Captain Kronos - Vampire Hunter

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 18^th-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.