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?!?!

Let Sleeping Corpses Lie (1974)

a.k.a. The Living Dead at Manchester Morgue / Don't Open the Window / The Living Dead / Breakfast at the Manchester Morgue etc etc etc.
Directed by: Jorge Grau

After having had myself an Arrested Development marathon this last week it is now time to return to the wild wild world of weird weird movies... and what better movie to restart this with than Let Sleeping Corpses Lie? I do prefer the title The Living Dead at Manchester Morgue as it has such a poetic touch (yep, you heard me!) and I just love the use of "The Living Dead" rather than the word zombie in a title... Like most zombie flicks of the 70's/80's this one has a million alternative titles and apparently it was released in italy as Zombi 3 at one time as well... That's not a small feat considering it was marketed as a second sequel to a movie that still was 4 years away from being released... Oh, those crazy italians!

I'm not sure what to call this movie as it was filmed in the UK and Italy (mostly in Italy), with an british, spanish and italian cast and a spanish director. It's set in the UK, but it sure does feel more like a spanish 70's horror flick than anything else... and you could of course do a lot worse than that. I love the zombies in this movie as they are not the decomposed walking dead that you usually see in the italian zombie flicks that started to pop up a couple of years after this movie was released, these zombies are more recent dead that still have some use of their brains. Their mission is the same though - eating human flesh! And when we're talking about that subject I have to say that the gore we get in this flick is pretty damn impressive for the time it was made.

The movie starts with the hip bike riding and leather wearing antiques dealer George (Ray Lovelock) closing his London Antiques shop to head out to the English countryside on his bike. He's made plans with some friends to fix up a cottage as well as to flog off an ugly looking statue from his shop. On his way to the cottage he stops by a petrol station and manages to get his bike run over by a car driven by the beautiful Edna (Cristina Galbó), being the man's man that he is he more or less forces himself into her car and decides that she will let him drive himself to the cottage and then she can go where the hell she was going afterwards. After all, she owes him that from running over his bike, right?

It turns out that Edna was on her way to meet her junkie sister and her husband and at a crossroads she manages to persuade George that she really needs him to get her there a.s.a.p. After some grumbling on George's part they head for the sister's home instead, but first they have to stop and ask for directions... While good ol' George walk onto a field where some farming people are using a weird insect killing machine (that uses ultra sonic waves to kill off the insects) a strange looking man comes stumbling towards Edna. He attacks her, but she manages to flee from him and when George returns with one of the farmers the weird looking dude is gone - and of course Edna is not believed as the guy she described died last week...

They get into the car again and drive to Edna's sister's cottage where the same man now attacks her inside the house... that is one fast son of a bitch! The sister flees from the house to where her photographer husband is taking pics of some flowers and manages to be followed by the weirdo from the house... Just in time as George and Edna arrives the strange man attacks the photographer husband and kills him, and as this is on the countryside where people aren't as bright as in the cities (right?) George and Edna immediately get under suspicion of killing Edna's sister's husband. It doesn't matter if there is any proof or not, the Police Inspector on the case (Arthur Kennedy) don't believe a thing he's being told by anyone as he is so set on George and Edna being guilty of this crime. He is without a doubt the biggest dick I've ever seen in a movie (and that comes from someone who has watched a couple of John Holmes movies in my days), but not even he is above the law so he must let George and Edna go... but only to the nearby village where they have to stay at a hotel so he can get to them whenever he needs.

Our dynamic duo won't stay at the hotel though and as George now starts to believe Edna about the first attack they decide to go to the local cemetary and check out if they can find out anything about that dude who died last week. They end up in the basement where they are attacked by this man and it's quite obvious he's a zombie, he can also turn other corpses into the living dead by touching their faces, so soon the two "heroes" have three zombies coming for them. They manage to get out of the basement and into the church (together with a cop that was following them), but they are soon under siege as the zombies REALLY want their flesh. The cop makes a run for it to get his radio (that he had dropped outside), but he ends up as a healthy meal instead... The zombies then manage to break into the church only to be burnt to a crisp by reliable ol' George.

