Vampires (17 page)

Nigel Green plays another intimidating character in the wake of films like
Zulu (1964)
and
The Ipcress File (1965).
He becomes a reluctant aide to his lifelong lover in procuring young girls so that she can restore her beauty. Like all men on a never-ending promise, he becomes just a little tired of waiting and decides to put an end to the madness by exposing the Countess to her young beau. These plans backfire when her madness for eternal youth over rides anything else. Green had begun acting in the 1950s and has a long credit list in films like
Reach for the Sky (1956)
,
Jason and the Argonauts (1963) and Khartoum (1966)
. He appeared in the horror films,
Corridors of Blood (1958)
and
The Masque of the Red Death (1964)
. The son of a College professor he married twice and died in 1972 from an overdose of sleeping pills. It is still unknown if this was intentional. He was 47 years old.

One aspect of the movie that is rarely mentioned is the makeup applied by Tom Smith to Ingrid Pitt to turn her into the ageing countess. The real Countess Bathory was 54 when she was found dead in her suite of rooms that she was confined to. Hammer had mixed notices about all of their makeup and special effects assignments; they usually ranged from pretty decent to very poor. In
Curse of Frankenstein
the creature make up was applied directly to Christopher Lee’s face by Phil Leakey without the aid of a life mask. Roy Ashton had resorted to using cardigan remnants to paste onto Anton Diffring’s face for
The Man Who Could Cheat Death
and had failed to make Herbert Lom frightening as
The Phantom of the Opera.
The most unforgivable Hammer make up gaffe was a moustache and beard for Paul Massie’s Dr Jekyll that disappears when he is Mr Hyde, only to re-grow again when he transforms back in
The Two Faces of Dr Jekyll
.

Countess Nadasdy’s makeup is on the better side of ‘good’ and I began to think of the awe and admiration that had greeted the film
Monster (2003)
and the praise for its star Charlize Theron who had put on thirty pounds in weight and refused make up to play serial killer Aileen Woronos. The actress won seventeen awards for her portrayal. In the wake of
Countess Dracula
, make up expert Dick Smith had transformed both Jonathon Frid and Dustin Hoffman into very old men in
The House of Dark Shadows
and
Little Big Man
respectively
in 1970. I felt that Tom Smith, who had dressed up vampires for Roman Polanski and would work on such Hollywood gold as
The Raiders of the Lost Ark
and
Star Wars
movies, should have received more kudos for his excellent work on the lovely Miss Pitt in
Countess Dracula.

On the whole there are no vampires in the film and it
fails to deliver on its obviously exploitative title even though it is peppered with another great cast and sterling performances.
Countess Dracula
is still held in high regard as possibly the definitive fictionalized version of the Bathory legend.

Vampire Circus (1972)
Adrienne Corri as
Gypsy woman.
Lawrence Payne as
Meuller
. Thorley Walters as
The Burgomeister
. John Moulder Brown as
Anton Kersh
. Elizabeth Seal as
Gerta Hauser
. Anthony Corlan as
Emil
. Richard Owens as
Dr. Kersh
. Domini Blythe as
Anna Mueller
. Robert Tayman as
Count Mitterhouse
. Skip Martin as
The Dwarf
. David Prowse as
The strong Man.
Screenplay from a story by George Baxt and Wilbur Stark: Judson kinberg. Director: Robert Young

Synopsis

The castle of Count Mitterhouse is charged by outraged villagers due to the disappearances of the local children. They are headed by Mueller whose wife Anna is under the Counts hold as his liver and procurer. The Count is staked and places a curse on the village of Schtettel before he dies. Anna is savagely whipped and runs into the blazing castle to secrete the body of her master in its cellars to escape the flames. Her blood drops onto his corpse and he revives long enough to tell her the name of his cousin, Emil and The Circus of Nights. Fifteen years later and Schtettel is cut off from the rest of the world by storm troopers and a deadly plague as a circus arrives in town. The circus performers are vampires and the town is in for a most horrific show.

Review

This movie is arguably Hammer's best vampire movie of the 1970s. The company had found its regular franchises of
Dracula
and
Frankenstein
relegated to abysmal copies of their former selves. Both
Horror of Frankenstein
and
Scars of Dracula
had finally reached a nadir and focused on gratuitous sex, bloodthirsty gore and schoolboy humour to sell their image. On the distaff side, Tudor Gates had inaugurated lesbian sex into the proceedings in screenplays based on JS LeFanu's
Carmilla.
The Vampire Lovers, Lust for a Vampire
and
Twins of Evil
introduced movie goers to a fairly believable account of the unlife of Carmilla Karnstein and Ingrid Pitt's reputation would be cemented as the Queen of the Horror movie.

