Now Playing: JAN. 25, 1962

In Charleston again, a Thursday opening for a British comedy from the house of horror itself -- Hammer Studios.

Despite the advertising, IMDB reviewers describe this film as "clean," "family-friendly" and "non-offensive." No trailer available online, but Hardtofindvideos2 has uploaded the U.S. credits and jazzy opening scene, which teases more suspicious goings-on.



Hope that tides you over until tomorrow's more extensive listings, but I might get another review in before that.

Wendigo Meets CAPTAIN KRONOS, VAMPIRE HUNTER (1974)

It's not a good sign for the movie, I suppose, when the DVD box cover forgets to show you the title character, and that's where Wendigo and I started with the now-remaindered Paramount DVD of Brian Clemens's would-be tentpole picture from the dying days of the Hammer studio. With Dracula played out and the Karnstein act already growing tired, the home of the vampire made this last stab at infusing some novelty into the bloodsuckers, making sure to make Captain Kronos a tangental sequel to the Karnstein series (here pronounced "Karn-steen," Mel Brooks style) while pointing toward new directions that were never actually taken.

A Van Helsing for the Swaggering Seventies, Kronos (Horst Janson) is a sword-swinging, often-shirtless, cheroot smoking stud on a mission from God. The way Wendigo sees it, Kronos was to Peter Cushing's Van Helsing what Hugh Jackman's Van Helsing was to all other respectable vampire hunters: a floundering attempt to be more cool on all levels. At this point, Hammer thought it was better to look good than to talk good, giving us a very Germanic, very wooden star. Nor, under Clemens's direction, does Janson look very good as an action hero. The director doesn't direct action very well and has difficulty maintaining the balance he seeks between horror action and tongue-in-cheek fantasy. The climactic swordfight between hunter and vampire, waged while everyone else stands in mesmerized stillness, looks ridiculous, but not in a good way, and much of the action is like that.

Hammer clearly wanted Kronos to stand for something new in vampire movies. The script stresses that there are as many varieties of vampire as there are animals in nature, with different modes of attack, different vulnerabilities, etc. For this introductory outing the studio tries to spice up its usual gothic formula. The vampire doesn't drain its victims of blood alone, but of youth above all, leaving the usual pretty Hammer victims dessicated old ladies. It slinks about by day, albeit concealed in black robes that keep the predator's true identity a mystery until the end. It drains the life even from the landscapes, plants withering in its shadow. It can be trailed in obscure ways; plant a dead toad in a box beneath a road, for instance, and the poor croaker will come back to life if a vampire passes over. Wendigo assures me that this is authentic folklore, but that only shows that folks will believe all manner of lore. In one blackly comic scene, Kronos and his hunchbacked assistant struggle to figure out the right method to kill a more-or-less compliant subordinate vampire, trying the usual stake and the unusual expedient of hanging before literally stumbling upon the solution of applying blessed steel to its flesh. This inspires the forging of a sword from a steel crucifix while Kronos gets all spiritual and meditative like the martial-arts masters he was probably meant to emulate. These eccentric details are most of the best things about Captain Kronos in Wendigo's opinion.

Above: Shadow of the vampire -- or shadow of Gumby?

Below: a crucifix was no help to this victim.

The other best thing about the movie, of course, is Caroline Munro.

Munro is an icon of Seventies genre cinema, the Vampirella that never was and a mesmerizing presence in everything from The Golden Voyage of Sinbad to Starcrash. Sadly, she's underutilized and at the same time overutilized here. She isn't given much to do but service Kronos after he frees her from the stocks (she'd been sentenced for dancing on Sundays), but Clemens always cuts to her reaction shots as she makes saucy and sardonic faces in lieu of actual commentary on the action. Wendigo is compelled to admit that she's little more than eye candy here -- but he doesn't mind indulging his cinematic sweet tooth every so often. He's always regretted that she didn't have as many substantial roles as she deserved -- and that she didn't do nude scenes. He treasures what we do have of her just the same. She effortlessly eclipses most of the cast, from John Cater's learned hunchback to Wanda Ventham as a poor man's Ingrid Pitt.

Dr. Grost's Zoology: Dead toads are our friends;

bats are not.

