FANTASIA OBSCURA: Move Over Abraham Lincoln – Captain Kronos is Hunting Vampires
There are some fantasy, science fiction, and horror films that not every fan has caught. Not every film ever made has been seen by the audience that lives for such fare. Some of these deserve another look, because sometimes not every film should remain obscure.
Sometimes, even if it’s too late to do any good, a hero will rise…
Captain Kronos: Vampire Hunter (1974)
(Dist: Paramount Pictures; Dir: Brian Clemens)
By 1974, Hammer Films was looking like one of Dracula’s victims, bereft of life and shambling about. Audience tastes moved away from the traditional horror films Hammer had been known for, and efforts to modernize their films such as Dracula A.D. 1972 were not well executed or received. Desperate to shake things up, the producers were willing to entertain some wild departures.
One of the more radical projects to come about was The Legend of the 7 Golden Vampires, a co-production with Shaw Brothers Studio of Hong Kong, which attempted to merge the current hot Kung fu pictures of the East with the not very tepid Gothic works of the past. It was a long shot by a desperate studio that was willing to add unarmed combat to their output to keep the studio afloat.
And if you preferred that the people fighting vampires be armed with weapons, then hey, Hammer had you covered.
The film opens sometime around the Napoleonic Wars where young girls are being attacked in and around the woods. A mysterious figure comes up to them, mesmerizes them, and then drains them of their… youth, turning them into withered hags, which is the first sign that yes, the Hammer formula is getting a major re-imagining here.
We soon encounter our hero, Captain Kronos (Horst Janson), riding his steed with a saber and a katana at the ready, accompanied by Professor Gorst (John Cater), who mans the wagon. The two are on their way to their friend from the war, Dr. Marcus (John Carson) who made the pair aware of the vampiric plague in the area; however, they have enough time en route to free Carla (Caroline Munro), who was placed in the stocks for dancing on a Sunday. Desperate to get the hell out of that place, she hitches a ride with the duo on their way to their summons.
The character of Carla is essential to the film in that she’s our main point of perspective, our surrogate for the story. We get introduced to the plot elements and most of the action in the film as she encounters it, and her encountering how weird and wild the milieu is gets shared with us through her eyes.
In many ways, she has the same role in the film that a companion would have on Doctor Who: someone who gets caught up in the adventure and lends a hand. (She also ends up in a physical relationship with Kronos, which admittedly didn’t happen with the Doctor’s companions before 1995, but in 1974, certain things were expected in Hammer Films, so…)
With Carla and Marcus’ help, the search for the vampire is on. Gorst’s detection methods get put to use, burying dead toads and seeing which ones come back to life, a proof that vampires have been running over them. Kronos meanwhile tries the old ask-at-the-tavern trick, where the vampire’s minions attempt to do away with our heroes, not realizing how skilled a swordsman they faced.
Kronos’ foe is not without means, however, and soon claims Marcus as one of the undead. Marcus asks his friends to kill him, saving his soul and allowing the hunters to better understand the means of killing the vampire, as according to Gorst there are “as many species of vampire as there are beasts of prey”:
With a life lost for a purpose, Kronos and his party are able to track the vampire to its lair, one of the suspects the film introduced before the finale, where we get a reveal that was not telegraphed early on. Unlike many films before or since, there is enough satisfactory misdirection without hiding vital clues or adding anything at the last minute, leading to a revelation and resolution that plays well in the milieu set up by the film.
The fact that Clemens’ main experience before coming to Hammer to write (and direct, though this was his only feature film) was in creating The Avengers for ITV, shows in the final film, with plenty of action and dry humor franticly thrown at you. It’s a quick set up with plot presentation that has the speed of an elevator pitch, and it asks you to sign on quickly for the ride. Your only choices when you find yourself up against a vampire hunting ex-officer and his companions (permanent and otherwise) are either shut down or come along to see where this goes.
Unfortunately, most of the initial audience chose the former. The film was not a financial success, and Hammer and Clemens’ plans for a series of Kronos films to follow never saw the light of day. The fact that they established the variance of vampires gave them plenty of ways to bring new blood (no pun really intended) to the franchise; perhaps had this series been a success, Christopher Lee might have rescinded his walking away from Dracula for Hammer and taken up the cape and fangs one last time, pitting the old franchise idol versus the new one for a final battle for dominance…
The biggest strike against the film was its timing. Had it opened a few years earlier in the Sixties, it might have found a niche as a quirky project that would have drawn attention to itself as a more “Swinging” action film. Likewise, a few decades later, after Buffy the Vampire Slayer had whetted everyone’s appetite for monster hunters, a production with the verve of the original might have found its fans.
Which the original managed to do on its own; in the years after the initial release, a growing cadre of fans discovered the film and sung its praises to anyone who’d listen. Supposedly, a 15-year-old Peter Jackson remade the film with a Super-8 camera, playing the lead himself. In fact, it could be argued that the monster hunter genre fans that would have welcomed Kronos into their ranks years later might not have existed had Kronos not tried his hand at it earlier on.
Which means that the hero may not have been too late after all — just a bit early to show us what we could have if we tried…
NEXT TIME: We look at the 1970s horror musical that got a remake. The other 1970s horror musical that got a remake…
