Remember
when I said how awesome it would have been if Hammer had made a
Solomon Kane movie? Well, they kind of did. Not a real adaptation,
obviously, but still a movie with a lot of Kane DNA in it, right down
to the letter of the last name. This is maybe the last of the great
Hammer films: Captain Kronos – Vampire Hunter.
By
the 70s it was becoming apparent that the gothic horror films that
had driven Hammer studios to success were running out of steam.
Horror had started to go more mainstream, and so there was less
market for their kind of genteel grindhouse approach. The main
players, from Dracula to Frankenstein to the Mummy had been done and
done over again, and it was obvious the studio was starting to run
out of ideas in the more traditional vein, and so they were branching
out, trying new things and seeking to use their standard characters
in new ways. This resulted in some ridiculous films (like Dracula
AD 1970 and Satanic Rites of Dracula) but it also brought
forth a few gems.
Captain
Kronos is a real attempt to create a more serial-style character
for the movies, as had been so successful in comics and on TV. In
fact, the movie has a definite feel like a TV pilot, setting up the
main characters and establishing the rules of the fictional universe
to set a longer, continuing story in motion. In most horror films,
the monster is the most interesting character, and most Hammer films
suffer from a bland, unexciting cast of good guys who nobody in their
right mind gave two shits about. Unless Peter Cushing was on hand,
the human characters in Hammer movies were pretty disposable, save
for the requisite pretty young things running about in their
nightgowns.
Played
by German actor Horst Janson, Kronos is a hero straight from the
old-school pulp tradition. An ex-soldier, he returned home from an
unidentified war to find both his mother and sister transformed into
vampires and had to destroy them. Then he set forth on his quest to
hunt the undead with no more depth or backstory required. He wears a
super-cool 18th-century military coat with his “K”
initial logoed on it and carries both a Hussar’s saber and a katana
– which is never referred to or explained in any way. Smoking a
cheroot, Eastwood-style, he cuts a dramatic figure somewhere between
The Man With No Name and Vampire Hunter D.
Accompanied
by his hunchbacked assistant Professor Grost, he rides into an
unnamed village at the behest of an old army friend to address the
assault of a vampire upon the populace. This vampire preys on young
girls, draining away their youth and leaving them covered in old-age
makeup. The killer is only seen as a shadow, and there are some cool
effects like the vampire draining the life from flowers as it passes,
which are obviously done cheaply but still work.
The
movie plays around with expectations and with vampire lore, keeping
you guessing who the vampire is, or even what its powers or
weaknesses might be. There is a scene that is both horrific and
hilarious where they have to experiment on a captured vampire to find
out how to kill it, and it’s the most meta thing in the movie.
Very much like what might happen in a tabletop RPG under similar
circumstances.
All
the performers are good. Janson is solid in the lead, though he was
dubbed in post as his accent was deemed too strong. BBC stalwart
John Cater is fun as the hunchbacked Grost, and Caroline Munro is
probably doing the best work she ever did as the peasant girl Carla.
Interestingly, the master vampire is not revealed until the very end,
and he is played by William Hobbs, who was not an actor, but a stage
combat master. Horst Janson was also renowned as a trained
swordsman, and this ensures that the final duel between Kronos and
the vampire is an epic, swashbuckling showdown like something from a
golden age pirate movie.
Everything
here just works, from good writing and solid characters to excellent and
atmospheric direction and cinematography. It’s a Hammer film, so
the effects look cheesy and the blood looks like tempura paint, but
that also means it has great locations and sets on top of a ton of
mood. The story leads through twists and turns and genuinely
surprises you, and it’s a fun ride all the way through.
Despite
obviously being set up to create an ongoing series, the movie didn’t
do well. The studio didn’t really like it, and shelved it for 2
years before it got a release in 1974 without much publicity. Hammer
was on the financial skids by then, and they would shut down just
five years later. It’s sad that we never got the ongoing
adventures of Kronos and his hunchback sidekick, and this remains a
property that could be easily rebooted as a TV show or something in
the current era. Watching this, it is surprising how modern so
many of the storytelling concepts are, and it makes this movie seem
like something really ahead of its time.