Wendigo thinks that Captain Kronos could have become the series Hammer hoped for -- if it had a different director and star and had come out in a period when people hadn't grown bored with vampires. As it turned out, Clemens's Kronos was the wrong film at the wrong time. Would it be worth trying again now? Again, Wendigo notes sadly that Stephen Sommers's abominable Van Helsing is, for all intents and purposes, a Kronos remake. He presumes that any attempt to literally redo Kronos would end up sharing all of Van Helsing's flaws and excesses. The simplicity of a hunter stalking a single master vampire and deducing the right method of killing it probably wouldn't satisfy 21st century audiences -- but you never know. People who are interested in alternate approaches to vampires and vampire hunting -- and people interested in Caroline Munro -- might be satisfied with the Captain Kronos we have, but the whole remains less than the sum of its parts.

Here's a trailer uploaded to YouTube by TheCultMovieReview.

Wendigo Meets HORROR OF DRACULA (1958)

My friend Wendigo estimates that he's seen Terence Fisher's landmark vampire film more times than any other "Dracula" movie, unless you count Nosferatu. Despite that, he was still able to look at it with fresh eyes to mark our return from an unintended hiatus following Wendigo's discovery of the Encore Westerns channel. Someday we might start doing "Wendigo's Wild West," but for now we've taken the latest title off the top of his to-do pile and asked ourselves where Horror of Dracula's real significance lies.

Released in the U.K. as just plain Dracula -- Warner Bros., the U.S. distributor, was more deferential toward Universal's implicit claim to the Dracula title even though Universal itself distributed Hammer's film in some markets without fuss -- Fisher's film is a natural follow-up to his Curse of Frankenstein from the previous year, bringing back Peter Cushing as the protagonist and Christopher Lee as the monster. Like Curse, it was something new as a Technicolor horror movie. What was new and lastingly distinctive, in Wendigo's opinion, is the paring down of Bram Stoker's source story and the increased prominence of Van Helsing as a more energetic vampire hunter. Renfield is perhaps the most conspicuous absence, and as is almost always the case, Quincey Morris is nowhere to be found. Dracula himself is strangely monogamous, having but one bride when Jonathan Harker visits him, but Wendigo suspects that the master vampire may have had to live on a budget. Most impressive and probably most influential is the physicality of the combat between vampire and hunter. Cushing has to do more than brandish a cross to get the upper hand on Lee -- crossing candlesticks is really more a coup de grace than the decisive blow. Cross damage, however, plays a more important role here than in previous vampire films; Fisher makes much of how they burn a vampire's thrall on contact. That's typical of a greater use of effects to portray supernatural damage, as in Lee's protracted destruction.

Above and below: the power of the cross.

As a new kind of Dracula, Lee makes a strong early impression, but there are already signs of trouble for his later career in the role. In his first appearance he is casually conversational, articulate and businesslike, and Lee handles these scenes with ease. But after he leaves Harker in his room, Lee never gets another line of dialogue, setting the tone for his reappearance in Dracula, Prince of Darkness, when he has no dialogue at all.

Christopher Lee: shadow and substance.

Why silence Lee so soon? I suspect that Hammer may not have been too confident in an un-accented, un-foreign Dracula, but Wendigo makes the more pragmatic point that, in billing and practically every other detail, this is Cushing's movie, not Lee's, and it wasn't Lee's job to upstage the star by grabbing the best lines. Cushing at this point was perhaps the most popular star on British television while Lee was still paying his dues, and the roles are proportioned accordingly.

Wendigo readily allows that Horror of Dracula -- or Dracula, if you prefer -- is a movie about Van Helsing. That may reflect Cushing's stardom, but it also reflects a new sense of what Van Helsing is about that continues into a sequel that also has Dracula in the title, but features Van Helsing instead of Dracula. The scholar and vampire hunter is the initiator of the action rather than an expert called in for help in the middle. Jonathan Harker is only his helper and spy, sent by the good doctor to take the job Dracula was offering (in the want ads???) as the castle librarian. He is one of who-knows-how-many agents Van Helsing employs in his crusade against the "insidious cult" of vampires, and as such, the protagonist of Stoker's novel is no more than cannon fodder. That means, we must note, that Harker has to be stupid. He could have ended this movie after two reels if he had thought to stake a still-helpless Dracula first when he discovers the vampire's sleeping quarters. Instead, the idiot decides to stake the contentious Mrs. Dracula first. What was that, practice? Anyway, for that Harker deserves his fate, and that clears the stage for Van Helsing to take over. Our hero is a man of science as well as fate; in a scene Hammer would come to regret, he tells Arthur Holmwood (the late Michael Gough) that vampires turning into bats is just a myth. Wendigo thinks this bit of debunking was another case of Hammer knowing its limitations. In his opinion, given the studio's history of bat effects, they shouldn't have forgotten them. But he thinks Van Helsing's lecture may have had an influence beyond Hammer, as many modern vampires lack the panoply of powers that the doctor denies.

