Captain Kronos: Vampire Hunter (1974)

To me, this movie is perfection.

Yo, there's no way for me to review this film without saying, take your *insert ethnicity + "ass" here* to see this film,like now. You have to see it in order to know what you're really messing with.

The acting in this movie is really good.

This movie feels like it was made purely to piss off people who want good shows

If you buy boxes of Hammer you almost never come across this flick. It's not very known and I guess the reason is simple, it doesn't have Christopher Lee or Peter Cushing in it although regular Caroline Munro is in it. But back then Caroline wasn't a big name, she made it a few years later with a few horrors. She did appear in earlier hammers like Dracula A.D. 1972 (1972). The acting was rather good and the effects used were very simple but where this flick do fails a bit is the fact that we don't see that often the vampires. It's more a story about Kronos himself, played by Horst Janson. You surely will recognize a few popular faces like Shane Briant and Ian Hendry.Was it scary? No it never was although we do see severed arms and heads but it is low on the horror factor for the year it was made. If you look at The Exorcist (1973) then this flick here is a big laugh. It's also made at the end of the Hammer era. They tried to move further from the Gothic horror and this here shows but they failed. During the late 1960s and 1970s the saturation of the horror film market by competitors and the loss of American funding forced changes to the previously lucrative Hammer-formula, with varying degrees of success. The Legend of the 7 Golden Vampires (1974) was a big flop and even To The Devil A Daughter (1976) failed too. In 1979 they stopped with a remake of Hitchcocks The Lady Vanishes. In fact Rosemary's Baby (1968) started a new era in horror.Still, it's worth watching for the typical Hammer effects and for Munro going full frontal in one scene. Gore 0/5 Nudity 1/5 Effects 2/5 Story 3/5 Comedy 0/5

In the English countryside, bizarre murders have been occurring as some of the women in the village have been drained of their age and killed instantly. A local Doctor named Marcus (John Carson) calls upon a vampire killer named Kronos (Horst Janson) along with hump-backed assistant Grost (John Cater) to investigate these strange occurrences. They team up with lovely gypsy (Caroline Munro) as they fight this unique kind of vampire creature that drains youth/lifeforces/souls/energy instead of blood yet also turns people into soul-draining vampires.Brilliant and very original Hammer production! this is probably their second best movie besides "Horror of Dracula" and one of my favorite movies since i was a kid. What is really outstanding that it has a breath of fresh air over the tired same old bloodsucking vampire routine as instead it goes for the energy-draining psychic vampire routine told in vampire legends mainly in Asia to Japan where they have vampires of that sort. The movies "Sleepwalkers", "Lifeforce" and others besides this have told of this kind of vampire on the big screen. The vampires in this movie do cast reflections and can walk in the daylight, Grost even educates the audiences there is more than one species of vampire when there are other kinds of vampires in the world that have powers different than any of the Dracula kind and can be killed in any way.The performances are very good, it's loaded with action and charisma peppered with a few humorous moments and a new twist to the vampire legend. Miss Munro is lovely as usual and this film has a nice combination of vampire flick and swashbuckler all rolled in one. This movie was a major inspiration to the Blade movies, Van Helsing, Buffy The Vampire Slayer and even the Castlevania games.A must watch! it also teaches people there is more than one kind of vampire to hit the screen when there are other legends.

Prepare to be hammered by Captain Kronos, Vampire Hunter. He's a swashbuckling, brooding, silent type who cavorts across the countryside with his assistant, Prof. Grost, who is a hunchbacked sort of Dr.-Watson-Meets-Hephaestus. As you will learn well into the storyline, Kronos's family was attacked by vampires, so now he has to repay the "species" a thousandfold by hunting them down in the, well, dead of day, actually, and learning along the way that vampires are a varied species that must be snuffed in a multitude of ways as no one set of rules works for all of them(a nice twist).The score is adequate, and in some places, rousing. Acting is somewhat of "Horst of another color." Janson is tolerable as Cap'n Kronos, sometimes delivering his lines very well, other times you might groan. If I were to cast a remake, I'd lovingly place Dave Mustaine in the lead with John Hurt as his quasimodo-in-tow. Anyway, I know plenty of horror fans dig this film and there is a lot to be said for it 35 years later. Part of its appeal would lie in when you watched the movie, though. If you are a geezer like me and waited until you were older to see this, it certainly won't have the same attraction as it might for a kid in high school in the 70's. This is not to say it's a bad film or even really dated. You just have to be in the right mindset when you start watching or you'll end up being too critical. Personally, I'd have preferred more swordplay and a few more vampiric slayings. The swordfight in the cemetery is beyond pathetic and at least the cinematographer was able to clean up the shortcomings a bit with fast camera-work. However, the sword fight at the end is considerably better and will make up for the one previously derided.There are a bevy of beauties in the film, including the delicious Caroline Munro, so there's no shortage of flesh, although nudity is kept in the shadows. If you are a careful viewer, and I know you are, you'll spot the main baddie rather early on, but that doesn't necessarily spoil things. Perhaps the best thing about this movie is not so much the action or dialogue as the uber-creepy vampire moving about the countryside, mainly in the forests, donning a black shroud and sucking the youth out of the fair maidens. The fact the vampire's face is not shown until the end greatly helps the film, which has little in the way of effects or gore.Today, we have Van Helsing and the late-in-coming Solomon Kane as a sort of modern cinematic Captain Kronos, but that doesn't mean his character couldn't live on in more stories. I'm sure there are enough fans of this film to warrant his resurrection.

Sometimes a good movie fails for no very good reason. By 1974, the whole glorious cycle of Hammer Horrors, the long weekend four-horrors-beginning-at-midnight cycle was losing its audience, turning to slicker and more expensive Hollywood productions.Captain Kronos, infused with the campy pop-culture verve and schlock aesthetic of the late sixties/early seventies British sensibility, was, with it's comic-book feel, also ahead of its time, a completely new and inventive take on the whole vampire ethos. The hero was also a little wooden for the cigar-smoking, womanising rogue vampire hunter that he played. And the movie is, compared to other late Hammer ventures, a little lacking in babes and nudity. Nevertheless it deserves to stand with them as one of the very best Hammer productions. An interesting story that never stops moving, a fine ensemble cast, beautiful and lush photography, characters that are lively and full of interest, Kronos was a creative, unexpected and confident take on the vampire genre and one that was enjoyed by almost everyone that got the chance to see it. Not as transgressive as Vampire Circus, it nevertheless breaks the box in terms of the expected. A fine vampire movie and one of the best B movie vampire productions ever, Kronos never disappoints.