Review of Captain Kronos: Vampire Hunter (1973) by Kim S — 17 Jan 2012

During the 1970's, Brian Clemens, creator of The Avengers did two films for Hammer, the first was Dr. Jekyll and Sister Hyde (1971) and the second film was this one, which originally started out as the 4th Karnstein film after Twins of Evil (1972), but Clemens had other ideas, and it's an unusual Hammer Horror, but it's an enjoyable one.

Captain Kronos (Horst Janson) is an ex-army soldier who travels with his hunchback assistant Professor Hieronymus Grost (John Cater) as vampire hunters. They get a message from one of Kronos' old army buddies, Dr.

Marcus (John Carson), about an epidemic where young women are being turned into old hags who die. Kronos and Grost conclude that it's the work of a vampire, and even trying to find who is resonsible is harder than it looks, as whoever doing it is very elusive.

But, a tip leads Kronos to the the Durward family, with whom Marcus is acquainted with, their son Paul (Shane Briant) seems to have something to hide, and there's very untrustworthy about Paul's sister Sara (Lois Daine), but Kronos thinks there's darker work afoot.

It's a very good and effective horror film, and writer/director Clemens has a good deal of imagination on display too, he should have made more like this, maybe Hammer would have survived, plus, it was shelved for 2 years before it was released.

Pity, as this could have been a good franchise.