Intensity	Stupidity:Nudity Ratio 2:1	Budget Medium

A four cup rating for this movie is a little bit subjective. The movie lacks a little cohesion and slows way down just before the final showdown, but for me personally it is a pivotal movie and I think for vampire lore as well. This is going to be a long review with several side trips, so you may want to get a cup of coffee before continuing.

The story opens with a young girl breaking a commandment, vanity and pride. Her friend runs off to get some flowers for her hair and when she returns, the girl has aged tremendously and dies shortly after. Dr. Marcus happens on the scene and soon calls for his old war buddy, the titular Captain Kronos, to come and investigate. On the way to the troubled town, our hero frees a woman from a stock. When asked what her crime was, Carla replies "dancing on Sunday". Carla joins our hero and his partner, Professor Hieronymos Grost (who has a hunchback!) on their journey to rid the town of vampires.

Like many Hammer films, this one was shot on elaborate sets and in huge gorgeous locations. There are no small cramped rooms, even the tavern is a large and has enough room for sword fights (or presumably dancing on regular nights). The lighting is excellent throughout the film with a few moments of carefully controlled brilliance. When Kronos and Carla go in for their first kiss, we see their faces go through moonbeams, then their eyes, then their lips. Of course that same lighting prevents us from seeing Caroline Monroe's naughty bits, so it is a mixed blessing. The director makes full use of the large spaces he has to work with frequently framing a character in a window then pulling back to reveal a courtyard and then further to reveal another character watching. Mirrors are used in the same way at least three times in the movie. We first see the heavily cloaked vampire in a mirror and Paula Durward (who we think may be a vampire) is first shown in a mirror. Flowers also seem to figure strongly in the movie, we see several brightly colored flowers at key times and there are bright blue flowers on the coach that the Durward's ride around in, though like the framing technique, they seem to contribute nothing the plot. Visually the movie is wonderful and is everything you'd expect from a Hammer film. I do think that a lot of "framing" came from the director and not the writer. This technique is pretty heavy handed and I kept thinking it was a clue or had some relevance to the plot. But in truth, I suspect it was just the director's favorite thing to do. The second time we see bell tower framing a scene, we realize that forced perspective is being used and from then on the framing starts being distracting. Still for me, Hammer Studios have always set the standards for quality filmmaking. Close up of eyes, shots of faces, half body shots, full body shots, large rooms, crowd shots, shots of wide open fields with the characters looking like ants. Their directors and writers always had tons of image options and made extensive use of them. Often when I am watching newer movies with claustrophobic sets and talking head direction, I find myself growing nostalgic for the grandeur of Hammer films. Captain Kronos has always been one of the films I compare other films against, which is why it was a pivotal film for me.

But what about for vampirism? There are several radical breaks from the standard vampire mythology in this movie. Bram Stoker based his 1897 novel on short stories and folklore about vampires. In fact, Transylvania came from another short story and the name Dracul means devil in a Romanian dialect. I have always found it likely that the core concept of vampirism, a wasting away that can occasionally be reversed by garlic, may have been related to garlic being a natural antibiotic. Disease, like many other aspects of life, had supernatural overtones. Folklore was a way of entertaining, but also a way of passing knowledge. So it is easy to see a story about a girl who got very sick but recovered after eating garlic could grow to becoming a myth about an evil spirit that sucks the life out of people but is repelled by garlic. Sunlight and running (fresh) water both have folk medicine connotations and both are deadly for vampires. Bram Stoker took the folklore and expounded on earlier writings with a heavily melodramatic story and strong religious overtones. Dracula was part demon and therefore could not face any true sign of christianity. While he was much stronger than van Helsing, van Helsing had God on his side and was ultimately victorious. This basic scenario would be repeated over and over until the late 60's when the religious aspects would start to fade. The heroes would not always be as virtuous as van Helsing and the fact that the cross was made of silver was more significant than the shape. But still in the end, the vampire died (at least temporarily) at the hands of christians.

From the very first scene in Captain Kronos we notice an unsettling trend; the victims are wearing crucifixes before, during and after the attacks. This is addressed by Dr. Marcus and Professor Grost in this conversation:

Grost: I suspect mesmerism in this.
Marcus: Mesmerism?
Grost: Hypnotism. The subjugation of the mind.
Marcus: You don't believe in that nonsense, do you? Well, it is highly improbable.
Grost: What could be more improbable than God? But I believe in Him.

Clearly Grost is deluding himself here. These were good, young, religious girls wearing a symbol of God and it did not even slow down the vampire. The vampire did not have to hypnotize the girls and make them take the cross off before attacking them. As if to drive this home even more, there is a scene in a church where we see a girl, a crucifix and what appears to be its shadow on the wall. Just about the time you realize that the crucifix has rounded edges and the shadow does not, the shadow moves and we see that it is made by the vampire who kills the girl in the church! On sacred ground! The first of our assumptions has been disavowed. Soon we learn another unsettling fact about Kronos; he appears to be able to light his Chinese herb cigarettes without matches. While this is not clearly shown, we twice see him cupping his hands over the end of the cigarette and then taking what appears to be his first drag. We also find that he is supernaturally fast. Twice Ms. Munroe goes from leaning against Kronos to a pratfall as he seems to move so fast as to simply disappear. Eventually we get Kronos' backstory. After coming home from the war, he found his mother and his sister had become vampires. Before he could kill them, his beloved little sister bit him on the neck! We see the large, ugly scars. Yup. Our hero is part vampire. While this may seem a commonplace, even logical, attribute of a vampire hunter now, it was not in 1974. Vampire D and Blade were still a couple decades away. Shortly after this unsettling revelation, Kronos has sex with Carla and afterwards, she has a trace of blood on her lips just like the vampire's victims. She lovingly remarks on how rough he was and about the anger he has inside of him. Hmm, maybe our hero is more than part vampire.

Grost also lectures Marcus on the different types of vampires and the different ways to kill them. Apparently a stake through the heart is not a surefire method of vampire disposal. Hanging, drowning, decapitation and fire all work depending on the vampire. This turns out to be a rather ironic conversation. When Marcus is turned into a vampire, he willingly allows Kronos and Grost to figure out how to kill this particular type of vampire by trying out the aforementioned techniques on him. They get it right on about the fourth try.

Hammer was trying to create a franchise with this film. Caroline Munroe was the only woman to ever sign a long term contract with Hammer and new rules were obviously being set up. As played by Horst Janson, Kronos was a cooler James Bond. He smoked Chinese herb, drank and had sex with Caroline Munroe and while these are all attributes to be admired, they are a significant departure from your average vampire hunter. He even smiles and seems happy most of the time. Captain Kronos did poorly at the box office and no sequels were made. Hammer Studios itself was struggling at this point and would soon lose it's position as a major studio. Perhaps the reason that it did so poorly was that there were too many radical departures from the accepted mythology, but I think it is more likely that the film just throws too many things at you and not enough of them stick. Still I think this film is required watching for vampire aficionados as I believe, but am not positive, that it is the first appearance of a vampire hunter who may be part vampire himself.

Caroline Munroe and Horst Janson

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