I Watch Movies: Twins Of Evil

 

Twins Of Evil

Gustav Weil* (Peter Cushing) leads a brotherhood of witch-hunters who burn young women for consorting with the devil, or possibly for being too sexy. His two orphaned nieces arrive from Venice, they are too fashionable, spending their time swanning around in low-cut gowns or flowing nighties.

Count Karstein really is consorting with the devil, or trying to. After a staged satanist ritual turns boring for him he sacrifices a woman and calls up his ancestor Mircalla Karnstein, familiar to us from Sheridan LeFanu’s Carmilla, or maybe the other two Hammer films in the loosely related Karnstein Trilogy. She vampires him and he starts drinking blood, retroactively giving Weil’s murderous misogyny a shred of cover.

Weil wants to go after Karnstein, but he’s rich and powerful and is a favourite of the Emperor so keeps letting him off. Freida the bad twin goes off to join Count Karnstein, and is vampirised. As we know will eventually happen, when bad things start to be discovered she swaps places with Maria, the good twin.

Watch This: For a Hammer period vampire film with sex blood and violence
Don’t Watch This: Neither as strong nor as female-centred as Hammer’s earlier sexy female vampire films

* Pronounced “vile”.