a cemetary where a man is having a grave dug up and he hacks off the head of the corpse lying in that grave. He brings the head back home with him and into his bathroom where he strips it of its flesh, but moments later his mistress finds him drowned in his bathtub and the skull is sitting on a table facing the dead man.

We then jump circa 150 years into the present day (well, it was the present day when the movie was released) and at an auction we meet Dr. Christopher Maitland (Peter Cushing), an collector of occult stuff (and author of books dealing with the occult). Present at the auction is also Maitland's friend and fellow collector Sir Matthew Phillips (Christopher Lee), and when four small statues of different devils are up for bids they start a bidding war that ends when Phillips ups the price far beyond their worth. Maitland returns to his home where he is visited by Marco (Patrick Wymark), and unscrupulous antiques dealer. Marco has sold many things to Maitland in the past, but this time he feels he has some real good shit to sell him. Marco has brought with him a book, bound in human skin, that's about the life and death of the Marquis de Sade. Even though he at first doesn't seem that interested Maitland buys the book and is told that he will be offered something even greater the next evening...


The following evening Marco returns and this time he offers Maitland a skull, but it's just not any skull... it's the skull of the Marquis de Sade (the very same skull that was dug up in the beginning of the movie). Maitland doesn't jump on the chance of owning the skull of de Sade immediately though as Marco asks for too much money... that kind of cash needs some sleeping on. So, they decide that Maitland will come around Marco's place the next evening if he wants to buy the skull.

While visiting his friend Phillips, Maitland discovers that the skull was stolen from him and he really don't want it back. Phillips warns Maitland to buy it as it is an evil skull with powers to possess you during the first nights of the new moon... spooky stuff... Maitland returns back home where he later that night is visited by a couple of police men who are there to arrest him. They bring him to a strange house and a weirdo judge who forces him to play russian roulette before locking him up in a room that is filled with gas (this whole segment reminded me of the TV show The Prisoner for some reason, it has that strange weird feeling over it). And just then Maitland wakes up in a strange place he doesn't recognize... he's in the building Marco lives and when he enters Marco's apartment to talk about the skull he finds Marco dead. But, before calling the cops he finds the skull and hides it in an hallway closet.


Later on when the cops are gone he returns for the skull, and while taking it from it's hiding place he runs into the building's caretaker which he pushes down the stairs to his death. The skull is already slowly taking over Maitland, who then breaks into Phillips' house to steal one of the small statues from the auction in the beginning of the movie... When he returns back home the skull wants him to kill his wife, but Maitland refuses to do it making the skull to go after him instead...

This here is a great movie, and I wonder why the hell I had never watched it before... I always go back to the great atmospheric Hammer horrors, but this one almost felt more like an Hammer film than the Hammer films themselves. This is how it should be done! Peter Cushing holds up the entire movie on his shoulders and he does it so well, the last 20 minutes or so has almost no dialogue and still he manages to crank out such a great performance. Christopher Lee is in only three scenes, but he is still very important to the plot and as always he shines in his part. I didn't even think about how little screen time he had as this truly felt like an Cushing/Lee movie all the way.

Freddie Francis also shines as the director, his use of strange angles adds to the weirdness that comes from the skull's powers. His skull point of view cam is also superb. Everything about this film felt just perfect to me, the library/study where Maitland is working is one of those places you just feel you want to visit for real and just sit there and read through all of those books. The attention to detail is wonderful... and one thing that probably isn't so perfect from the filmmaker's point of view just made my day, when the skull is flying through the house at the end the strings holding it up are clearly visible and I just LOVE that! Today it would of course have been done by using CGI (and Cushing's and Lee's roles would probably have been played by stupid teens from a soap opera or something), but this is how it should be... more visible strings!!!

This is a truly great movie that you should rather be watching right now instead of reading this shitty so called review!