So, do you think our beloved Police Inspector believes a word he's being told when he arrives at the scene? Of course not... now George and Edna are under suspicion of killing the cop (and being satanists), but they escape in a cop car as George has now worked things out. The dead are coming back because of that ultra sonic wave machine he saw earlier in the movie... yep, it's as clear as a sunny day that he has found the culprit! He must stop it, but leaves Edna at another petrol station, where she freaks out and get hurt and is sent off to the hospital. George arrives at the field where the machine is and starts banging on it, not really damaging it that much, but he seems happy with it at least. He returns for Edna, after he has been told she's been sent to the hospital, and again he has to battle zombies...

This is quite different from most zombie movies as there has been no zombie apocalypse, there are not zombie all over the place (I think there are something like 7-8 zombies altogether in the whole movie). These zombies are the product of a local pesticide experiment (the ultra sonic wave machine) and not the usual zombie plague.

I'm a sucker for this movie, no matter how much I love the italian zombie flicks that came a couple of years later I'd say that this one beats them all. Sure, there are some hefty plot holes, but nothing I can't live with. The special fx are great (the fx dude Gianetto de Rossi would later work with Fulci on Zombi 2), the zombie in the pic above this text really looks like he's been cut up and then stapled back together again... that gash all down his front looks damn deep to me.

Hell, you get it all, some swinging 70's people battling it out with some great looking zombies... what more can you ask for from a movie?

Vampyres (1974)

a.k.a. Daughters of Dracula / Vampyres: Daughters of Darkness / Satan's Daughters / Blood Hunger
Directed by: José Larraz

I'm a pretty simple person, when there's some blood and gore mixed with nudity I'm gonna watch it. When those ingredients are present in a british flick from the 70's I'm really gonna watch it! Sex and horror go well together and seldom have the two of them mixed so well as in this movie... It's strange as I wouldn't really say there's a huge ass plot that moves the story forward all of the time, it's rather that we get to spend a couple of days with the main characters and that's it, but I fucking love this movie. And it's not only because of the plentiful amounts of nudity we get here, the whole movie has such a great gothic atmosphere and, at times, quite shocking violence. But, I'm not gonna say that all of those nude lesbian scenes with Marianne Morris and Anulka made when wanna turn the movie off either...

This is also an utterly beautiful looking movie that really takes advantage of the british autumn as the falling leaves is a nice metaphor for death, and there is a lot of death in this movie. I'm not sure if it's because of the spanish director, but it doesn't feel like other british horror flicks at the time - it has a more south european feeling and it's easy to compare this flick to the vampire films of Jean Rollin as Vampyres is in the same vein as those (being surreal and dream like), but this one is so much better (and I do really like the Rollin vampire movies).


We start the film with two very beautiful and very nude women tumbling around in a bed, enjoying some sapphic love together when someone with a gun enters their bedroom and shoots them. We then flash forward and find the couple John and Harriet (Brian Deacon & Sally Faulkner) out on a camping trip with their trailer arriving on the grounds of a big mansion in the english countryside. While driving to their destination, Harriet noticed these two women standing by the side of the road trying to hitchhike... and for some reason she can't get that image out of her mind.

The two women were the two from the beginning of the movie, so already here we know that there's something fishy going on. The two women are Fran (Marianne Morris) and Miriam (Anulka) and they have this little thing going on where Fran is picked up by a car and get the driver to bring her back to her home (the big mansion). The driver is invited into the house and end up in bed with the beautiful Fran... and before you say "now, that's one lucky dude!", I have to tell you that the driver ends up dead the very next morning in what looks like a accident with his car.


One day Fran gets picked up by a man named Ted (Murray Brown), who of course won't say no to some rolling around in the hay with her. The next day he finds the bed empty and he's feeling a bit drained... sure, from all the sucking the night before he should feel drained, but not like that... He also has this big scar on his arm that appears he got from a broken glass. Or did he? Um, no he didn't... but more about that later. As he can't find Fran he decides to leave, but not feeling too good he ends up at the trailer with John and Harriet, where he's bandaged up and after having had some coffee he's right as rain again.