Vampire Circus
came along seemingly to add a balance that was missing. The townspeople of Schtettel finally brew up the courage to destroy Count Mitterhouse after the disappearance of a number of local children. Charging his castle with flaming torches and wooden stakes, the vampire is dispatched in a great opening featurette. Before dying, he places a curse on the town and its people, vowing that they and their families will be destroyed to return him to life. The castle burns to the ground and we follow the season changes - approximately fifteen years - beneath the unfolding titles, presided over by the ghost of Mitterhouse. When we see the town again, it is ravaged by plague and guarded by storm troopers and roadblocks. Impervious to these setbacks is the Circus of Nights as it enters the town and raises the spirits of the townsfolk. The acts perform incredible stunts and feats of magic that belie the senses. Twin acrobats literally transform into the leathery-winged mammals and a man morphs into a large Panther. A hunter captures a snake girl as his own in an imaginative dance routine and the patrons are offered the chance to view their future in the mirror of life. The Burgomeister is the first to see the real reason for the appearance of the circus. They are vampires, led by Emil, the cousin of Count Mitterhouse, and they have come to drain the town dry.

At the time of release,
Vampire Circus
was derided because of its theme concerning the disappearance of local children. Many made parallels with the recent events of the Moors Murders in England and Sir James Carreras himself condemned the film as being
'sick-making material!'
  These are statements that do hold weight when watching the movie and
Vampire Circus
belies strong studio interference. Having no name stars in its cast list is to the movies credit. Hammer veteran Thorley Walters turns up as the dotty Burgomeister and Adrienne Corri as the Ringmistress gets all the best lines:

"Why have you come?"
she is asked
"To steal the money from dead men's eyes!"

Anthony Corlan and Robert Tayman take the honours as the bad boy vampires. Tayman's Count seduces the wives of the townsfolk and then boasts to the husbands openly confessing that he gave their bored spouse,
"only what she wanted!"
and leaving his naked conquests writhing on a four poster bed begging him to come back. Anthony Corlan, the much-altered hero from
Taste the Blood of Dracula (1969),
preys on young schoolgirls with his tales of his travelling exploits to so many places before fanging them under his circus tent. Later, transformed into a large panther, he hunts down people who have paid the gypsies to cross through the roadblock, flinging them hither and thither while the psychotically-deranged dwarf giggles maniacally. At the end of the movie, the unmasked vampires are cornered by the townsfolk and Mitterhouse is destroyed again by the young hero John Moulder-Brown.

First time director Robert Young brought fresh blood into his script that, on closer inspection, could have been found in the vaults of Universal studios The imaginative twist on vampires casting no reflection is subverted as the victims see their own deaths laid out before them and vampire twins seduce and murder two straying schoolchildren behind the glass. An attack on escaping townspeople by a large panther is well-realized and the torn, bleeding head left in its wake had already been used as the innkeeper’s wife in
The Scars of Dracula
. The travelling Circus of Horrors had appeared in
House of Frankenstein
in 1944 and the rhubarbing villagers; complete with flaming torches and clueless Burgomaster were regular Universal staples.
When I watch
Vampire Circus
I lament the waste of an underused talent. Had Hammer given Young full rein and let him elaborate on the ideas only hinted at in the movie they would have finished with a film that possibly would have ranked amongst the ten best vampire movies of all time. Perhaps an enterprising entrepreneur will refashion Young's script for the remake treatment and give us back a vampire franchise with real bite.

Kronos aka Captain Kronos Vampire Hunter (1974)
Horst Jansen as
Kronos
. John Carson as
Doctor Marcus
. John Cater as
Professor Grost
. Shane Briant as
Paul Durward
. Caroline Munro as
Carla.
Ian Hendry as
Kerro
. Wanda Ventham as
Lady Durward.
William Hobbs as
Hagen
. Screenplay; Brian Clemens. Director; Brian Clemens.
Synopsis
When young girls begin dying of old age in the town of Durward, the call goes out for the help of Captain Kronos – Vampire hunter. The adventurer locks horns with the evil Durward family when they are unmasked as vampires. Kronos is a survivor of the vampire’s bite and vows to destroy other vampires wherever they might appear. At his side is the Professor Hieronymus Grost and together these heroes defeat evil across the land.

Review

This was Brian Clemen’s pilot movie for a planned TV series. Captain Kronos (Horst Jansen) is an enigmatic adventurer who scours the countryside to combat satanic evil with his trusty sword and, by his side his philosophical hunchback sidekick, Grost (John Cater)
.
Playing very loosely with vampire lore and traditions, Clemens leaves the field wide open for many ongoing ‘seasons’ and makes sure that audiences get the thrills that they have come to expect from a decent and non-discerning television show.