But for all that's new in Hammer's Dracula, Horror is in some ways reminiscent of Universal's vampire films. The most notable similarity is tied to writer Jimmy Sangster's most significant departure from Stoker -- the fact that Dracula never leaves Europe. The way some people write about how Stoker's Dracula stands for the general threat of the foreigner polluting England, it might seem that Sangster loses the point of the story if the Count doesn't invade the island kingdom. But he sets the story in a landscape much like what we call "preoccupied Europe," the timeless setting of Universal's monster rallies. Casting Lee as Dracula and having him speak without a Transylvanian accent is reminiscent of Universal's use of Lon Chaney Jr. and John Carradine in its later Dracula movies. By comparison, when an American studio revived Dracula around the same time, they made a point of casting an obvious foreigner, Francis Lederer, in an echo of Bela Lugosi. As for the period, the most we can say is that, whether Sangster meant it or not, the film can take place no earlier than 1903, thanks to Van Helsing's comparison of a little girl to a Teddy bear. But the landscape of Klaussenberg, Ingolstadt, etc., strongly resembles Universal's Visaria more than anyplace else -- with an important bit of difference. Dracula's territory seems to be getting colonized by Englishmen.

Horror of Dracula competed against William Castle's Macabre in some North American markets. At least one enterprising exhibitor thought the film could use a gimmick to compete more effectively.

Jonathan Harker is just an interloper, but Arthur Holmwood appears to be a permanent residence, and another Englishman, Dr. Seward, practices there. Wendigo notes that Hammer's mitteleuropa is really a barely-disguised rural England, given how few actors attempt foreign accents. He suggests that Hammer's Europe may symbolize English nostalgia for a disappearing past and its rustic traditions. I can agree with that, but I'd like to go further out on a limb and suggest that Horror of Dracula is a "postcolonial" film for the dying days of the British Empire. My description of Holmwood and Seward as "colonists" probably tipped my hand already on that point. In that context, it may not be as important for Dracula to invade England as it is for him to be a kind of native insurgent, representing the danger of the "dark" tides engulfing the handful of English whose efforts to civilize the world are apparently failing. Read that way, the "horror" film Dracula is not so different from such Hammer "adventure" films as Stranglers of Bombay and Terror of the Tongs, which also highlight Englishmen in peril abroad among secretive hostile natives with strange powers over the mind, thanks to drugs or fanatic religion. The "cult of the vampires" thus becomes an analogue for the Thugee cult and other terrifying phenomena of imperial history that Hammer would later confront directly. Wendigo sees some merit in this reading, but he thinks it was more likely a subconscious approach by Sangster, the conscious motive being to save money by re-using as many Curse of Frankenstein sets as possible.

Lee lacks a certain grace in his flight from Cushing, but those stairs probably did neither man many favors.

Horror of Dracula's place in movie history is indisputable, but Wendigo finds the Hammer Dracula series to be less than meets the eye. The studio never really gives the vampire enough to do, or at least enough to make him an interesting character. Most of his favorite Hammer vampire films have nothing to do with Dracula; those do more with vampire concepts than the Dracula movies ever dared. Brides of Dracula is arguably an exception, but mainly because it had no Dracula. Had a Van Helsing series continued from that point, instead of being feebly resumed with Dracula A.D. 1972, Hammer may have changed the face of horror cinema in an even more profound way. Christopher Lee may not be a truly great Dracula, but Peter Cushing is nearly the definitive cinematic Van Helsing, with Edward Van Sloan from the Universal Dracula as his only serious competition. For introducing Cushing's vampire hunter, the model for generations of paranormal warriors to come, Horror's place in history remains secure.

It's harder than I expected to find a 1958 "Dracula" (as opposed to "Horror") trailer online -- so this U.S. trailer uploaded to YouTube by hermankatnip will have to do.

