Love this podcast? Support this show through the Acast Supporter feature. It's up to you how much you give and there's no regular commitment. Just hit the link in the show description to support now. Tumble on LG OLED TV from Curry's. It has self-lit tech that gives perfect contrast, colour accuracy and detail. Since, he's binged a new series, re-watched his favourite movies, watched his team play...
And now he's typing in his Curry's receipt number to claim his guaranteed cash reward between £50 and £100,000 when you buy any LG OLED TV. Everyone's a winner. Curry's, beyond expectations. And 2nd of December, one 100k prize available. Claim online with receipt after purchase. Terms apply. At Matalan, red is the new black. The up to 50% off Red Friday sale is still going strong. And there's 25% off selected nightwear and party wear too. Shop in store and online at matalan.com.
James, if you can hear me, knock three times. Where is he? Is he in a chopper? John said, are you in a chopper? Not the bike, the helicopter. Are you in the boot of a car? All I can hear is like a noise. That's the chopper. That's Airwolf. Alan Sugar's taking him hostage. The Tory scene belligerent. Text us if you can hear us. So, dear listener, we're trying to locate James Randall. He's gone AWOL. He's gone AWOL. John, you try ringing him. Okay, hang on.
See if you're getting the same weird noise. Well, it went through straight away. James, can you hear me? Over. Can you hear me? Over. Is it doing the same weird noise? Hang on. Let me take my bloody headphones off. James. Yeah, it's like doing that weird noise. There is a weird noise, James. Is it us just... Echoing back. Echoing back. That sounds like a voice though, doesn't it? It does sound like a voice. This is very paranormal, James.
Are you dead? Knock once for yes, knock twice for no. What was that? I've hung up. That does sound like a ghost. James Randall has passed away. If he has, that'd be awful. For the podcast. We can keep in touch with him through WhatsApp. Through whispering noises. Well, I don't think he's coming. I'll leave it set up. Okay. Do you want to see if you can get a hold of him? Yeah, I will do. I'll stay here for now. Are you going to keep recording it? What, are you just going to talk to yourself?
Something funny might happen. I hope he's okay. What a way to start episode 51. Good evening goblins and ghouls and welcome to episode 51. of the General Witchfinders podcast. Can you believe it? We've got a message. He's fell asleep. It's classic. He's on his way. Britain. An ancient kingdom with legends of violence, cruelty, and torment in its blood. Join your hosts, Ross, John, and James, as they bravely tread where few would dare.
Witness their journey into the horrific history of British horror. They are... The General Witch Finders. So, ladies and gentlemen, goblins and girls, welcome back to...
Now, the 51st episode of the General Witchfinder's Podcast. Start of a new era. Exactly. The 51st state. Well, maybe. I'm James in Bournemouth in Southern England. I'm John Pountney, and I'm here in... south wales which is still in the south of wales i am ross in dorchester in southern england this time we hired captain chronos the vampire hunter in the 18th century in central europe a black terror swept across the face of the land
The curse of vampirism, which had been a half forgotten memory for hundreds of years, returned with a fury that struck unholy fear into the hearts of every man, woman and child. One man dared to make a stand against this evil epidemic. One man dared to hurl a challenge of cold steel against the terror of the undead. He was Captain Kronos, Vampire Hunter.
It is commonly supposed that a vampire attacks in only one way, by biting the neck and draining the victim of blood. The girls you spoke of, they were not drained of blood. but of youth, of life itself. You see? He's been bitten on the mouth. God's sake, I survived the vampire's bite, but he is not the man you are. I'm doomed. My soul will never-ending torment. Kill me! Kill me! Her life will be yours. Yours.
Her youth will pulse through your veins, my darling. Replenishing, restoring. Take her. At your service, sir. To the death. Yes, you bleed, my lord. This is God's blade. Forged for your black heart. So Captain Kronos Vampire Hunter is a 1974 British swashbuckling action horror film written and directed by Brian Clements in his directorial debut.
Clemens was celebrated for his work as a screenwriter, particularly for his contributions to British television series, such as Danger Man, The Avengers, where he wrote many episodes, including The Pilot, The Baron, Not about Keith Barron. It would have been amazing if it would have been. They should do one called The Red Baron. It's all about him being a secret sort of communist spy or something during the 1980s. Keith Barron? Yeah. Yeah. While making duty.
free yeah yeah he also wrote the persuaders exclamation mark and the professionals which he also created achievements that earned him an obe in 2010 He got an OBE for creating some TV series. Not for like being a lollipop man for like 50 years or something. Just think of all the pleasure he brought to people. They are incredible.
