Twins of Evil is a 1971 British supernatural horror film directed by John Hough (American Gothic; The Legend of Hell House, Incubus) from a screenplay written by Tudor Gates (The Vampire Lovers, Lust for a Vampire, Fright). Produced by Harry Fine and Michael Style as Fantale for Hammer Films.
The movie stars Peter Cushing, Dennis Price, Isobel Black, Kathleen Byron, Damien Thomas (Journey to the Unknown TV series), David Warbeck (Panic; The Beyond; The Black Cat; Craze) and real-life twins Mary Collinson and Madeleine Collinson.
It is the third film of The Karnstein Trilogy, based on the vampire tale Carmilla by Sheridan Le Fanu. The film has the least resemblance to the novel and adds a witch-finding theme to the vampire story. Much of the plot revolves around the contrasting evil and good natures of two beautiful sisters, Frieda and Maria Gellhorn.
Plot:
Maria and Frieda, recently orphaned identical twin teenage girls, move from Venice to Karnstein in Central Europe to live with their uncle Gustav Weil (Peter Cushing).
Weil is a stern puritan Christian sadist and leader of the fanatical witch-hunting ‘Brotherhood’. Both twins resent their uncle’s religious obsession and one of them, Frieda, looks for a way to escape. She becomes fascinated by the local Count Karnstein, who has the reputation of being “a wicked man”.
Count Karnstein, who enjoys the Emperor’s favour and thus remains untouched by the Brotherhood, is indeed wicked and interested in satanism and black magic. Trying to emulate his evil ancestors, he murders a girl as a human sacrifice, calling forth Countess Mircalla Karnstein from her grave. Mircalla turns the Count into a vampire…
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Our review:
In recent years, it’s become fashionable for clueless hacks in the mainstream media to refer to Hammer horror films as ‘campy’, which has to be one of the most inaccurate descriptions imaginable. Love them or hate them, everyone should surely agree that if there is one thing these films are not, it is camp. Unless you believe that old horror films are by default rather cheesy and comical – and let’s face it, that’s essentially what is being said here by smart arses who probably haven’t even seen the films and just assume that they are all boobs, blood splattering and bad acting – then the idea that these well crafted, solid and serious films are somehow the height of kitsch seems ludicrous. On the whole, Hammer films are as straight-faced a series of movies as you could imagine, bringing a stoic sense of realism to their fantastical stories (especially their splendid black and white psycho thrillers). The fact that you can immediately spot when an actor thinks that these films are beneath them and delivers a lazy, smirking performance – such as, Michael Gough in Dracula – says a lot for their quality as a whole. Sure, some of the films have sub-par supporting actors, iffy dialogue and the melodrama ladled on, but camp? Nay.
However… there are exceptions to the rules, and re-watching Twins of Evil with my reviewer’s hat on, I was immediately struck by just how spectacularly hysterical and – yes – camp this particular film is. It’s insanely, trashily, gloriously and – most important, this bit – knowingly lurid, seeming to revel in every gothic cliché and replete with full-blooded performances, comic book dialogue and moments that are so outrageously kitsch that the whole thing almost feels like a satire. All this is to the film’s advantage. The film is the third and final entry in the Karnstein trilogy, a series of related but individual films that have little connecting them beyond the Karnstein name and a reputation as ‘soft porn’ with the more stiff upper lipped Hammer experts and critics. The series began with The Vampire Lovers, which – despite its reputation – is rather tame, almost staid – even in 1970, the levels of nudity in the film were hardly excessive but Hammer fans, then and now, have often been both prudish and traditionalist. Any variation on the established style has generally been looked at with contempt and suspicion, which is why many of the company’s more adventurous films of the 1970s – when diminishing returns forced Hammer to try anything and everything to bring new life to what was becoming an increasingly tired formula – are dismissed with a vitriol that is hard for the rest of us to grasp. The film was followed by Lust for a Vampire, which was very much the film that The Vampire Lovers was claimed to be – wildly and deliberately kitsch, gleefully trashy and wonderfully lurid. Producers Harry Fine and Michael Style – names that evoke thoughts of a music hall comedy double act – seemed to have an understanding that the Hammer formula was looking old and, if they had to make gothic period movies about vampires, the only way forward was to crank up the levels of (s)excess.
Interestingly, the Karnstein trilogy is perhaps the most varied series that Hammer produced. The first film, The Vampire Lovers, is a fairly straightforward Hammer horror, even down to its literary origins; the second, Lust for a Vampire, is as much a lecherous sex comedy as anything, almost a satire of its predecessor; and this film, unquestionably the best of the bunch, is part of the then-popular series of ‘burn supposed witches’ films that began with Witchfinder General and continued with Mark of the Devil, Cry of the Banshee, The Demons, The Bloody Judge and others, where the witchfinders become the real villains of the piece.
