Vampires (18 page)

Doctor Marcus (John Carson) calls his friend Captain Kronos to the city of Durward after an unusual amount of deaths occur in the young girls. They are
dying of old age. Kronos is an ex officer of the Imperial guard who has survived the bite of a vampire and is on an eternal quest to destroy the demons in whatever guise they might appear. Hieronymus Grost informs Marcus that the girls are the victims of vampires and uses the odd habit of burying toads in order to be able to detect the evil ones.

Youth is the key factor to the deaths and Lady Durward (Wanda Ventham) is the prime suspect. The Durwards claim kinship to the Karnstein family and have two children, Paul and Sarah who hold nothing but contempt for Dr Marcus whom they blame for the death of their father. Lady Durward has recently taken to her bed after aging very rapidly, but this is a ruse as the face she wears is a mask hiding her stolen beauty.

The best sequence in the movie is not the uninvolving, and at times confusing, repetitious vampire attacks or the final duel to the death between Kronos and the newly revived, but pretty unmemorable, Lord Durward (William Hobbs); it is Kronos dispatching three hired thugs led by Kerro in a local inn. Kerro was inserted into the movie when Ian Hendry approached Hammer for work and turns in a very under-rated performance in this pretty pedestrian story.

Also in the cast list is the beautiful Caroline Munro as a rescued peasant girl who indulges in some shadowed nudity to keep interest in the production. She provides the romantic interest and also becomes the damsel in distress when she is captured by the scheming Lady Durward who intends to steal her youth. Dr Marcus, another dependable turn by John Carson, becomes afflicted with vampirism through a freak storm and begs to be staked on the moment of his turn into one of the undead. This involves a lengthy sequence as Kronos and Grost tie their friend to a chair and hang him by a rope from the ceiling in order for him to commit suicide. At least, that is the impression that I took away with me. Played for laughs and with all-seriousness by the cast, the scene is overlong and just very confusing. The eerie moment that Marcus revives with grey hair and
fangs does, however, provide a small jolt to the nerves.

Confusion is the key word for
Captain Kronos
. The film stagnates to boredom many times and Clemens history in television is all too evident; Kronos plays like a mid-century version of
The Avengers
with added nudity and unmemorable villains. John Carson had appeared in many Hammer films, most notably
Plague of the Zombies (1966)
and
Taste the Blood of Dracula (1969).
He made his film debut in 1947 and appeared in a string of British television shows in the 60s and 70s. Happily, still acting today, his most recent movie credit is
Doomsday (2008)
and he still attends fan conventions.

Wanda Ventham is today more recognized as being the mum of Benedict Cumberbatch, but has a lengthy CV in her own right in multiple films and TV shows in the last five decades. As Lady Durward, I thought that she was under used as the youth draining matriarch. Perhaps her most memorable horror film role is in
The Blood Beast Terror (1968)
opposite Peter Cushing where she undergoes a metamorphosis into a giant Death’s Head moth.

The casting of Kronos went to popular prolific German actor Horst Jansen, born in 1935. Harbouring a certain kind of mysterious edge to his character and able to tackle the many stunts throughout the movie, Jansen armed himself with his trusty metal sword – the metal forged specially to kill vampires – and rode into the halcyon halls of the horror movie. Captain Kronos received positive reviews for Hammer and certainly has all the makings of the TV show envisioned by his creator. Alas, it was just a little too late. Love it or hate it,
Captain Kronos – Vampire Hunter
now resides as a happy snippet of yesteryear with promises of what could have been. But at least the dashing hero did race towards the sunset with the lovely Caroline Munroe.

