Twins Of Evil

The Last Vam-pair

Twins Of Evil
UK 1971
Directed by John Hough
Hammer/Network  Blu Ray Zone B

Warning: Slight spoiler on the death of
one of the villains at the end of the movie.

Twins Of Evil is the last of the Karnstein trilogy of films produced by Hammer in the space of about a year and a half, based on Sheridan Le Fanu’s short story Carmilla. Well... no... the first one in the sequence, The Vampire Lovers (reviewed by me here) was certainly using that story as a template, the second one... well, there wasn’t much more you could do with it but at least the main antagonist Carmilla, aka Mircalla Karnstein, was continued over into the next film (played by a different actress).

Here, the character’s appearance is very brief, maybe lasting five minutes in total, as she is resurrected from her tomb by accident... the blood pooled from a victim of this films main villain, Count Karnstein played by Damien Thomas, during a devil worshipping ritual... drips into Mircalla’s tomb below and brings her back to her undead state. This is yet a third actress, Katya Wyeth, in the role after, once again, the part had been offered to Indgrid Pitt (who played her in The Vampire Lovers), who turned it down. She exists in the narrative purely to vamp up Damien Thomas’ character before, bizarrely, just dropping out of the movie. So that’s about as close as being ‘inspired’ by Le Fanu that this third film gets.

I said in previous reviews of the other parts of the trilogy that, by this time, Hammer were trying to spice up their films to keep them popular by putting nudity and lesbian sex scenes in them. At first glance of the casting in this one, you might assume they were making an extra special effort here, as the twins from the title, Maria and Frieda, are played by the Collinson twins, Mary and Madeleine. The Collinson twins had been the October 1970 Playboy playmates of the month but, surprisingly, this third film in the trilogy, which seems to be a prequel to the previous films, doesn’t really capitalise on the notoriety of the two ladies in question. When they do strip off... or one of them does... it’s only for a second or two and, frankly, there’s very little nudity in this film and almost no sapphic shenanigans at all which, given the original story’s implied subtext of vampiric lesbianism, seems rather strange. If anything, the film is rather tasteful in this kind of stuff... which in a way makes it an odd fit with the previous two movies. Also, it turns out that only Frieda is the evil one here and Maria is actually ‘the good sister’... so I’ve no idea why the title of this movie is Twins Of Evil, to be honest.

The film is fairly bloody in places, though and it’s also interesting for a number of reasons. I was fascinated by Peter Cushing’s role in this film and the way the story is pitched. Right from the start, we see Cushing playing Gustav Weil, the head of a clan of witch-finders and they go around to find unsuspecting, single women who they think should be married by now (otherwise they must be an evil temptress of a witch, right?) and burn them at the stake. The horrible Witchfinder General film from a few years before must have been a vein Hammer were trying to tap with this and Cushing is not someone who I would normally associate with this kind of role. After all, when it comes to bible thumping Witchfinders, I can only seem them as dim-witted psychopaths or, you know, nutters and that’s not what this actor represents to me. However, Cushing plays it really straight, almost chilling, allowing absolutely no humour into his character whatsoever, spending most of the film as a villain, only to redeem himself at the end of the movie after the other leading man here, David ‘The Horror Man’ Warbeck, shows him that the supernatural force he is dealing with cannot be effectively vanquished by his preferred method of burning but, instead, needs to be either decapitated or staked. Both Warbeck and Cushing are great in this so, there’s another reason to watch this movie.

Another interesting thing this movie does, comes after Count Karnstein and Mircalla indulge in an outrageously chaste but camp sex scene. The sex scene itself is hilarious because, rather than focus on the action, we track up to Mircalla’s arm just above her head as she grabs hold of a candle and starts stroking it up and down... I wonder how the actors kept straight faces during these scenes. However, the cool thing is, just after she fangs up Karnstein, he looks in the mirror and we can see him as his reflection fades out, thus signifying he has joined the ranks of the undead. So that’s quite cool... I wonder if this was the first time this had been done in a movie before. I’m sure it probably wasn’t but I can’t think of an earlier example off the top of my head. Answers in the comments box below or on Twitter please.

There’s also a section at the end which had me scratching my head. Karnstein can only be in his twenties and the film takes place over, maybe, just a week. He’s only been a vampire that long so how is it possible, in the world of supernatural vampire physics that, at the end of the movie after he’s been staked and in a nicely done special effect, he ages before our eyes into a wizened old man and crumbles. I mean, seriously? He’s only in his twenties... he’s not an old vampire at all. This makes absolutely no sense!

One other thing of note is the score by Harry Robinson, one of only a handful of the Hammer film scores that got issued on CD. It’s pretty good but there’s a kind of riding/action theme which, in structure (not orchestration) is very much the kind of music you might get in a spaghetti western of the time. Lovely score and I need to go and listen to the disc again now that I’ve finally seen the movie it comes from.

And that’s me done with the Hammer Karnstein trilogy finally... but not yet done with all the films based on Le Fanu’s original story (I’ll hopefully get to those eventually). Twins Of Evil is less exploitational but much more interesting than the previous film in the series, Lust For A Vampire (which I reviewed here) and it’s definitely a film that fans of the original incarnation of Hammer should check out if they haven’t done so already. Peter Cushing playing against type, at least in terms of what I’ve seen him do... even in the Frankenstein films... is definitely worth a look.

Feline Groovy

The Black Cat
1981 Italy

Directed by
Lucio Fulci

Shameless Screen Entertainment

DVD Region 0

I always have mixed feelings about Lucio Fulci. Sure Zombie Flesh Eaters (aka Zombi aka Zombi 2 depending on which country’s print you happen to be viewing at the time) was an okay movie in that some of the shot compositions are nice (visually it’s like the spiritual cousin of Breakfast At Tiffanys) and in that it never really takes you out of your comfort zone so it’s one of those films you can just relax to. But he also did what I consider to be the truly dullest and most unwatchable spaghetti western ever (and I’ve seen a fair few), Four of the Apocalypse.