Wendigo Meets VAMPIRE CIRCUS (1972)

If there was ever a "lost" Hammer vampire film, it'd probably be Robert Young's effort, which stands apart from both the Dracula and Karnstein series. I can't recall it ever being on TV when I was a kid, but my friend Wendigo managed to see it about 30 years ago on one of the New York movie stations from the good old days of cable TV. As a vampire buff young Wendigo went out of his way to make sure he saw it after he saw it listed in the TV guide. He presumes that he knew about it from Famous Monsters of Filmland, which he was reading long before I ever bought a cult-movie mag. His sources told him that it was actually one of the better Hammer films, and definitely better than the studio's other Seventies vampire films. Thirty years on, before we sat down to watch it on Netflix, he remembered a woman being made to run a gauntlet; a vampire staked early and revived late; and not much else. He remembers being disappointed with a lack of "importance" due to Dracula's absence and confused by some apparent bending of the vampire rules. He recalls some ambivalence, neither liking it well nor hating it much, but now that he has a greater appreciation for the diversity of vampire lore he was ready to give Circus a fresh look.

Director Young sends us back to Hammerland, opening with a woman presenting a child as an offering to the local vampire, Count Mitterhaus. After drinking his fill, the Count declares, "One lust awakens another" and takes the woman to bed. Aroused in a different way by the girl's disappearance, the villagers, including the woman's schoolteacher husband, overcome their fear of aristocracy and storm the Mitterhaus castle with torches and barrels of gunpowder. After a struggle, they manage to stake Mitterhaus. Since he's not obliged to disintegrate or explode instantly, the aggrieved Count has time to curse his killers, vowing that their children would die to give him new life. Anna, the vampire's lover, is made to run the gauntlet as a presumed prelude to lynching, but her husband can't stand to see her suffer, despite everything. But he can't stop her from running into the castle as it burns, apparently to her death. Bleeding from her wounds, she manages to make Mitterhaus stir long enough to instruct her to seek out his cousin, who'll arrange for the vengeance.

Count Mitterhaus (Robert Tayman) and a youthful victim.

Fifteen years pass. Given that our town is suffering from a plague and quarantine, you might not blame folks for thinking that Mitterhausen's prophecy was coming true. On the other hand, the circus is coming to town! Somehow the Circus of Nights ("A hundred delights!") has made it through the military cordon thrown around the community to provide the plagued villagers with the solace of wholesome family entertainment. It has all you can ask for: a dwarf, a strong man (David "Darth Vader" Prowse), a gypsy animal trainer, a naked dancing girl in reptile make-up (or is she supposed to be feline?), a panther that turns into a man, and twin acrobats (including Lalla "Romana" Ward) who turn into bats in broad daylight. You might think that superstitious villagers might tear a circus apart that sported bat-tropic performers, but it's a circus, so it must be some sort of carny magic, right? But you know better, don't you?...

See! The Circus of Nights!

See! The Ssssnaked Woman!

See! The Twins of Ev-- sorry, that's another picture.

Wendigo tells me that folklore often makes circuses out to be dangerous affairs, infested with faerie folk, vampires and other menaces. You see the gimmick in movies too, as recently as The Vampire's Apprentice. Vampires and circuses are a natural match somehow, since travelling players were always an object of suspicion as well as fascination and fantasy. Vampire Circus stresses the circus part of the equation, pausing the action to show off its specialty artists. While not all the performers are vampires, Wendigo claims that the circus as a whole has a mesmeric effect on audiences, breaking down their resistance and enticing them into traps. The problem with the film, however, is that the circus folk seem so sinister and suspicious from the beginning that it doesn't make sense for the villagers to let their guard down so easily. But I guess you can't have the Count's revenge otherwise. The circus gimmick also left Wendigo wondering what was in it for the non-vampire performers. The dwarf, strongman and snake-girl are human, but are they slaves or willing allies of Emil the were-panther vampire, the older and vengeful Anna, and her vampire twins? The fact that the vampires eventually drain the snake-girl and her partner really left us scratching our heads, but explaining their strange careers would probably require a different movie altogether.