Witchboard (1986)

Directed by: Kevin Tenney

Want some cheese with that? Or wait a minute... it should probably rather be: Want some extra cheese on top of all that cheese, and maybe some cheese on the side? If you like cheesy 80's horror flicks this is probably the holy grail for you as it has plenty of cheesy stuff in it... I love cheesy movies, but even I have a limit somewhere and this flick might have crossed the line. Well, maybe not totally as I did enjoy it, but god damn it's a cheesy flick! It was the director Kevin Tenney's first movie and he truly went for all the clichés in a supernatural horror flick in the 80's (he wrote the flick as well). There are plenty of jump scares (is that even an expression? hopefully you know what I mean), bad 80's acting and silly looking effects.

Back in my teens I used to have this big Swedish Witchboard poster above my bed, I think it was the same image that was on the UK poster as well, a painting of a very scantily clad Tawny Kitaen with some ghostly hands reaching for her. After having rewatched the movie now I wonder if it wasn't because of ms. Kitaen I had that poster up rather than the movie itself... I do remember liking the movie back then, but trust me when I say that a short nude scene with Tawny was probably all I needed to like this movie as a horny teenager with hormones flying all over the place (I would probably have exploded if I had watched Gwendoline at the time...).

It all starts at a party that Jim (Todd Allen) and Linda (Tawny Kitaen) are throwing. Among the guests are Jim's ex best friend and Linda's ex boyfriend Brandon (Stephen Nichols) - apparently hooking up with your best friend's ex can break a frienship... but, in the movie world it would be worth it for the lovely ms. Kitaen. In the real world I don't think it would be a great idea, rather stay with the best friend and not get beaten up by the not so lovely ms. Kitaen... Ok, back to the story, Brandon has brought with him a Ouija-board to the party - it should preferrably be two people using it by placing the board on their knees and put their hands on the thingy that moves over the letters. So, Brandon enlists Linda to help him contact his dead buddy David - David shows up, but Jim not liking his girl doing this with her ex manages to upset David by acting like an asshole. David splits in a rage and the party has come to a halt.

The next day Linda finds the Ouija board still being at their apartment and she starts using it to contact David on her own (a big no-no as you should never do this alone). She manages to contact David (or is it?) who is very helpful and nice again... meanwhile, at the same time some spooky spirit stuff is going on at the construction site Jim works at when a coworker gets crushed under a big load of construction material. And all of a sudden "David" is starting to scare Linda and even go so far as to attack her, sending her to the hospital.

Jim and Brandon have to work together to save Linda from whatever it is that is terrorizing her. They contact David through another Ouija board and is told that there is another spirit that is the one terrorizing Linda, the evil Malfeitor. And just as the boys get this news they are attacked by Malfeitor and Brandon gets clobbered over the head with an axe and it's bye bye to him... Meanwhile, Linda is now out of the hospital and of course she just can't keep her hands from the board, but this time she gets no response. She decides to take a shower (and yes, here comes the nude scene) and there she gets attacked again. When Jim comes back home the whole place is in a mess and Linda shows up, possessed by the spirit of Malfeitor, holding an axe. She attacks him and right here a cop shows up to get knocked out immediately, but his gun falls to the floor and Jim uses it to shoot the Ouija board to free Linda from Malfeitor's powers.

Ok, what can I say that I didn't say in the beginning of this "review"? It sure is a cheesy movie, but it's grade A cheese at least, no matter how silly it gets it's still a charming 80's horror flick that contains everything an 80's horror flick should have. It drags along at times, but if you wait around you'll get one of those extra silly horror flicks that could only have been made in the 80's. And we also get a super hot Tawny Kitaen (yep, I NEED to watch Gwendoline again soon!) dressing up in men's clothes and acting crazy (um, is that maybe just me with that kind of fetish? ;-)).

