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.