Put all the circus stuff aside, of course, and you have a familiar Hammer vampire's-revenge storyline with an also-familiar generation-gap spin on it. Circus doesn't really do much new with these ideas, and its young romantic hero and heroine are pretty dull, but it's the sort of story that can be done over and over. If anything, this movie seems to vindicate intolerance, since the circus clearly shouldn't have been welcomed to town, and for that matter, everyone would have been better off had Anna's husband let her be lynched at the start of the picture. The only intolerance that gets refuted is the hero's initial refusal to recognize the supernatural at work. Circus can be seen as a reactionary picture if you interpret the circus itself as symbolic of the counterculture or alternate lifestyles. Sometimes, though, a vampire is just a vampire.

The power of Christ doesn't compel everybody.

In some ways, Vampire Circus is ahead of its time in its diversity of vampire powers. Cousin Emil may have been unique up to that time as a vampire who turns into a panther, while the Mitterhaus twins, as noted, can do their bat tricks during the day. If any of this seems "wrong" to a vampire buff, Wendigo says: too bad. Critics often go overboard classifying things and insisting that a thing can't be what it is if it doesn't fit their made-up categories. Folklore is more fluid, and if anything, the eccentric elements of Circus make it a more folkloric-feeling vampire film than many other Hammer films. But some things stay the same.

In Hammer films the cross is invincible -- except in the meaty paw of Dave Prowse -- even if it's just a light-reflecting crosspiece of a crossbow. Circus adds a more unusual but folklorically sound turning method when the vampires are repelled by the ringing of church bells. Being a late Hammer, Circus also sports more nudity and much more gore than earlier films. The snake-girl dances about quite nude, albeit in body paint, and the actress playing young Anna is ardently naked for her master vampire. The gore highlight, if you please, is a shot of the ripped-up, maggot-ridden remains of a panther attack on an entire family, while the highlight for pure cartoonish violence is the moment when the heroine drops a huge cross from a church ceiling to impale poor Lalla Ward. As for effects, both bats and fangs are usually adequate, though the teeth effects are erratic (especially when it comes to length) depending on the mouth employed.

Wendigo now feels that Vampire Circus is one of Hammer's good ones, and one of the best of its Seventies vampire films along with Twins of Evil. I'm not quite as impressed with it, since its pretty simple stuff apart from the novelty, but the novelty itself is enough to raise Circus a little above the Hammer average. Difference is its virtue compared to the anemic Dracula films, and for Wendigo the difference includes the film's look at a circus tradition far different from what he's used to from Ringling Bros. In any event, Wendigo doesn't propose to wait another thirty years before seeing it again, and now that it's finally been released on DVD in the U.S., Vampire Circus will most likely earn a spot in his permanent collection.

SynapseFilms released the DVD, and they've uploaded the trailer to YouTube.

Wendigo Meets BRIDES OF DRACULA (1960)

If ever a film should have been called "Van Helsing," It's Terrence Fisher's 1960 follow up to Hammer's breakthrough vampire film (Horror of) Dracula. As an opening narration tells us, Count Dracula himself is dead, but J. Van Helsing (Peter Cushing) carries on his holy work from the previous picture. Cushing is clearly the star and Van Helsing the main character, but the world wasn't ready for a film bearing the doctor's name. The "Dracula" name was more of a sure thing, as testified by contemporary films where the famous vampire's presence was a tease (Return of Dracula) or a lie (Blood of Dracula).

My friend Wendigo mentioned Brides in passing when I asked him to list his least favorite cinematic vampires, but he's here today to praise the film. His critique, in short, is "bad vampires, good movie." He hasn't warmed over time toward David Peel's tepid portrayal of Baron Meinster, the master vampire of the piece. Peel still strikes him as little more than a pretty boy who brings no power to the role. It is true that he bests the mighty Van Helsing in combat, but Wendigo reminds us that there were two other vampires plus a minion in the fight. The vampire women also disappoint him. The big problem with the otherwise typically attractive Hammer women is that they look like they're wearing clown makeup. Their faces are paler than the rest of their flesh and to Wendigo that just looks silly. Don't even gets him started on the bat effects; he finds them nightmarishly bad. The oversized bats float without flapping their wings or bounce awkwardly on wires like a silent-movie ornithopter. Hammer was usually more careful about trying effects they couldn't achieve, but this time was an embarrassing botch.

Really: would Count Dracula take these whitefaced women as his brides? They're more than good enough for Baron Meinster (David Peel, below), as are Brides's bumbling bats.

