Dundead: Captain Kronos: Vampire Hunter

Here is a new restoration of an intriguing and charmingly offbeat horror curio from the legendary Hammer Films. For a lot of audiences, Hammer is synonymous with Christopher Lee’s Dracula who debuted in 1958, but as the ‘70s wore on, Hammer began taking bigger swings with its films, folding in all sorts of incongruous iconography into its vivid-hued gothic style, and with 1974’s Captain Kronos, writer-director Brian Clemens plays fast and loose with the established vampire mythos.  

Debonair supernatural expert Captain Kronos (Horst Janson) and his hunchbacked assistant, Grost (John Cater), meet their match when they encounter a village where vampires have been stealing the vitality of young women, leaving them elderly and decrepit. Armed with his sword and formidable deductive reasoning, Kronos begins to solve the macabre mystery, with evidence pointing to the aristocratic Lady Durward (Wanda Ventham) and her family as prime suspects. 

Although Captain Kronos failed to find an audience on release, it has been reappraised in the years since. Hammer were master purveyors of pulp entertainment, wrapping their productions up in plenty of atmosphere, gothic stylings and that iconic poster-paint-red fake blood. A swashbuckling action horror film, Captain Kronos: Vampire Hunter is one of Hammer's most entertaining '70s productions.