The Van Helsing Group

Abraham Van Helsing first appeared in the pages of Dracula. As the Count is the father of vampires, the professor who hails originally from Amsterdam is undoubtedly the grandfather of the vampire slayers. The Hammer studio was the first film production company to give us a real character in Van Helsing. Peter Wilton Cushing OBE became the definitive
Doctor
Van Helsing in five Hammer successes.
Dracula (1958), The Brides of Dracula (1960), Dracula AD1972 (1972), The Satanic Rites of Dracula (1973) and The Legend of the Seven Golden Vampires (1974).
No other actor has been so closely related to the role than Cushing and his performance gave great eminence to the part; so much so that his boots have been worn by the cream of Hollywood. Herbert Lom became the first Van Helsing after Cushing to hit the big screen in
El Conde Dracula/Count Dracula (1970)
and rumours abound that it was first offered to Vincent Price. A grim and unrelenting Nigel Davenport put paid to Jack Palance’s method-acting Count in
Bram Stoker’s Dracula (1973).
Interestingly, Palance was offered numerous Dracula scripts after this movie, but turned them down because the method he used was so intense that he thought he might actually
become
Dracula. The most elaborate casting has to be Sir Laurence Olivier in
Dracula (1979)
as he holds off Armani-shirted Count, Frank Langella with shrubs of hawthorn and a tired Dutch accent. Walter Ladengast looks and acts like a recovering alcoholic in
Nosferatu; the Vampyre (1979)
and rams a stake through Klaus Kinski’s already decomposing corpse. Sir Anthony Hopkins overindulges in nightmarish melodrama in
Bram Stoker’s Dracula (1992)
and it was no surprise that Mel Brooks would laugh at the unintentional humour in that movie with his own spoof,
Dracula – Dead and Loving It (1995).
The latest actor to play the Professor is the first legitimate Dutchman Rutger Hauer in Dario Argento’s
Dracula 3D (2011).
Hauer is no stranger to vampires as he has played four of them including the Count himself. But no one has even come close to matching Peter Cushing’s portrayal as the relentless vampire hunter. For this author, no one ever shall.

The kindest man in show business had set his unmistakable stamp on both Van Helsing and Dr Victor Frankenstein for all time. On 11
th
August 1994, he joined his loving wife Helen in the afterlife. After a long career that included many seminal horror movies, his last appearance was in
Hammer; Flesh and Blood (1994);
a documentary on the studio that he helped catapult to international
success.

Drawing blood and
inspiration

The drawings that appear in this volume are illustrated using a regular ballpoint pen. In my previous books I had worked in pencil using a 5b staedtler stick. This can become very messy, but it is quick.
A few drawings failed to make it into the final book as they ultimately didn’t work for me, but all of them were great fun to do. When I envisioned
Vampires Under the Hammer,
my intention was to draw comic strip splash pages of the various movies as chapter intros, mainly because I loved the old Hammer
House of Horror
magazines and their graphic depictions of the films by such talents as Paul Neary, John Bolton, David Lloyd and Bryan Lewis. I illustrated four pages before I called it a day. On the following pages are reproductions of the two that I consider were the best of the four. They were drafted in pencil and then inked using ballpoint pen and black marker. It is a small tribute to those great artists and I hope that you enjoy them

Scenes from
Dracula (1958)
with Christopher Lee and Melissa Stribling.

The Brides of Dracula (1960)
with Peter Cushing, Martita Hunt, Yvonne Monlaur, David Peel, Freda Jackson, Andree Melly and Marie Deveraux

Notes

A book that I thought I would never write. In fact, I never thought that I would write any book. I find it constantly amazing the twists and turns that life takes us. A very enjoyable excursion to say the least and it was great to revisit old fiends of the night. One very sad aspect of writing the final draft, was having to record the many deaths and obituaries throughout.
Many more of the original Hammer alumni are no longer with us. The latest death at the time of writing is that of Producer and screenwriter Anthony Hinds on 30
th
September 2013. Hind’s best screenplay being the adaptation of Guy Endore’s
The Werewolf of Paris
that would become known as
Curse of the Werewolf.
In many of the passages, I had to reign in a little so that I didn’t finish the book as being one long obituary. The company still flourishes as Hammer film productions was purchased by Dutch media tycoon John de Mol in May 2007 and CEO Simon Oakes has admitted to being able to put $50 million dollars into the making of new Hammer horror films. I saw the first vampire movie from this new wave just prior to finishing this book.
Let Me In (2010)
is a more than competent remake of a great original that received excellent reviews not least from John Avjide Lindqvist, the author of the original novel,
Let the Right One in (2007).
The style of the piece is very much in keeping with 21
st
century standards and the vampire hailed as a heroine when she decapitates her young friends bullying tormentors. Will the new studio revive the
Dracula
franchise? There are many blogs and internet gossip that hints of such a revival, but we shall have to wait and see. I wish them luck in all their future productions. As for me, another rambling reminiscence has reached the end. They say that there is no rest for the wicked and I hope that you, faithful reader, will join me in my next excursion; a twilight meander through a darkened forest; in search of
Werewolves; the Children of the Full Moon
.