Brides is the first Hammer vampire film and possibly the first vampire movie Wendigo remembers seeing. He was more impressed by the vampire hunter than the vampire, understandably, with Cushing setting the standard for fighting the undead for ever afterward. Wendigo digs Cushing's energy, the character's courage, creativity and determination. The images of Cushing cauterizing a vampire bite on his own neck with a hot iron and holy water, throwing holy water in a vampire's face, and killing the vampire by catching him in the cruciform shadow of a windmill's blades are indelible for my friend. Stephen Sommers would probably never have made his Van Helsing movie had this one never existed -- but don't hold that against Brides. Wendigo's opinion, of course, is that Cushing could kick Hugh Jackman's ass no matter how many steampunk weapons Sommers's hero brought to the fight.

Dr. Van Helsing doesn't just clean up your vampire problems; he's also a client.

Besides Cushing, Brides boasts some luscious art direction and vivid cinematography, along with the gorgeous Yvonne Monlaur as the heroine. Fisher shows off Monlaur's red hair to full advantage, and she gives just the right performance of naive vulnerability and longing as her aspiring schoolteacher falls into Meinster's gothic trap. The first half hour of Brides is a little gothic tale that could virtually stand on its own in an anthology film or an EC comic; the poor victimized (and handsome) young scion who proves to have been held prisoner for excellent reasons. Unfortunately, Peel isn't especially convincing even in that role, but the film marches on in spite of him.

Like other early Hammers, Brides develops the mythos of the "cult of the vampires" that was briefly mentioned in Horror of Dracula. The spectre of the "cult" reflects British fear and hatred for an occult revival already underway in the U.K., but also seems to anticipate the accelerated decadence to come later in the Sixties. In this picture, Van Helsing offers an origin story for the cult, claiming that it began with pagan resistance to Christianity during the late Roman Empire. Later in the cycle, when the idea of the cult is picked up again, the vampires will be portrayed as Satanists, but for now the decadent eastern aristocrat Meinster and his harem of brides stand in for Wicca and other evils in the heritage of Aleister Crowley. Wendigo is something of a student of Wiccan history, and his observations allow us to see the early Hammer vampire films in a fresh light.

"Chill-lerrr..."

Our latest viewing of Brides made more clear for us how British vampire films emphasize class and aristocracy in a way that'd make no sense for American movies. Class and the dominance of aristocracy or gentry was an inescapable fact in the 19th century Europe portrayed in Hammer's films, and its legacy had a long-term influence on English and European images of the dominant, lordly vampire who holds whole communities in thrall. If American stories have made the vampire a different sort of creature, it's at least partly because Americans, no matter how much they may embrace certain gothic motifs and concepts, don't really feel that feudal heritage. The vampire as predatory aristocrat was bound to become too campy to be taken seriously, and at that point the vampire had to become something meaningful to an American or a post-aristocratic global audience. People watching Brides today may not get how the Meinsters could hold such sway over their community; as a result, they may miss some of the horror of films like this one.

Bite a Van Helsing in the neck and then just walk away? You deserve everything you get, Meinster.

In Hammer history, Brides can be seen as the middle film of a trilogy dealing with the "cult of the vampires" that closes with Kiss of the Vampire, which does without both Dracula and Van Helsing but boasts a much bigger cult. While certain concepts of Brides (particularly the girls' school setting) are taken up again in the sexier Karnstein films of the Seventies, the film itself is a kind of dead end in that Hammer didn't use Van Helsing again until they cast Cushing as a modern-day version of the character in Dracula A.D. 1972. The studio must have decided that it couldn't build a horror series around a hero, though they would try to create their own such hero late in the day in Captain Kronos. Like Kiss, Brides is perceived as a poor relation to the "real" Dracula films lorded over by Christopher Lee. In Wendigo's opinion, Brides is much better, despite its inferior vampire, to many of the later Lee films. It may be the most visually impressive of all the Hammer vampire films, and it deserves respect as one of Peter Cushing's greatest showcases.

David Peel is relegated to fifth billing behind Cushing, two old ladies and "France's newest sex kitten" in this U.S. trailer, uploaded to YouTube by TheFearChamber.

