Director: John Hough
Year: 1971
Country: United Kingdom
Alternate Titles: N/A
Genre: Vampire
Plot:
Living in 16th Century Germany, the head of a group of fanatical Puritans becomes the guardian of his twin nieces who get involved with a local warlord turning villagers into vampires and gets caught in the middle of the war between the two sides battling for the two girls' souls.
Review:
There is quite a lot to like here being one of their better efforts. One of the better features here is that the film genuinely is a mixture of the more explicit violence and erotic tones present in many films. That is in fine form here as the use of the twins in here is quite an advantage as they have a great look to them since even though they were identical, you could completely believe one could be demure and innocent, yet the other could be hideous and vicious. That the sequence where a series of symbolic close-ups of a hand stroking a candlestick during a love sequence is a finely erotic moment is a prime example of the two types of film this can be mixed along with the seductive qualities of the main vampire during his pagan games and ceremonies during the castle scenes, and the general manner of the activities around the village leave this with a lot of sensuality on the fringes of the story.
As well, Karnstein Castle is a superbly crafted Gothic house and all the time spent is very atmospheric and realistically historic from the resurrection of the main vampire to the spectacular action scene featuring their march on the castle grounds that let the location get put to good use as the multitude of skirmishes and battles leaves this one featuring plenty of travels through cobwebbed corridors and secret passages while it also gives us a short but great gore-fest in a shockingly well-done decapitation, a nasty ax- in-the-back, a horrific body hitting the floor like a sack of spuds, and a great enormous spike through the guts inside a spectacular conclusion that really hits some moments. Even the torture sequences are quite brutal, and they give it some extra violence, from the introduction of a busty wench pursued through a dark forest by a bunch of men dressed in black, being tied to a stake and burned alive to the various tortures inflicted over the innocents throughout the village that connects it to the other films.
The last big plus is a truly outstanding performance by Cushing who is given one of his most multi-faceted characters ever, a complex and ultimately hypocritical man who does indeed recognize evil and who wants to rid the land of the evil yet his fanaticism corrupts him as much as the villain. These are its finer points as there is very little actually to complain about here. The main issue here is that the nudity is actually pretty restrained, as the nightgowns hide much and are really reduced to a couple of scenes late in the film. There are also quite a few lapses of logic that can only be overcome if you have a really warped suspension of disbelief. The biggest is that the evil twin apparently becomes a vampire after she receives the vampire's bite because she's supposedly Satanic. Establishing her before this scene as truly evil and not just rebellious would have made her transformation more believable as everything says she's just a rebellious teenager. These, though, are minor complaints.
Overview: *****/5
Best one of the series and one of the finest entries in the genre, there's not much to dislike and quite a few likable factors that make for one of the better features here. Those who appreciate the style found here, enjoyed the other entries in the series, or are fans of the creative crew will have the most to like here while most others out there should heed caution.
Comments
Post a Comment