for his contributions to broadcasting and drama. Prior to Captain Cronus, he wrote and produced Dr. Jekyll and Sister Hyde, The Hammer. Other films that he wrote that fall into and circle around our area of interest includes... and soon the darkness which he wrote with dalek uh creator terry nation did he really that's why they they fell out later did they i read they fell out over survivors
Nation claimed... No. Brian Hales. Not Brian Hales. Who are we talking about? Brian Clemens. Brian Clemens. Brian Hales is a Doctor Who writer. Brian Clemens claimed... that he had given the idea for survivors to Terry Nation, and then Terry Nation hadn't given him a credit. Well, it makes a difference with Terry Nation ripping someone else off, rather than just ripping himself off. um then he also see no evil that's the 1971 mia farrow film not the
Richard Pryor and Gene Wilder classic. Such a good film. And then the golden voyage of Sinbad, The Watcher in the Woods, one of Disney's forays into horror. And one of Ross's all-time favourites. Yeah, I would love to do that one day. Which one is that? It's about the girl who disappears when they're doing some kind of ritual and then they keep seeing a ghost in the farmyard. Have you seen that? Really? It's really good.
Okay. This isn't Digby the giant dog. No, it's not. Or one of our dinosaurs are missing. I was always disappointed every Christmas when one of our dinosaurs misses came on. Again. Oh, this is shit.
believe it or not he also was responsible for one of the most bizarre sequels of all time highlander 2 colon the quickening which oh my let's make them all aliens no way oh the one of the most i was so looking forward to highlander 2 when when like news came out that it was coming ross will tell you this it was like one of the absolute vhs staples that our generation didn't see in the cinema but then we had watched it over and over and over again here we are Yes
Not the best riff ever. Happy Halloween, ladies. Clancy Brown is the best. He's absolutely awesome. So when they go, oh, look, there's going to be a Highlander soon. It's like, oh. Everyone is coming back for it. Whoa! Okay, this is going to be amazing. Oh, I cannot wait. I cannot wait. And I remember going to UCI. Yeah, we went together. Ross and I went together.
and then just kind of you're sat there watching it and you're like what so Christopher Lambert has invented something which has solved the environmental catastrophe the whole ozone layer yeah and And then he's really old, but then they become young again because it turns out that him and Sean Connery are aliens or something. Yeah, that's right. Who were sent to Earth, along with all the other immortals, as some form of punishment.
Oh, God almighty, it's dreadful. It's absolutely awful. It's actually and officially a British-American-French-Argentingian co-production. So if we could argue it's horror, we could possibly produce it. If we're still going, if our listener hasn't become bored and tired of our endless rambling about it, I'm up for it. Because I'm still so angry about it. I think that's the mileage in the tank. I don't think I've ever seen it again since the cinema. You know who's in it, James, don't you? Go on.
JT Dubois, whatever. CJ Dubois, he's working around. Imagine if he was. Anyway, right, okay. So, but then on a slightly sadder note, the script says, according to his son, Samuel, Clemens' last words were, I did quite a good job. Spoken after watching an episode of The Avengers. Oh, love him. And also, his son was called Samuel Clemens. Oh! How strange. If you're listening, Samuel, it's not that weird. Well, that's the real name, isn't it? Mark Swain.
the Mark Twain it then says maybe he's a time traveller never the Twain as in Star Trek the next generation perhaps in Captain Kronos the titular Ross well done Ross for resisting the urge to use the word embodiment. The titular character is played by Horst Jansen, famous in Germany for his role in Salto Mortal. where he portrayed a trapeze artist. Sounds a lot more dramatic than that, doesn't it, that title? Yeah, yeah, yeah. He later became familiar to younger audiences as Horst in Simstrasse.
the German adaptation of Sesame Street from 1980 to 1983. Good. The captain's voice was dubbed in this film due to Janssen's strong German accent, with Julian Holloway taking on the task. Holloway, who featured in eight carry-on films before moving into voiceover work, has recently voiced Prime Minister Olmec and Admiral Killian in Star Wars The Clone Wars. Cool.
He also appeared in Doctor Who's last story of the classic era, Survival, playing Hattison, a Territorial Army member who taught teenagers survival techniques in Paravail. Yeah. In 1976, he had a brief relationship with Tessa Dahl, daughter of Patricia Neal and Roald Dahl, from which produced one daughter. True story.
and former model sophie doll yeah which i had absolutely no idea that was yeah that's well well recently i can't remember what for yeah and she remarkably so you know she's she's very statuesque ladies and you know she's about six foot And she is married to Jazz Goblin. Who's that little pianist? Jamie Cullum. She is married to Jazz Goblin, Jamie Cullum.
