A vampire hunter known as Captain Kronos, and his hunchbacked sidekick Grost, travel to a small village where young women have been found mysteriously drained of their youth, turned old and frail. Kronos deduces that the women are the victims of a particular variety of vampire, which feeds by sucking the life out of their victims with a kiss.
Kronos meets a beautiful woman by the name of Carla, who joins their investigatory team. Soon they find themselves at the Duward Estate, where a pair of young siblings are caring for their elderly mother. Kronos suspects something is fishy, could it be that there is more to the Duward's than meets the eye?
Captain Kronos - Vampire Hunter has sometimes been referred to as the fourth installment in Hammer Horror's Karnstein trilogy. Technically this is not accurate. There's a reason it is a trilogy; it's because there are three films. A fourth film had been intended by Hammer, but it never made it past the earliest stages of development. While Captain Kronos does include some similar themes, and does end up mentioning the Karnstein name, it is not actually part of the same series, and there are several key differences between this film and the other three.
First of all, this film is substantially cheesier. While the originals attempted to maintain a level of seriousness, Kronos errors on the side of total camp. Also, the vampires are completely different. This film claims there are several types of vampires who feed in different ways and must be killed by different means. Not the case in the Karnstein films. This film is also toned down a fair bit from the Karnstein films. It includes negligible violence, and substantially toned down sexuality - although the relationship between those Duward siblings does seem a bit creepy at times. Furthermore, this film was not written by the same man, Tudor Gates, who wrote the Karnstein stories.
Over all, Captain Kronos is pretty bad. The dialogue is ridiculous, the effects are cheesy, the acting is nothing to write home about. There is a plot twist, a substantial sword fight, and some kind of neat imagery of the villains demise at the end as well if you can hang on till then. Otherwise this film, and its swashbuckling, womanizing hero is, at best, good for a light-hearted chuckle.
1.5 cross-swords out of 5
Rated R: contains violence, mild sexuality.
No comments:
Post a Comment