Instead of just leaving, Ted lets his little head do the thinking and he returns to the mansion, waiting in his car for Fran to return. She does, this time together with Miriam and another dude that picked them up in his car... yeah, why stop a winning concept? Later that night Miriam attacks the guy who drove them home and bites him to lick his blood (sounds sexy, but this is pretty ferocious), Fran joins in and soon the poor dude has his main vein drained, and not in the way he was hoping.


The next morning Ted wakes up again, and again feeling weak and unusally drained. He again looks for Fran, but as she's not around he gets into his car and drives off... on the road he passes by a car crash scene and when he stops he recognize the dead driver as the guy from the night before. Instead of letting the cops know this he instead returns to the house, where he manages to get locked inside the wine cellar looking for Fran. She returns to the house that same evening and again they have this new guy with them, and again it's party time! This time without Ted as he's too weak to party (I don't care how weak you are, you don't say no to partying with those two gorgeous women!).

The party ends just like all of the other parties these two women have, the guy gets killed and they drink his blood. But, throughout the movie, Harriet (the woman camping near the house) has been doing her Ms. Marple thing and been nosying around the house where she even entered the wine cellar to find Fran and Miriam sleeping a very strange looking sleep (well, Miriam awoke and hid from Harriet). So, things really needs to be taken care of there...


As I said earlier, I really love this movie and one of the things that I really love is how the movie ends... it's not a happy ending and it's not really an end to what is going on in the movie either, if that makes sense. We get to spend some time with these people and then we move on, while they keep doing before we first entered their world. I also like the way these two vampires are being portrayed as there is none of the regular vampire myths present. There are no fangs, the girls have to cut open wounds to drink the blood from people, they can move around in sunlight, they don't transform into any bats or anything and somehow I don't think crosses would make them go away either.

Even though Hammer (yeah, I know... apparently I can't talk about a british horror film from the 70's without bringing up Hammer, but it's valid here) are known for their lesbian vampire movies in the Karnstein series (The Vampire Lovers, Lust for a Vampire & Twins of Evil) this is the definite lesbian vampire movie to me (well, I'm ashamed to confess that I haven't watched Daughters of Darkness or The Blood Spattered Bride yet, but I will!). Sexy nude lesbian vampires... need I say more? Watch it!!!!

The Asphyx (1973)

a.k.a The Horror of Death / Spirit of the Dead
Directed by: Peter Newbrook

It's hard to not compare this movie with the Hammer films from the same time. I mean, it's a gothic horror film set in the victorian era (the film is set in 1875) and it has all of the ingredients that a Hammer flick would have had as well. But, if you go beyond the similarities you'll soon spot the signs that this isn't a Hammer flick. Don't get me wrong, I do think the film is quite OK, but at times it has a tendency to be a bit too slow paced, talky and in all honesty, a bit on the dull side. Even though the sets looked good it still felt like a low budget little brother to the Hammer films of the time and I know it's not fair to compare to Hammer all of the time, but they really set a standard for gothic period horror flicks.

The low budget showed quite well in the last scenes of the movie (I'm not gonna tell you exactly what happens - watch it for yourself) where there is a mask that looked even worse than the old alien masks in the original Star Trek TV series. That was a pure low budget series and still this flick managed to look even cheaper when it came to the special effects. Not that it should matter as a great movie is a great movie no matter how cheap it might look, but then again... I wouldn't go so far as to call this one a great movie.


The main character in the movie is the scientist Sir Hugo Cunningham (Robert Stephens), who is taking photographs of dying people (quite a macabre hobby, wouldn't you say?). When he discovers a black blur in all of the photographs he starts to research the phenomena, coming to the conclusion that he has captured the souls leaving the bodies. Later when he is out filming with his family (yes, he's also an inventor as he has invented a way to make moving pictures) his son and Hugo's soon to be second wife capsize with their small boat and drown. Hugo continues to film them when they're drowning (that's dedication for ya!), while the rest of the family at least tries to save them.