It! The Terror from Beyond Space (1958)

Directed by: Edward L. Cahn

I'm not sure if the tagline "It breathes, It hunts..., It kills!!" is just on the DVD cover and (hopefully) wasn't used back in 1958 to promote this flick as it's beyond stupid. Sure, being hunted by the IT in the movie is probably no picnic and being killed by it isn't of course something that I would choose, but IT breathing isn't really that scary now, is it? Sure, it's a part of the plot, but still... I'm not gonna complain too much though as I live for these over exaggerated taglines for sci-fi/horror flicks from the 50's. The wilder the better, I just felt a little let down by the whole "It breathes!" thing... ;-)

I'm a total sucker for 50's sci-fi and this is one of the classics, so it was with bated breath that I finally sat down to watch it for my very first time. And I have to confess that losing my It! The Terror from Beyond Space virginity wasn't as exciting as I had hoped for... More about that later though, what I want to mention (and I suppose everyone else does as well) is the Alien connection in this flick. This is one of a couple of movies that are said to surely must have been inspiration for the movie Alien, there are flicks like Planet of the Vampires and Queen of Blood that would fit with this one as being close plotwise as well. Ok, we have a space ship with a monster on the lose picking the crew members off one by one, the ending has something to do with an air lock and that's about it that I can recall from this flick. I've read somewhere that some people look at Alien as a remake of this one, but I just can't see that at all.

The movie is set in 1973 (yay! the year I was born, but I don't remember people still dressing in very typical 50's clothes in 1973...) and 6 months after the first manned mission to Mars crashed a second space ship arrives to rescue the survivors. There's only one man left though, Col. Edward Carruthers (Marshall Thompson), and immediately he is suspected of killing the other members of his crew. Supposedly so he would have more food so he could stay alive longer... Yep, he truly is being treated as guilty without no evidence. That he tells his rescuers a monster killed his crew really doesn't help either... so, it's back to earth and court martial for Col. Carruthers.

Before the ship lifts off some stupid idiot leaves a door to the space ship open for quite some time (hm... here we are in space and people are leaving the god damn doors open???), and just like that something sneaks onto the new ship as well. It doesn't take long before some crew members disappear and when their dead and mangled bodies are found people start to believe Carruthers about the monster. They run into the monster and no bullets can harm it, so the crew has to hide on the upper floors of the space ship while the monster is lose a couple of floors below then munching on dead crew members (or something, I don't know what he does to them...).

The remaining crew members hatch a plan and that is to head outside of the space ship, walk down the body of the ship and enter a floor beneath the monster. There they will try to electrocute it by putting some electric cords on the stairs (yep, it's THAT high tech ;-)). This doesn't work and the monster is now getting mightily pissed off and starts to break through the hatches on the floors above him to get his hands on the remaining crew. But, thanks to some bright thinking they realize that the monster needs a lot of oxygen to live (kinda strange as I just don't see that much oxygen existing on Mars to begin with) and when it breaks through the last hatch they throw everything they got at it. That includes a bazooka, ladies and gentlemen... yep, a big fucking bazooka on a space ship!

When the monster is getting weak from the attack they open an air lock and let all air out (while having donned space suits themselves) and the monster soon dies of lack of oxygene... back on earth we get to witness a press conference telling people about the dangers of the planet Mars. And the over dramatic guy holding the press conference ends the movie by letting us know in an typical 1950's over the top way: "There's another name for Mars, and that is... Death!".

This is a movie I have read about many times and have wanted to see for a long time and maybe it was my anticipation that kinda killed it a little as it really wasn't as good as I had hoped for. I'm not gonna say that this is a bad movie though, I did enjoy it in a way, but I just felt that there was something lacking. The movie is very short, only 69 minutes, but still at times it did feel like it was a lot longer than that as there isn't anything happening. The monster itself was quite underwhelming as well, I don't think it was made for the guy wearing it ("Crash" Corrigan) as it looks very much like a suit and not the body of a space creature. We get folds and creases all over when it moves and the head just looks stupid (also probably due to it having a last minute change right before they started shooting the movie).

If you enjoy, just like I do, old black and white 50's sci-fi you should check it out though, I might just have had a bad day (I'm gonna rewatch it later on just to see why I didn't like it more than I did, after all this is the stuff I live for). But, I would rather recommend movies like This Island Earth and Forbidden Planet first if you haven't watched them yet, those are some really good 50's sci-fi movies (both in color though).