Vampire Circus (1972)

Human fangs ripping throats - no sawdust can soak up the torrent of blood!

You know the saying: Back in my day vampires sucked blood not cock? Well I'm not sure if that's necessarily true if "your day" was back in 1972, because Vampire Circus continues the Hammer tradition of frilly-shirt wearing, limp-wristed English dandies as incarnations of the lords of the undead.

Don't get me wrong, Hammer vampires aren't all like this.  Christopher Lee's portrayal of a sophisticated yet carnal Count Dracula gives the impression that he'd just as soon dry-fist the ladies as suck their blood...  Or do both at the same time, because he was convincing as the embodiment of evil.  Lee's Dracula enjoyed inflicting pain for his own personal gain and that came across on screen.  These other Hammer vampires like Robert Tayman and Anthony Higgins in Vampire Circus and Damien Thomas's Count Karnstein in Twins of Evil prance around and make pouty, scowly faces and we're supposed to believe they're personifications of pure evil.  I'm not convinced.  And after having said that one might think that Vampire Circus is complete shite, but that's not the case at all.

A little village in Eastern Europe thought it had eradicated its vampire problem after an angry mob stormed the castle of the bloodsucking Count Mitterhaus, drove a stake through his heart and burned his home to the ground.  For you see, this fiendish nobleman had been abducting the town's women and little girls, giving them some of his fluid and then draining them of theirs.  But before he succumbed to the piece of wood buried in his chest, he cursed the town with a plague and vowed he would return and take the lives of the town's children someday.

"Someday" comes 15 years later when a traveling circus manages to break through the quarantine and set up shop in the village.  The performers in this traveling show have supernatural powers like the ability to shape-shift and jump really high, and they use these abilities to manipulate the townsfolk to do their bidding and by "do their bidding" I mean have sex and then die, or sometimes just die without the sex part first.  And so, these evil circus performers use the blood of the village children that they are secretly slaughtering to raise Count Mitterhaus back to "life" or whatever you call it when undead vampires come back after being staked through the heart.

Vampire Circus certainly has the feel and atmosphere of a Hammer horror film but it also has more gore and significantly more boobage than one would expect from Hammer, and the quality of said boobage is excellent.  Of course, I think this is a good thing and it's too bad Hammer Studios didn't have the opportunity incorporate more blood and boobies into their films before they were forced to stop making movies because of financial difficulties.

Overall, I do like this movie quite a bit and except for Robert Tayman's portrayal of Count Mitterhaus I can't think of any significant faults in this film.  Not that my opinion really matters anyway, or that I'm competent enough to find faults in a film.  I guess what I'm saying is, Robert Tayman's role as the Count is the only part of this movie that bothered me.  The rest is good.

Wait!  I thought of something else that bothered me.  Lynne Frederick, the hottest actress in the film, never gets naked.

Violence Rating: 3 out of 5
Booby Rating: 2.5 out of 5

Get it at TLACult

Girls of Grindhouse: Caroline Munro

This summary is not available. Please click here to view the post.

Captain Kronos - Vampire Hunter (1974): Evil Ends Here.

Captain Kronos - Vampire Hunter

When I made it known the other day that I think many of Tobe Hooper's movies are crap, a couple of people left suggestions of some of his earlier works that they thought were good.  One of those suggestions was Lifeforce which is about alien energy-sucking vampires which reminded me of this film, Captain Kronos - Vampire Hunter.

This is one of the later attempts by Hammer Studios to find an audience amid the changing face of horror and the emergence of exploitation films in the 1970s.  Captain Kronos - Vampire Hunter was intended to be the first in a series of films but the idea never caught on and Hammer Films eventually withered away.

How could you not want to see this movie?  It has a swashbuckling, tights wearing, cigar smoking, vampire killing German.  If that's not enough, it also stars Caroline Munro who is very easy on the eyes. What else do you need to know?  I'll give you a short summary anyway.  Something is stalking the woods and draining the fair young maidens of their youth and vitality, leaving wrinkled old hags in their stead.  At the request of one of the villagers, professional vampire hunters Captain Kronos of the Imperial Guard and his hunchback sidekick Grost travel to the area and rescue the gypsy Carla (Caroline Munro) along the way.  Once there, they kill some local thugs, slay some vampires and track down the vampire lord who is behind all of the life-draining murders.

"Quiet dear, the men are talking."

Captain Kronos is a good film and if it had more violence and nudity it could be a great film.  My impression is that this film came out a few years too late.  It should have been made in the late sixties instead of the mid-seventies.  Still, it's worth watching.

Violence Rating:  2.5 out of 5
Booby Rating:  1.5 out of 5

Rent Captain Kronos by mail from GreenCine.com, As Low As $9.95 Per Month! Unlimited rentals, choose from 30,000 titles. Free Shipping!

The Legend of the 7 Golden Vampires (1974)

Hammer Horror! Dragon Thrills! The First Kung Fu Horror Spectacular!

The Legend of the 7 Golden Vampires

We shall end Hammer Horror week with the grindhousiest of the Hammer films; the last of the nine Hammer Dracula movies; the movie so excellent that Christopher Lee turned it down after reading the script... 

The Legend of the 7 Golden Vampires, of course, is not just another Gothic vampire yarn.  It has kung-fu!  It also has nine different titles and some of you may know it as the edited North American version, The 7 Brothers Meet Dracula.  Hammer Film Productions teamed up with the legendary Shaw Brothers Studio in Hong Kong to capitalize on the popularity of the kung-fu films of the early 1970s.  So now the dreaded bloodthirsty creatures are no longer lurking in some dank Transylvanian castle or crypt, they are duking it out in China.

There isn't much of a plot and there doesn't have to be because it has kung-fu dammit!  Dracula rises from the grave after being summoned by a Chinese disciple.  He takes the form of this Asian guy and travels to China to help six vampire brothers who are distressed at losing the seventh member of their gang.  Meanwhile, Professor Van Helsing (Peter Cushing) is teaching a university class in China to a group of skeptics who ridicule him for suggesting that vampires are real.  One student does believe him because he and his 

"Shawty wanna l-l-lick me like a lollipop."

brothers and one sister are vampire hunters.  They need Van Helsing's expertise to eradicate the golden vampire minions from their town where these monsters are draining the blood of the local maidens.  The brothers and their sister team up with Van Helsing, his widower son and a wealthy European debutante to confront the six Chinese vampires and the Count Dracula himself... with kung-fu!

I really like this film.  It has Dracula, kung-fu and topless Chinese girls.  What's not to like?  Who cares if some the characters are wooden and irrelevant or that Dracula isn't frightening or really even necessary to the plot.  Somehow it all works for me, but my standards are pretty low.

Here is the trailer for The Legend of the 7 Golden Vampires but I must warn you, because of the topless Chinese girls, it's NSFW.

Grindhouse Movie Poster Extravaganza #5: Hammer Horror Week Edition

Hammer Horror Week is will soon come to an end.  Tomorrow will be the last review but I saved the best for last.  Well, it may not be the best but it's the most "grindhousy" of them all.  Until then, here is some Hammer movie poster art to peruse at your leisure.  Have a great weekend everybody!

Also, here's a screenshot from a Hammer film that I did not showcase during Hammer Horror Week.  Can anyone guess which movie this comes from?