Later on when Hugo is examining the film from the accident he finds the same black blur there as well, but realizes that the blur is not leaving the bodies - it's coming for them. And later when he's filming a public hanging he manages to capture a weird muppet looking blue spirit coming for the hanged man. Hugo comes to the conclusion that what he captured on film was the spirit of the dead, The Asphyx, who came to take the hanged man to the underworld. Being the bright guy that he is he realizes that if he can capture the spirit he will have found immortality... if there's no spirit of the dead to take you away you will not die.

He uses a guinea pig (it's an actual guinea pig) for an experiment in trying to capture the Asphyx, and after having fed it some poisoned paste the guinea pig starts to die - and viola! the Asphyx appears. Thanks to some weird blue light Hugo uses he traps the spirit and locks it up in a box - the guinea pig recovers and it comes clear that if you catch the spirit of the dead you can not die. He's not only a brilliant scientist, he's also a bit koo-koo, so Hugo decides to top himself off (well, almost at least) and with the help of his adopted son, Giles (Robert Powell), capture his very own spirit of the dead who will come and collect his soul and thus become immortal.


After doing what they do so well in Texas, using an electric chair, Hugo's very own Asphyx is now trapped and locked up in a room in the cellar. Having lost half of his family recently Hugo wants Giles and Hugo's daughter (who wants to get married to Giles... her adpoted brother, what the hell is going on in that family, really???) to do the same so he won't lose them as well. After some persuading they both agree (he won't let them marry unless they do this, nice guy that he is), but things don't really go as planned...

This is by far not a bad movie, not at all, but I feel it could have been so much more... It's a horror film, but in all honesty there isn't really that much horror in it. I don't know if it's the low budget, but at times it does feel like I'm watching an old british TV theater episode - it's a very talky movie that rather than showing some of the stuff let the characters tell us about it instead. Even though the DVD I have of this flick looks pretty washed out when it comes to the colors it is a good looking film with some great looking sets - and even if some of the acting was a bit too TV theater looking I really liked Robert Stephens as Hugo Cunningham. The ending was maybe a bit on the cheesy side, but I like cheesy so I won't complain too much.

It's a good flick to check out when you have run out of Hammer flicks to watch... well, check out the Amicus ones before this one as well, but then you should definitely check this one out as it is well worth the time you'll spend with it if you're into british 70's gothic horror flicks.

Tales from the Crypt (1972)

Directed by: Freddie Francis

Being a big fan of Hammer Films it's easy to also have a soft spot for Amicus Productions as Amicus always felt like the poor man's Hammer. Not that their movies were not as good as Hammer's, as a lot of them were, but you get the feeling the company didn't really have the same budget as Hammer as most of their movies are set in a "modern" time instead of the usual Hammer period pieces. Another reason Hammer and Amicus go so well together is all the Hammer stars (both actors and directors) that worked for Amicus as well.

One thing that Amicus were really good at, and I don't think Hammer did any at all, are anthology movies. I like anthology movies as even at worse case scenario you usually get at least one great story... that's at least better than to have to suffer through a total snooze fest with no entertaining value at all. And when it comes to the Amicus anthology movies you usually get much more of the good than the bad.


And now, over to the movie: We start with some tourists visiting some catacombs somewhere in England, and while most of the tourists are following the guide five manage to get left behind and not finding a way out. That's until a door opens and they find a big room with five stone chairs in the middle - no one is there and they decide that this party really blows and head for the door when it slams shut and behind them a monk looking man appears. You never get to know who he is in the movie, but this is the Crypt Keeper - looking and sounding very different from the yattering pun machine that was presenting the Tales from the Crypt TV series in the 90's. He tells the five people that they need to see what he will show them and here's where the short movies within the movie starts...


First out is ...And All Through the House, and here we find Joanne (Joan Collins) celebrating Christmas by bashing her husband's head in... by being that naughty just around Christmas time you'd suspect that Joanne wouldn't get a visit from Santa Claus, but you're so wrong about that! While she's taking care of her hubby's dead body a radio announcement is letting us know that a man has escaped from the home of the criminally insane, and he is wearing a Santa costume. Of course he is headed straight for Joanne's house and starts to knock on the door trying to get in... Joanne would have been safe if it wasn't for her stupid daughter who thought that Santa should come inside the house instead of freezing outside. There's one reason why I really hate kids... retards!