Madeleine and Mary Collinson are Frieda and Maria Gellhorn, newly orphaned and sent to live with their aunt and uncle in the village of Karnstein, a long way from cosmopolitan Venice. Uncle Gustav Weil (Peter Cushing) is no fun – he’s the head of The Brotherhood, a puritanical religious cult who get their jollies by snatching young women at night and burning them as witches. Weil’s nemesis is Count Karnstein (Damien Thomas), a genuine Satanist who Weil is powerless to move against. This conflict briefly sets up an interesting moral angle – the God-fearing Weil is a genuine monster and the Satan-worshipping Count initially seems to have the moral high ground. There might have been an interesting story to be explored here, but such a daringly provocative play on morality might be a bit much to expect from Hammer, even in the wake of The Devils, and the film soon reveals Karnstein to be at least as fiendish as the puritans. Tiring of watching performers play-acting black magic rituals, he yearns for the real thing, which involves killing a naked girl on an altar and invoking Satan. What he gets is the revived Mircalla Karnstein (as seen as the main character in the previous films in the series, now reduced to a cameo by Katya Wyeth), who vampirises him in what must be the fastest transformation into the undead ever seen on film – here, you become a vampire within seconds of being bitten, not even having to die first. This scene also offers our first hint that the film might not be taking itself quite as seriously as we might expect, featuring as it does Mircalla’s infamous phallic candle fondling scene during getting it on with the Count.
Back in the village, the two twins have started school (where, naturally, all the pupils are nubile young women in their twenties and the only lessons are in sewing and choir practice), and Frieda catches the eye of choirmaster Anton (David Warbeck). But Frieda is the archetypal Evil Twin – unlike her mousey sister, she’s not content to follow Uncle Gustav’s rules, and is fascinated by tales of Count Karnstein and his depraved activities. Before long, she has slipped out and made her way to the castle, where Karnstein initiates her into vampirism, and soon the pair are leaving a trail of bodies in their wake. Eventually, Frieda slips up and is captured by the Brotherhood, but as they keep her locked up, Karnstein kidnaps Maria and the two girls are switched. Will Maria be burned at the stake in place of her wicked sister, or will Anton come to the rescue? Well, we know the answer to that.
In many ways, Twins of Evil is the closest Hammer came to recreating the florid Euro Gothic movies of the era –gloriously knowing productions such Malenka, Lady Frankenstein and The Devil’s Wedding Night. It shakes off any vestiges of petty English restraint and instead becomes a fantastically entertaining, shamelessly trashy tale of satanism, vampirism and forbidden pleasures. Like most Hammer films, it has impeccable production values – Harry Robertson’s score is one of the company’s best and the film is beautifully shot. The sets (which were also used in Vampire Circus) are suitably impressive, though here too, there is a sense of gothic excess not usually found in Hammer movies – skulls and cobwebs litter the castle for no good reason other than to look moody, and there’s a fantastic moment where Karnstein seduces Frieda into vampirism in front of an inverted, glowing red crucifix. It’s a ludicrous moment, but it’s also brilliant because it really emphasises the fact that nothing is too over the top for this movie.
John Hough – who was a decent director capable of some subtlety, as perhaps The Legend of Hell House shows – is clearly having fun here, and he seems to have encouraged a certain camp sensibility in his cast. It’s hard to imagine that scenes such a the one where mute manservant Joachim (Roy Stewart) wildly pantomimes a warning to Karnstein as the Count becomes more and more aghast (“they have crosses? And stakes? And axes??”) would get past the director if he hadn’t intended it to be funny. And other moments – Frieda’s melodramatic gasp at seeing Karnstein has no reflection, the Count actually growling like an animal before laughing like a supervillain – suggest a knowing awareness that this is not an especially serious tale.
The story is also full of holes – Mircalla is revived and then immediately forgotten about as though her appearance in the film is simply a contractual obligation to connect it to the other Karnstein stories, and in any case, the village already seems plagued by vampires before Karnstein summons her, a fact that is never explained. None of this matters, as the film seems to exist in a cartoonish version of the Hammer universe where logic and coherence are not important, where every village is of course plagued by the undead all the time and sinister castles are ten a penny. The film audaciously seems to challenge you to question its own internal logic – it has its vampires walking about in daylight when it is convenient for the narrative, and makes up some rules as it goes along while adhering strictly to others (the fear of the cross, the lack of reflection etc). Interestingly, given its predecessors, it doesn’t dwell on the lesbian vampire theme – at one point, Frieda bites village girl Gerta (Luan Peters) on the breast, but this again feels like a knowing nod to the earlier movies rather than anything else.
