TAlthough the sword-fighting vampire genre never really caught on, this highly entertaining 1974 Hammer Horror is a spooky adventurer written and directed by British genre legend Brian Clemens. And I didn't want to try it. In fact, it's his only directorial credit. Clemens is a prolific writer who was instrumental in getting TV viewers hooked on The Avengers, Persuaders, and The Professionals, and he also created a spin-off of this trio of vampire-hunting stories on TV. He must have thought that it was quite possible to rebroadcast it as a series. , presumably under the protection of Lou Grade.
German star and international co-production veteran Horst Jansson plays Lieutenant Kronos (voiced by British actor Julian Holloway), a blonde ex-military officer in a cheerful panto uniform, who lives in the middle of an unnamed Ruritanian Transylvania. You wander through what looks like a European landscape (with a bit of a whiff of Puritan England). He devotes himself to vampire hunting with his pathetic hunchback friend, Professor Grost, played by John Cater. Kronos rescues a sultry young woman from a horse farm who has been found guilty of “dancing on the Sabbath.” This is Carla, played by horror icon Caroline Munro, and the two fall in love.
Together, our three amigos become the veritable Three Musketeers of undead monster slaying, and a particularly terrifying type that sucks the blood of beautiful young women (which this desolate forest seems to have no shortage of). Take on a vampire. , but in their youth. They will be attacked, the camera will turn, and they will take your breath away. – old. Ian Hendry has a cameo as Kero, a gruff brat who makes fun of Professor Grost's disability in a bar and pays him a lot of money. (He had already insulted a young woman with whom he had been unfaithful in a bedroom at a tavern, ignored to pay her the full agreed amount, and then sneeringly tossed the remaining coins into the spit at the bar.)
Although the story is clearly characterized by the Edgar Allan Poe template that contributed to Hammer's brand identity, Clemens' screenplay has its own charm and humor. When the whole concept of vampires is ridiculed as improbable, people respond, But you believe in him. ” There are some great shots, like the reflection of people's eyes on the hilt of a sword, or the shadow of a cross starting to move on a wall. delicious.