Second out is Reflection of Death, and just as the first one this is kinda short (but that's a good thing as it's without a doubt the weakest of the lot). Here we have a guy called Carl (Ian Hendry) who abandons his wife and two kids for his mistress, while driving with her to their new home they get into a car crash. Carl is dragging himself from the scene of the crash looking for his mistress, but can't find her. So he decides to go back home to his wife again - who he freak the shit out when she opens the door (and strangely enough the name on the door is different now and she seems to have a new hubby... that's weird!), he keeps scaring people along the way (we only see things from his point of view) and ends up at his mistress' old apartment where she is living again. There he (and we) finally get a look of himself and it turns out the car crash happened two years ago and he's now a walking corpse... he wakes up screaming in the car (this was apparently just a dream) just about to be part of the same car crash he just dreamt about.


Third out is Poetic Justice, and here we have Peter Cushing playing an old gentle garbage man that some of his snobbish neighbors just can't stand. All because of what he's working with and that he is taking care of stray dogs (oh, the noise!) and is visited by the neighborhood's children (which he gives toys to, toys that he has found in the garbage and repaired). A father and son team from the other side of the street starts an smear campaign to get rid of the old man and first they have the police getting rid of his dogs. When that's not enough they imply to the children's parents that he might be a child molestor, so all the children are forbidden to go to him. Then they even manage to get him to lose his job, and when that's not enough they send him a lot of nasty Valentine cards on Valentine's Day. This last thing is too much for poor old Mr. Grimsdyke (Cushing) and he hangs himself... One year later he his back visiting his old neighbors though, and he leaves a Valentine card of his own...

The fourth story is Wish You Were Here, and this is a variant of the old "The Monkey's Paw" story. Be careful what you wish for, it just might come true! In this one we have a business man, Ralph Jason (Richard Greene), who is having financial troubles - luck have it that his wife spots a text on the bottom of a small statue in their home telling them about three wishes. Not that they believe in such things, but they do make a wish for money and ta-da! the phone rings and the money situation seems to be clearing up. But, on his way to his lawyer Ralph dies in a car crash - his wife desperately wants him back and makes another wish: to get him back as he was right before he crashed. Well, poor old Ralphie-boy died of a heart attack before the crash so he comes back to her in a coffin... So, she uses the third and last wish to make him alive now and forever as he was before he died. He comes back to life, but is screaming in pain due to having been embalmed... when his wife can't take his screams any more she uses a sword on him, chopping him to pieces and still he's screaming...


And the last story is Blind Alleys, and it takes place in a home for the blind, where Major William Rogers (Nigel Patrick) is the new director. Not knowing how to lead the blind he resorts to how he lead his men in the army and that might not be the best of ideas... he's also a cheap bastard taking away almost every little luxury thing the blind men enjoyed (like heat in the building, blankets, real food... you know, luxury stuff). When one of the blind dies from the cold the rest of them decides that enough is enough and lock the Major up in a small cell while they're doing some woodwork outside his door. When they finally open up his door he finds a small corridor that he needs to get through to get to safety... a corridor that has a shitload of razor blades stuck to the walls! And if that wasn't bad enough, they release the Major's now very hungry dog on him inside the corridor...

The movie ends with the Crypt Keeper letting us know why we have seen all of this and I'll let you find that out all by yourself... so find yourself a copy of this movie and watch it dammit!


Tales from the Crypt is based on an old comic book from the 50's with the same name, although some of the stories in this movie were taken from the magazine The Vault of Horror, which was published by the same people at the same time as Tales... The tone is quite dark in this movie, but with a dark sense of humor mixed in with the horror, just like the original magazines. And it works very well for me... This is not my favorite Amicus anthology movie (that honor goes to The House That Dripped Blood), but it's a damn fine one!

You get some great acting and the directing by Freddie Francis is flawless, we get the usual 70's style weird angles (which I love) and wild close ups (especially in the car crash in the second story). This a great example of classic early 70's british horror cinema with one of the greats, Peter Cushing. You can't go wrong with that! (and I must confess that I actually jumped up by something in the first story... yep, even yours truly can be scared by a movie ;-)).