On the other hand, he also directed Lizard In A Woman’s Skin which is easily one of the finest giallo movies ever committed to the screen.

So I’m never really sure whether a new Fulci movie is going to bring me something really great, something totally dreadful or something in between the two. But I picked up a DVD copy of his Poe “adaptation” The Black Cat and decided to settle down and watch it because I’ve not seen a great deal of his work.

Now Poe is a hard deal when it comes to adaptation because, frankly, he wrote mostly short stories which, if they were done faithfully on screen, would leave you with movies which are only ten minutes long at most... so most movies which “say” they are adapted from his work use that term very loosely. Most of the plot lines to Poe movies are created from air by scriptwriters in an anemic attempt to give a narrative structure to whatever key moments happen in the original short (if you’re lucky and they bother to even read the original Poe before embarking on the script... for example Roger Corman’s movie Edgar Allan Poe’s The Haunted Palace is actually an uncredited adaptation of H. P. Lovecraft’s The Case of Charles Dexter Ward).

I’ve now seen at least five different adaptations of Poe’s The Black Cat and I have to say that this version is no exception to the above rule. Fulci’s version certainly goes off on it’s own tangents throughout the course of the movie but I also have to say, in all fairness to him, that he manages to hit more of those elements which were part and parcel of the original story than most versions I’ve watched.

This is basically how the Poe version goes...

The story is about a man who hates a cat so much he gouges out its eye. After a while he kills it by hanging it but after a fire in his house the shape of the hanging cat is etched on the wall in the soot. After being haunted by the presence of an identical, one eyed cat which one is to presume is the original cat reincarnated, he goes to kill it with an axe but accidentally kills his wife instead. He walls her body up in the cellar and nearly gets away with his crime when the police investigate but just as they are about to leave a wailing from behind the wall is heard. The police knock down the wall and find the corpse of the wife with the wailing cat on it. To quote Poe, “I had walled the monster up within the tomb!”

Most of these elements from Poe are in place in the Fulci movie (I was impressed by the inclusion of the spectre of the hanged cat on the wall after a fire) although a lot of other stuff is thrown in to the mix to make it a full length feature. Like the fact that the cat in this one seems to be a killer cat of death and is going around causing the murders with it’s slinky feline antics. And the fact that it somehow seems to be able to control the minds of others, including that of a spiritualist who “owns “the cat, played by Patrick Magee (The Final Programme, A Clockwork Orange) a year before his death, in his own unique manner as always.

The cast is rounded out by some familiar names to people who like to watch gialli and horror films. Such luminaries as Mimsy Farmer (Four Flies on Grey Velvet, Autopsy), David Warbeck (Twins of Evil, Razor Blade Smile) and Dagmer Lassander (Femina Ridens, Werewolf Woman, Forbidden Photos of a Woman Above Suspicion) grace the movie with their presence and their collective presence is one of the main factors in helping to lift the movie above the expectations of a jaded audience.

Another factor is the absolutely superb lighting and framing which one would normally expect to find in a giallo more than a horror movie. There’s some really nice things going on here and, from what I’ve seen of the Shameless label so far, they seem to have a bit of a knack when it comes to picking out films which have a very strong and memorable visual flair. People tend not to think of Fulci in this light but in some of his films he certainly does some groovy things with shape and colour and this is one of the better examples.

The way the whole film is leisurely shot and paced gives a certain sense of atmosphere which is not always easy to credibly create in these kinds of movies but it’s certainly the case here that you get a definite feeling of unease and foreboding from the way certain scenes are handled. The DVD case itself makes a comparison to Hammer in terms of the mood conveyed in this picture but I think, in this particular case (or even on this particular case ;-) they are doing the Fulci movie a disservice since it gives off way more dread than the average Hammer movie (with one notable fumble which I will highlight in a minute).

Also thrown into this artistic stew of a movie is a vibrant and jaunty score by Pino Donnagio which is at times reminiscent of some of his earlier work, notably the score he provided for Nicholas Roeg’s Don’t Look Now. I say jaunty because there is, perhaps, a certain sense of some scenes being either notably overscored or, perhaps, inappropriately scored. The point of view shots taken from the cat’s perspective are maybe a little bit “over jolly” and are feintly reminiscent of some of his later works, most notably the theme associated with the little boy in Dario Argento’s Trauma. But mostly it’s pretty good Donnagio and he’s always worth a listen and can always be relied upon to bring a Hermmannesque sensibility to proceedings when it is called for.

The only real major fumble in the whole movie (apart from an unexpected “oh-he-wasn’t-killed-after-all” moment with one of the characters) is when the tension is building as Mimsy Farmer explores Patrick Magee’s house and is transfixed by the gaze of the cat... the cat unexpectedly teleports to another place in the room with a Donnagio musical flourish, reminiscent of the way Mr. Benn used to change clothes in the fancy dress shop on children’s TV. This may well kill the atmosphere for you and leave you to erupt in fits of laughter... you’ve been warned on that one!

The transfer and print quality is everything you’ve come to expect form a Shameless release (with the usual choice of a reversible sleeve). It’s worth checking out this and other releases because there are some real gems in their black cat-alogue (err... sorry, I meant back catalogue... getting carried away again).

This is probably not the most enthralling adaptation of Poe’s work that you’ll see but it is unique in some of the elements of the original story it gets up onto the screen and it’s a more atmospheric side of Fulci that you might not have glimpsed before. Definitely one to add to the pile for late night, alcohol fuelled viewing this Halloween. Give it a shot!