Michael Gough (1916 - 2011)

Sad news today for genre film fans. The actor once known for his scenery-chewing villainy in numerous British horror and sci-films (Konga, Horrors of the Black Museum, etc.), whose image mellowed into that of Batman's wise old butler in four films, has passed away at a great and venerable age. Gough was present close to the creation of Hammer Horror as a supporting player in Terrence Fisher's (Horror of) Dracula and was a fixture in the English genre for more than twenty years thereafter. He remained creatively associated with Tim Burton until just last year, when he contributed a voice to Alice in Wonderland, and he made it before the end into the latest edition of David Thomson's Biographical Dictionary of Film. Gough was an instantly memorable figure who'll be just as immediately missed by his many fans around the world.

Wendigo Meets TWINS OF EVIL (1971)

Hammer followed the success of Roy Ward Baker's The Vampire Lovers with Jimmy Sangster's Lust For a Vampire, a film my friend Wendigo has seen but once. Once was enough: the lead actress, though quite a looker, was no Ingrid Pitt when it came to talent or personality. Nothing about Lust impressed him, and to have the vampire woman lusting for a man violated the Carmilla concept. Whatever its original audience thought, Hammer persevered and put John Hough to work directing a third "Karnstein" film. This time, though, the British studio brought some extra exploitation inspiration to the project, merging their signature vampire product with the then-hot topic of witch-hunting. The result is a conceptually dynamic film that I prefer to Vampire Lovers, while Wendigo himself has some justified reservations.

The Collinson twins differentiate themselves gradually over the course of the film.

For most of the picture, the titular twins (played by pioneer twin Playmates Mary and Madelaine Collinson) take a back seat to a war of wills waged by witch-hunter Gustave Weil (Peter Cushing), the head of a torchbearing Brotherhood, and the decadent Count Karnstein (Damien Thomas). The Count routinely has his way with local women, doing who knows what in his castle, but the bourgeois Brotherhood can't touch him because, as an aristocrat, Karnstein enjoys the protection of the Holy Roman Emperor. The war of wills is a class war fueled by Weil's resentment of Karnstein's privileges -- and his sexual prowess, we can assume -- and Karnstein's libertine contempt for Weil's intolerant moralizing. In their first encounter, Karnstein looks more like a hero, since we've already grown suspicious that the Brotherhood is burning innocent women. We're inclined to think that Karnstein has Weil well pegged as the real villain of the piece. However, amid the witch-burning there's this nagging business of a vampire. Someone's in the woods biting necks. Who could that be?

Both Gustave Veil (Peter Cushing, above) and Count Karnstein (Damien Thomas, seated below) have sins to answer for, but is that poor schmuck with the bite on his neck (bottom) one of them?

Count Karnstein, perhaps? The answer seems to be no, at least at first. We see the Count become a vampire by performing a blood sacrifice to summon the spirit of his ancestress Mircalla/Carmilla for a round of necro-incest prior to the necessary bite, but that begs the question of who was biting folks before. Wendigo thinks it a major weakness of the picture that this question is never really answered. We may be meant to assume that Karnsteins are running around all over the place, but since we see no other vampires before the Count summons Mircalla, we can't draw any conclusions about the early vampire attacks with any certainty.

The Ghost of Vampires Past approaches Count Karnstein. Below, director John Hough makes the most of mirrors and mirror-related effects, including the Count's loss of his reflection as he becomes a vampire.

In any event, the battle between bourgeois morality and aristocratic depravity is played out in miniature between the newly-arrived Gellhorn twins. Maria (Mary) is the good girl, while Frieda (Madeline) is the wild child. Only Anton (David Warbeck), the choral instructor of the local Hammer Academy for Highly-Developed Young Ladies, senses the moral difference between the twins, and can thus tell them apart reliably when no one else can. Frieda resents the discipline imposed by Uncle Gustave and is attracted by the Count's decadent reputation. Maria isn't exactly happy with her uncle, but doesn't feel the same temptation to transgress out of spite that Frieda feels. Maria's too good for her own good. When Frieda runs off to spend a night with Karnstein and is turned into a vampire, Maria covers for her, convincing Gustave that she's Frieda and that Maria had run off for the night. For her trouble, Gustave beats "Frieda" with a belt and is sure to beat Maria in the morning to punish her. The real Frieda doesn't care.