Do we need more evidence that this is a deliberately camp film? Then consider the fact that it was written by Tudor Gates, the man who wrote Danger: Diabolik and had his hand in the screenplay for Barbarella – not to mention writing a brace of British sex comedies in the 1970s. It’s difficult to imagine him writing this with a straight face.
The cast, for the most part, plays it straight. Cushing, of course, gives it his all in an unsympathetic role (the film’s biggest fault, I would say, is wimping out and allowing the murderous Brotherhood to ultimately become somewhat heroic figures), and he’s remarkably physical in the part. He commits to this as thoroughly as any other role and you wonder if he even realised that it wasn’t a serious film. Cushing showed an admirable commitment to Hammer and was famously reluctant to say anything bad about anything he made, but you have to wonder just discerning he was, or how much attention he paid to the script. Given his public disapproval of ‘erotic’ horror, his involvement in movies such as Corruption – and he was scheduled to appear in Lust for a Vampire as well before dropping out to care for his terminally ill wife – is rather baffling. On the other hand, the fact that he would give such powerful performances in movies that he probably had no genuine interest in is admirable. There is never any sense of him phoning a performance in.
David Warbeck – who was once considered as a potential James Bond (!) and would go on to be a stalwart of European exploitation, starring in the likes of The Beyond, The Last Hunter and Hunters of the Golden Cobra – is admirably straight-faced (and he was someone who definitely knew camp when he saw it and certainly would’ve picked up on the ludicrousness of this film) and actually has a more worthwhile involvement in the story than is usual for such films. Damien Thomas, on the other hand, is clearly hamming it up as Count Karnstein, his tongue entirely in cheek. Given that he has most of the outlandish dialogue, it was probably hard to show restraint and he’s given full reign to be as outrageous as possible. The supporting cast, including Dennis Price (quite the prolific horror star in the 1970s), Kathleen Bryon as Weil’s long-suffering wife and Isobel Black as the schoolmistress are all decent, and while Price always seems to have his tongue wedged firmly in his cheek in films like this, the other two are perhaps the most grounded and realistic characters in the story.
As for the twins… well, they are actually pretty good. Of course, their main role was to look sexy in sheer negligees and to take off their clothes as required, a task that they are more than up to, though the film has less nudity than you might expect.
By 1971, Hammer’s gothic horrors were already a bit long in the tooth. They were established enough to have been widely satirised on TV, in movies and across the media. More to the point, Hammer copycats were already pushing Gothic horror in new, more extreme directions – or rejecting it entirely. With the 1960s Hammer movies now turning up on TV across the world, the company knew that they needed to offer something new, or else lose their audience – they took Dracula into the modern day in Dracula AD 1972, cashed in on the kung fu craze with The Legend of the 7 Golden Vampires and belatedly tried to modernise and enter the Satanic Seventies with To the Devil a Daughter, though it was all too little, too late of course. As much as the traditionalists seem to hate it, Hammer’s 1970s output is fascinating because there is a desperation about it, leading to sometimes radical ideas being tried by new producers only for the Hammer executives to react with confused bewilderment. The final years of Hammer’s Golden Age produced some of their best work, but it was often buried at the @rse-end of double bills or promoted in ways that just made it look like the same old formulaic stuff. Hammer, in the end, was too wedded to what it understood, and it was down to individual filmmakers – the writers, directors and independent producers – to try and breathe new life into a dated formula, a conflict of ideas that sometimes created extraordinary and provocative films that even now tend to be overlooked because of the Hammer label.
Twins of Evil makes the most sense when you see it as a knowing satire of the traditional gothic, cranking everything up to 11 in a deliberate act of subversion. The result is a livid, melodramatic and ostentatious extravaganza that looks like the traditional Hammer film but is anything but that. Shameless entertainment.
