The sword fighting vampire genre never really took off, but it wasn’t for the want of trying by this very enjoyable Hammer horror from 1974, a macabre swashbuckler written and directed by British genre legend Brian Clemens; his sole feature directing credit in fact. Clemens was a prolific writer who did so much to get TV audiences addicted to The Avengers, The Persuaders and The Professionals and it surely must have occurred to him that this trio of vampire-hunting leads could well have been spun off into a recurring TV series, perhaps under the aegis of Lew Grade.
German star and international co-production veteran Horst Janson plays Captain Kronos (dubbed by British actor Julian Holloway), a blond ex-army officer in a hilarious panto military outfit, roaming what appears to be a nameless Ruritanian-Transylvanian central European landscape (with a dash of Puritan England); he is dedicated to hunting vampires with his friend, the poignantly hunchbacked Professor Grost, played by John Cater. Kronos rescues a sultry young woman from the stocks, to which she had been sentenced for “dancing on the Sabbath”; this is Carla, played by horror icon Caroline Munro, and they fall in love.
Together, our three amigos become the veritable three musketeers of undead-monster-slaying, and they take on a particularly horrible type of vampire who drains comely young women (of which there appears to be no shortage in these stark woods) not of their blood, but of their youth. They will be attacked and then turn to the camera faces which have turned – gasp! – old. Ian Hendry has a cameo as boorish braggart Kerro who pays dearly for mocking Prof Grost’s disability in a tavern. (He had already insulted the young woman with whom he had been disporting himself in the tavern’s bedroom, neglecting to pay her the full sum agreed, and afterwards in the bar sneeringly throwing the remaining coin into a spittoon.)
The story is clearly marked by the Edgar Allan Poe template which contributed to the Hammer brand identity, but Clemens’s script has a charm and humour of its own. When the whole idea of vampires is mocked as improbable, one replies: “What could be more improbable than God? But you believe in Him.” And there are some great shots of people’s eyes reflected in sword hilts, and the shadow of a crucifix beginning to move on a wall. Tasty.
• Captain Kronos: Vampire Hunter is at Queen’s Film Theatre, Belfast on 18 January, then tours, and is on Blu-ray from 27 January.