Anton has been studying vampire lore, and tries to explain to Gustave that the local problem is vampires rather than witches, and that burning suspects will do no good. You get a sense that, on some level, Anton is simply trying to discourage Gustave from burning women. But when his sister turns up dead by neckbite (and not necessarily by Karnstein or Frieda) he makes vampire fighting a serious vocation. Gustave gets wise when he catches Frieda in the act, but convinces the Brotherhood to behave themselves and hold the vampiress in prison for a time. That gives Karnstein time to kidnap Maria and do the switcheroo, so that Maria is brought to the brink of burning before Anton convinces Gustave to give her the crucifix test again. A now quite repentant Gustave rallies the Brotherhood to join Anton in an assault on Karnstein castle to destroy the aristocrat and his evil acolytes once and for all. Normally Peter Cushing vs. vampires has a foregone conclusion, but this time around he may have too much to answer for....

Twins may not have as much nudity as one might hope for, but the final reel has plenty of gore to keep up Hammer's street cred.

Wendigo acknowledges that Twins has a lot going for it. It has a strong male cast, Cushing, Damien Thomas and Peter Warbeck all giving good performances grounded in the film's social and cultural context. The film is admirably ambiguous in making Cushing a virtual villain motivated by obvious jealousies and resentments who only gradually evolves into an antihero. Count Karnstein also evolves, or devolves, from a mere libertine skeptic who initially scoffs at a purported sacrifice to Satan into someone who embraces absolute evil as almost an aristocratic imperative. He looks like he'll be the antihero at first in that early confrontation with Gustave, but his aristocratic prejudices seem to doom him to wickedness. Amid the confusion, Anton emerges as the least ambiguous hero -- though I initially suspected him of being the original vampire. Wendigo also likes the way the conflict between the twins echoes that of Weil and Karnstein, with the sisters taking opposite extremes of fatal selfishness and almost-fatal selflessness. After stumbling with the first sequel, scripter Tudor Gates, who worked on all three Karnsteins, was really back on his game this time. Technically, Twins is a knockout, richly envisioned by Hough and usually realized evocatively by cinematographer Dick Bush and art director Roy Stannard. Interiors and exteriors are often quite striking, and Twins overall looks richer and more striking (whatever the difference in budget) than Vampire Lovers.

Wendigo wants to stress again how irritated he was by the film's failure to identify the original vampire. For him it's a major, almost crippling flaw of the story. If anything, the whole vampire angle is a weakness of this ostensible vampire movie. That's because he feels that both Frieda and Count Karnstein became less interesting once they became conventional vampire villains. He also feels that Hough bungles one major scene, the bedroom tussle between Anton and Frieda disguised as Maria. Shot with a handheld camera and a fisheye lens, it was probably meant to express immediacy, but in Wendigo's opinion it only looked amateurish and made Madelaine Collinson -- in her one nude scene -- look silly. Meanwhile, the business with Joachim, Karnstein's mute black servant, having to pantomime that the Brotherhood is advancing on the castle, looks goofy to say the least if not a little racist. Joachim gets his own back later with an impressive cleaver-to-the-head attack on a Brother. Finally, Harry Robinson's music is probably inappropriate in its own right, sounding more like a swashbuckler soundtrack, but his main theme now sounds alarming like the opening music for the Justice League cartoon series of a few years back. That's not Robinson's fault, but anyone who "recognizes" the music may have a hard time taking the film as seriously as it deserves.

While I've stated my preference for Twins over Lovers, Wendigo is reluctant to name a favorite of the two. The original film retains the overwhelming asset of Ingrid Pitt, while the stunt-cast Collinsons don't impress him as actors. Also, like Lust, Twins is almost lesbian-free, which is simply wrong, in Wendigo's opinion, for material derived from Carmilla. It also has less nudity in general, a fact that surprised and disappointed Wendigo somewhat. While this makes it look like he leans toward Lovers, he feels that the comparison is like apples vs. oranges. I'll accept that because Twins really took the Karnstein concept in a new direction and practically into a new genre. What keeps them together in a trilogy, beside the Karnstein name, is a concern with vampirism as an analog for sexual deviance, whether Lovers' obvious lesbianism or Twins' implicit libertinage. In the end, Wendigo likes both films for different reasons, flaws and all. Throw out the middle film and you have an admirable diptych of late Hammer nearly at its best.

Here's a British trailer uploaded to YouTube by flotzcore.