David Flint, guest reviewer via The Reprobate [click here for the full review]
Other reviews [may contain spoilers]:
“Twins of Evil is worth watching just for Peter Cushing’s performance alone. He is intense. But it’s also a great movie and unlike Doctor Jekyll and Sister Hyde which promised to deliver shock after shock and then failed, the last twenty minutes of Twins of Evil did surprise me – especially Frieda’s demise.” Beasts in Human Skin
“The picture is straightforward in its sense of duty, hitting all the required beats of tension, though it’s somewhat refreshing to find the Count’s hunger for blood not born from Stoker-esque events, but from his interest in evil, calling on his ancestors (and the most on-the-nose phallic imagery I’ve seen in a movie) to aid him in his quest to transform into a monster, gleefully terrorizing the land as he beds all the local women.” Blu-ray.com
“There’s a very dark introduction to this film, as a busty wench is pursued through a dark forest by a bunch of men dressed in black, before being tied to a stake and burned alive (in the dark). And things don’t get much lighter for the next 90 minutes, either. Twins of Evil is like a slap in the face for everyone who thinks that by the 70s, Hammer had disappeared up its own arse and started producing garish, entertaining but stupid films.” British Horror Films
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“More gaunt than usual, Cushing portrays the leader of a group of men called “The Brotherhood” that seek out and kill women accused of being witches. While not necessarily intended, there are contemporary reverberations here, with a group of men using religious piety as their motivation to put to death women who may be independent and sexually active without marriage.” Coffee, Coffee and More Coffee
“Bolstered by two excellent performances by Cushing and Damien Thomas ably assisted by an astounding score, Twins of Evil (1971) is one of Hammer’s best of their 1970’s slate of productions. Those years were not comparable to their films of the late ’50s and ’60s, although a few definitely came close. John Hough’s epic tale of puritans and vampires is assuredly one of them.” Cool @ss Cinema
“Twins of Evil is a mélange, a bouillabaisse, a veritable potpourri of then-current filmic trends (witchcraft) and the recently passé (vampires) – and it works surprisingly well. Well enough, any way; neither side really has a chance to explore their mythologies, with the witch hunt business taking a backseat once the vampires rise. By the same token, the vampire lore is given truncated thrift, with sunlight being fine and dandy and transformations happening instantaneously on first bite.” Daily Dead
“Twins positively speeds towards its inevitable storming of the castle but not before a few sublime moments such as Cushing’s realisation that his niece is a vampire or the Count’s mute black manservant miming what’s coming for his master as the mob nears the front door […] Twins of Evil stands out as one of Hammer’s most satisfying vampire efforts of the 70s.” Digital Retribution
“Twins of Evil truly is a masterpiece of gothic and erotic horror and holds up bloody well to this day. In my opinion, this film, along with Robert Young’s equally unique Vampire Circus (also available from Synapse Films), are two of Hammer’s most superb achievements of the early 1970s, giving credence to the company’s overall product quality during that decade, despite constant criticism by fans and writers alike.” DVD Drive-In
” …constant tension between fairy-tale trappings and a grimly cynical plot, together with Hough’s flair for super-charged action scenes, makes it easy to overlook a few silly bits and a handful of plot loopholes.” Jonathan Rigby, Euro Gothic: A Century of Horror Cinema
“There is actually a good subtext to this film about fanaticism of any hue, as Cushing’s Gustav is a blinkered fanatic who is cruel in his own home, and harbours barely suppressed desires for his nieces. His wife (the sadly underused Kathleen Byron) is a drudge, and he lives pathetically joyous life that pushes fun-loving Freida into the hands of the Count.” Andy Boot, Fragments of Fear
“Bar a couple of rather crude and out-of-place exposures, Twins of Evil substitutes the exploitation of flesh for the exploitation of violence, albeit with good reason. A tightly plotted tragedy, with characters painted in shades of grey (as opposed to, say, John Elder’s black and white) and heavily influenced by pictures such as Witchfinder General, it has an intensity and sense of purpose rare in horror.” Marcus Hearn and Alan Barnes, The Hammer Story
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“Fueled by a great performance by Cushing as the zealous witchfinder, Twins of Evil is an effective examination of the conflict between repression and hedonism. Director John Hough, who made his mark in several episodes of The Avengers, keeps things moving at a brisk pace and stages the scenes of horror with considerable panache.” The Horror Film, Cinebooks
“Latter-day Hammer film that abandons atmosphere for overt horrors: the Pinewood Studios backlot is too little changed from Vampire Circus and only Cushing’s performance as the fanatical witch-hunter lifts it out of a rut.” Alan Frank, The Horror Film Handbook, 1982 [N.B. The same sets were actually re-used for Vampire Circus, not the other way round]
“So it’s not quite solid, but there’s no denying that Twins of Evil has many more advantages than either of its predecessors in the Karnstein trilogy, The Vampire Lovers and Lust for a Vampire, both also scripted by Tudor Gates, and it is truer to the spirit of what Terence Fisher brought to Hammer’s golden age than any film made after his enforced retirement.” Pause. Rewind. Obsess.
