It is beautiful and very beautiful. “Twins of Evil” is one of those cult horror films relics staged in the dungeons of the British studio “Hammer”, which in the distant seventies had the courage to please the audience with their unusual dramatic and visual solutions, which modern scary cinema is not capable of a priori, regardless of the desire of whoever took it. Having created nine paintings about Dracula, seven about Frankenstein, four about the Mummy, two about the forked Dr. Jackkill and even one about Petr Grigorievich Rasputin himself, the British from time to time did not hesitate to make their own franchises straight from scratch, which did not have an already firmly established cinematic foundation. Part of this fully Hammer series and are “Twins of evil”. The film was staged by then just beginning genre director John Hough, who exactly a year later woke up famous after the resounding success of the thriller “Legend of Hell’s House”, who did just a colossal job in the production. The plot focuses on a lonely blasphemer – a young but very authoritative Count Carstein, who decided to sell his immortal soul to Satan in exchange for eternal life and youth, but as a result turned into a monstrous vampire. The tape I am considering was the final part of the trilogy about the family of vampires with the name Karstein.
Even on the opening credits, the director unfolds before the viewer a gloomy palette of the Middle Ages, where the cruel Church Inquisition without pity burns young innocent girls at the stake only for their natural beauty, always considered “democratic”. Europe is a sign of devilish origin. The shocking actor Peter Cushing played the crazy priest August Dupin, the leader of a small but extremely angry and authoritative branch of the Inquisitors, located in the heart of a cut off from the civilized world, a tiny medieval county. Influenced by this ruthless and furious fanatic and his followers were almost the whole vast county, in which the life of a commoner is not worth even the lives of simple livestock. In parallel, the long-suffering inhabitants are regularly attacked by a nearby, powerful, invulnerable vampire, against whom even the cruel Inquisition is powerless. In fact, in the film we have not one, but two main villains who fanatically confront each other, leaving behind huge mountains of corpses of innocent victims, with the only difference that the first does it to please the devil, while the second – to please God. And I must say, it is Cushing who ultimately pulls on the audience interest, leaving even the indescribably cruel Carstein unattended. If in the first film of the trilogy Peter played an exceptionally positive and virtuous fighter against evil, then his new hero is the full opposite of this and this only confirms how versatile and unique this undoubtedly great British actor was. Vampires, by the way, in the picture are very canonical: they are afraid of the cross, do not reflect in the mirror, adore carnal pleasures. and die only by decapitation and aspen stake, piercing the heart.
The film without exaggeration amazes with its visual luxury. As I mentioned earlier, John Hough's directing is simply unmatched. We are not only pampered with magnificent shootings of Gothic panoramas and picturesque natural landscapes, but also as the narrative is skillfully immersed in the eerie, depressing atmosphere of the cruel Middle Ages. The operator of the tape not only worked his fee, but I would even say overdone it. Literally, each frame is persistently asked for a carved frame made of mahogany. A lot of angles and editing solutions years later, the nimble Jew Sam Raimi successfully uses in his legendary trilogy Evil Dead. But in addition to visual beauty, "Twins of Evil" manages to do what the viewer actually watches films of this genre - they manage to scare. Scenes of fermentation of an innocent victim along the overgrown paths of a huge British forest, which necessarily end in death, are quite similar to younger and more famous "forest" horror films, years later, filmed in the United States. At the same time, each subsequent murder in one way or another helps the plot to develop and skillfully lead the viewer to a logically built end, without turning the action into a primitive spectacle with mountains of corpses and incessant slaughter. Thanks to such a scrupulous attention to detail, John Hough was able to create a real elegant classic of vampire cinema, which in modern years is certainly different from the soulless and boring commercial work of one day.
If Fisher’s whole “historical” almost always spoiled the pronounced presence of props and theater, in the form of painted landscapes, cardboard decorations and washed to shine village costumes of peasants, then Hough’s everything looks exactly as it should look. When a dirty laborer is on the screen, then, and it is shown stained and unkempt, “natural” shooting takes place exclusively in natural forests and fields, and the interior of the sinister Karstein Castle was clearly filmed in a real rare mansion, and not in a studio pavilion with foam walls decorated with watercolor. Even the rich aristocrats in the film are not very luxurious and fabulous (historically it has long been proved that theories about the luxury of medieval castles and the pompousness of the outfits of the rich are seriously exaggerated), which creates an additional effect of historical authenticity. At the same time, the tape impresses with an unexpectedly solid sweep. The disadvantages of the tape can be attributed to the traditional for the paintings of that era tightness, some monotony of action, not diluting itself with anything interesting (except for a really energetic and bloody ending) and not always successfully selected music, because of which during viewing there is a feeling that you are watching rather heroic fantasy about noble knights without fear and reproach, and not a gothic horror about the revived dead.
What's the bottom line? Beautiful, interesting, really fascinating film about vampires, skillfully created by the hands of British filmmakers of the seventies of the last century. This is not a spitting fashion melodrama about handsome vampire boys, shoving sexually anxious frigid young schoolgirls. We're talking about a British horror movie. A horror film created at Hammer Studios. Connoisseurs of logical plots, naturalistic bloody special effects, frightening atmosphere and Gothic splendor should not miss this gem of the genre in any case.
8 out of 10