CAPTAIN KRONOS, VAMPIRE HUNTER.


UK, 1971, 94 minutes, Colour.
Horst Janson, John Carson, Shane Briant, Caroline Munro.
Directed by Brian Clemens.

An off-beat vampire thriller made by the team responsible for the television series The Avengers. It is routine material but is a tongue-in-cheek example of the British spoofing the vampire tradition. This was very popular in the Hammer Studios' films of the late sixties and early seventies. Dracula was to have a much more serious re-birth of popularity in the late seventies as well as even more parodies and spoofs. An unusual vampire thriller.

1. What are the expectations from the title? As regards the hero, the vampires, the parody and style?

2. Why do horror films appeal to audiences? Involvement in suspense, the deeper understanding behind the myth of vampires, life and death, evil? The conquest of evil? How were these presuppositions incorporated into this film?

3. The value of the locations, the town and its background, the mansion? The forest?

4. The film’s reliance on dramatic effects, for example the vampire in the cloak, the aging of the victim , the storms, the final sword play?

5. The film’s detailed explanation of the myths about vampires, the variety of stories. the role of the hunters of the vampires? (How seriously to be taken?)

6. The situation and the town? The audience suspecting the children, their visit, the cemetery, their mysterious mother and her vengeance, the detailed presentation of the house and its sinister aspects, the aristocracy and their manners? The irony of the parents as the real villains? The effect of this final revelation? Audience judgement?

7. How was Kronos a hero? the night on the house, his vigil before striking, yet his sensuality and violence, his look and his accent? How comic, how serious? His assistant with his hunch and his knowledge of vampire law? The vagabond girl rescued and accompanying them? Asking herself for Kronos? How conventional?

8. The doctor in the village, a serious character, his investigations, giving his life for the others? The various ways in which he was killed? The horror and the violence of this?

9. The assassins in the inn? reason for this sequence? Kronos’s swordplay and the preparation for the ending?

10. The final encounter? The hypnotised children, the heroine in peril, the sinister villainess and the revelation of the truth, the sinister vampire, the professor and his understanding, Kronos and his sword-play? The appropriate climax for this film?

11. How appropriate the ending, the irony in Kronos continuing his vampire hunts?

12. The values underlying the style of this film, its gathering from all vampire films, the ironic dialogue and touches? How serious?