Dr. Jekyll & Sister Hyde (1971)

Directed by: Roy Ward Baker

Thinking of having a sex change operation? Well, there's no need! There's this potion that you can drink and viola! you're a woman! No nasty and painful surgery needed - the only drawback is that you'll have to kill some prostitutes to get the female hormones needed in the potion. But, you can always let people think the killings are the work of Jack the Ripper... Hm, maybe this only works back in Victorian London, and just maybe it only works in the movies...

"Dr. Jekyll & Sister Hyde" was Hammer Films' third version of Robert Louis Stevenson's "Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll & Mr. Hyde". The other two were "The Ugly Duckling" (1959) and "The Two Faces of Dr. Jekyll" (1960), but this is definitely the best and most fun of the three. How could things go wrong with a movie that throws both the killings of Jack the Ripper and the graverobbers Burke & Hare into the mix with some gender bending fun?

It's 1888 and the place is London. A young brilliant doctor, Henry Jekyll (Ralph Bates), is working hard on finding the cure for all diseases only to realize that it will take him too long to finish his work. So, our good doctor starts to search for the "elixir of life". An elixir that will expand his life long enough for him to be able to finish his research and find that cure he so desperately want to give to the world.

He finds that taking a gland from female corpses and use their hormones lets a fly live for days instead of hours. There's a side effect though... the male fly has now turned female. That's nothing that bothers Dr. Jekyll and he keeps going back to the morgue for more of those female hormones, he needs to test the elixir on a human and who better to try it on than himself? He turns into a sexy female, Sister Hyde (Martine Beswicke), for a short period and then turns back (not before the brother of a brother, sister & mother combo who just moved in upstairs from Dr Jekyll, and where the sister has the hots for the doctor, get to oogle the bare chest of "Sister Hyde"). Dr. Jekyll needs more fresh corpses to harvest more hormones so he can stay female for a longer time, but as the morgue has run out of them he gets in touch with the famous grave robbers Burke & Hare (who in reality lived in Scotland and died 60 years before this movie is set... but who cares about small things like that?). But when those two grave robbing bastards get caught it's up to the doctor to get his hands on those hormones. He's starting to kill prostitues in the dark streets of Whitechapel... and hey, we've got Jack the Ripper in the story as well!

The hormones work their magic and Sister Hyde is visiting more frequently, what Dr Jekyll didn't prepare for was her will to stay in his body (and do other things than researching a silly cure for all diseases)... and fool around with that dude from upstairs. The Police start to suspect Dr Jekyll of the murders, but as he needs more hormones he lets sister Hyde do the killing, and she does it well... little evil minx that she is! It soon escalates into a war between Dr. Jekyll and Sister Hyde over who will get to keep his body... and the ending is classic Hammer (that really needs to be seen)!

I'm a massive fan of the Hammer Horror movies so I'm hard to disappoint when it comes to anything from that studio, but you don't need to be as nerdy as I am when it comes to Hammer Films to like this one. It has all the ingredients (and then some) of the classic Hammer flicks, the period setting, the great looking sets, great actors and actresses (Martine Beswick is too damn delicious for words in this movie, and not just because she's a total hottie, she's so damn evil it's hard to not fall head over heels for her "Sister Hyde" and she goes really well with Ralph Bates, being his alter ego), good horror scenes with some nice murders - not as bloody as some might want them, but this is how it should be in a Hammer flick. And here we, of course, also get the gender bending fun with Mr Jekyll turning into Sister Hyde and the hanky panky that's almost going on with both the brother and sister from the apartment upstairs!

If you're only gonna see one Hammer film I would probably recommend "The Devil Rides Out", but if you're gonna check out two this one should be on that short list. Sure, we got the Frankenstein and Dracula series and anything featuring Ingrid Pitt is a must, but I think this one rises above all of those because it's just a great and fun popcorn movie that's not totally serious all the time... and Martine is just to die for (if you're a prostitute that's kinda literally in this movie ;-)).