“The plotting is rather uneven, Cushing’s lines become repetitious and there are three almost identical burnings before the film is halfway through. As in The Vampire Lovers, the vampires aren’t bothered by daylight, and after a while it begins to seem ridiculous that the entire Brotherhood spend their nights thundering about the countryside riding almost every young girl they can find.” The Peter Cushing Companion
“Twins of Evil balanced the modern Hammer demands of gore and nudity with the great acting, well-rounded plot and solid cast that made the earlier horror outings so enjoyable. And of course, it’s got Peter Cushing burning witches and slaying vampires – what more do you want?” Popcorn Pictures
The Flesh and the Fury: X-posing Twins of Evil (84 mins.) – New, feature-length documentary exploring Hammer’s infamous ‘Karnstein’ trilogy from the origin of Carmilla, to the making of Twins of Evil Featuring exclusive interviews with director John Hough, star Damien Thomas, cult film director Joe Dante, Video Watchdog editor Tim Lucas, and more!
he Props That Hammer Built – Featurette (Blu-ray Exclusive)
Motion Still Gallery (Blu-ray Exclusive)
Deleted Scene (Blu-ray Exclusive)
Original Theatrical Trailer & TV Spots (Blu-ray Exclusive)
Isolated Music & Effects Track (Blu-ray Exclusive)
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“There’s a nice gothic atmosphere throughout the film thanks to the camerawork of cinematographer Dick Bush and the score which comes courtesy of Harry Robinson is very effective and dramatic, adding plenty of weight to certain key moments in the film. The use of color is great in the movie, as is the use of shadow, with our titular twins consistently cast in the most alluring light possible and looking fantastic no matter the situation.” Rock! Shock! Pop!
“Twins of Evil benefits considerably from seasoned performances by a veteran cast that includes genre icon Peter Cushing, Dennis Price, and Kathleen Byron. And, last but certainly not least, there’s a compelling storyline (penned by Barbarella scribe Tudor Gates) that’s also rich in sociopolitical subtext, sketching (amid bouts of bare bosoms and bared fangs) the predicament of an Austrian peasantry crushed between the intolerance of religious fanaticism and the depredations of a debauched aristocracy.” Slant
“Harkening back to Olivia de Havilland in The Dark Mirror and beyond, there has to be a good twin and an evil twin, and director John Hough employs plenty of mirror imagery, even extending to the Count being the reflection of Weil. The horror elements may be routine, but Twins of Evil has interesting themes that belie its surface novelties.” The Spinning Image
“The script dealt with a potentially interesting confrontation between vampires and puritans, but the ambiguities are never explored and the potential clash of sensibilities remains unexpressed. Pater Cushing’s part as the puritan witchhunter is wholly insubstantial and again the emphasis is limitingly on sex…” David Pirie, A New Heritage of Horror
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“John Hough’s direction stirs interesting characters into a cracking tale and Roy Stannard’s magnificent sets are outstanding. Harry Robinson’s rousing title theme march pounds out at timely moments throughout the story […] Twins of Evil is a thrilling movie, and one of several diamonds in Hammer’s jewel-encrusted crown.” Tim Greaves, Ten Years of Terror
“Though both dubbed, the Collinson’s do what’s needed of them, and if the film has a weakness, it’s Thomas, who’s a tad too bland to be a good nemesis, though one suspects even Christopher Lee might wilt in the incandescent heat of Cushing’s performance. It does feel more like a throwback to the kind of film the company was making a decade ago.” Trash City
“John Hough’s direction isn’t particularly flashy, and so it is really up to the performers to make Twins of Evil something worth watching, and they deliver in spades. Peter Cushing’s wife, Helen, passed away shortly before he began shooting the film, and he puts an unusual amount of pain into his role as the vicious self-appointed witchfinder of the Karnstein village.” Twitch
“Fast-paced and creatively directed, Twins of Evil is a prime example of Hammer horror at its best.” Gary A. Smith, Uneasy Dreams: The Golden Age of British Horror Films, 1956 – 1976
“Director John Hough was relatively new to the business when he filmed Twins of Evil and he generally lacks any flair – dialogue scenes in particular are shot in a distinctly television style with simple full face shots of the speaking actor. Surprisingly, the film does boast a couple of very nice set pieces – notably a castle courtyard towards the end of the film, bathed in coloured light with plenty of ground fog that would impress many of the top Italian horror directors.” Dread Central
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