There he is, lying on the floor in TV's Survival. I'm not Jamie Cullen. No, no, Julian Holloway. He's good in Survival. I love Survival. Even Hail and Peace. That's very, very interesting about Horst Jansen as well. But I just wondered, how did he get... I couldn't find out why he got... Carson this because if you couldn't speak that never used to hold him back because you know don't ever forget whatever one of my favorite stories of all time is that
Jesus? The story of Jesus, James? That's one of your favourite stories, isn't it? That's why you went into teaching, so you can spread the word of Jesus Christ. Go up, Frobe! That's what I'm trying to think of. Don't forget, of course, that Gert Frobe was cast as Auric Goldfinger in the movie. Goldfinger, and couldn't speak a word of English. No way! Yeah, yeah. And he learnt all of his lines by rote. Oh, phonetically? Yes.
No, Mr Bond, I expect you to die! And so on and so forth. Yeah, so there was that. And in the 1980s as well, up to the first film that I ever saw in the cinema, Flash Gordon. Sam Jones who played the titular flash era They dubbed his voice tonight that's not his voice so I think it was quite a common practice to be fair it was like if your face fits we'll find a way to make it work
But how understand they find him? When we've done the review, I think we should all throw a name into the ring who could or should have been. Captain Kronos. Captain Kronos. Or Kronos. Or Kronos. I've got a name in mind. Okay. Go on then. No, no, no. We'll do it after. I'm going to write mine down on a bit of paper so I don't forget. Yes. I'm just going to remember mine. Yeah, well, I can't do that sort of thing.
Is there more from the script, James? Jesus Christ. Oh, you know there is. It's quarter to ten already. Already, I know, and it's all my fault. I'm sorry. The supporting cast includes John Carson as Dr. Marcus, a physician who enlists Kronos help to investigate strange... deaths in his village carson often noted for his voice that bears a striking resemblance to james mason's hammer regular it was a hammer regular with appearances in taste the blood of dracula
And the plague of the zombies. Yes. He also played Ambrill in Doctor Who's serial Snake Dance. How every paragraph. I've never seen Snake Dance, but that's a true fact. Caroline Monroe appears as Carla, a Romanian, in inverted commas. There's nothing to suggest she's a Romanian at any point. A Romanian girl who becomes Kronos' feisty sidekick.
Known for her glamorous looks, Monroe rose to fame as the Lamb's Navy Rum poster girl. I feel deja vu. I think I maybe told this story before. Yeah, you did. 50 episodes ago, probably. A role that she held for 10 years. She initially caught Hammer's attention through her work on The Abominable Dr. Fibes, where she played Victor Vincent Price's silent deceased wife, and its sequel, Dr. Fibes Rises Again. Check out episode 10 for our review of the first of those two.
classics. That was 40 episodes ago, was it? Yeah. Doesn't it feel like that? Fucking hell. As well as this film, she, of course, appeared in the subject of our very first podcast episode. Yeah. Dracula AD 1972. Outside of Hammer, Munro went on to play the slave girl, Margiana, in The Golden Voyage of Sinbad, the princess at At the Earth's Core, and the deadly Bond girl, Naomi, in The Spy Who Loved Me.
turning down the role of Ursa in Superman to accept it. No way. Wow. Well. Do you reckon she would have cut her hair off? She would have had to, wouldn't she, I suppose, yeah. And Ursa is Superman 2, isn't she? Well, she was in... And the original one, yeah. Is she? At the beginning, they get sent to the Phantom Zone. Oh, yeah. Guilty. Guilty. They get stuck in a piece of cellophane. That's right. This council has no hesitation in proclaiming you.
All guilty. Guilty. Guilty. And if not you, your ass, says Terrence Stamp whilst wearing lipstick. I like her in The Spy Who Loved Me. Gets stuck in an exploding helicopter, though, doesn't she? That's our spoilers.
If you haven't seen The Spy Who Loved Me. Is that the same helicopter out of The Demons, or is that a different one? It's a different one. The helicopter James is stuck in tonight when he missed the start of this episode. Sorry, everyone. Get to the chopper! It was noticed that some...
And then it says this in quotation marks. Ross hasn't provided the source of this quote. But it says, had assigned her so-called trademarks on imdb right so who said this ross well i believe because fingers though i've never noticed before that on imdb there's a section called trademarks which are the things people were known for and
and i was thinking whoever's done this is a right old perv so oh it's you yeah right okay um and apparently it says on imdb that she has large sensual brown eyes delicate high cheekbones voluptuous bombshell figure. A seductive deep voice. Has she? Apparently so. I thought her voice was just quite normal, really. It's probably her agent. Right. I don't know. Or maybe it's her. Apropos of nothing. Ross checks on Big Chris Lee's IMDB trademarks and they include
Deep melodic basso voice. I thought you were going to say deeply misogynistic. Extensive collection of special forces badges. His towering height and slender frame. No, it's insane. Where do these come from? I'm just looking up mine now to see if I've got any. In addition to her acting career, Monroe recorded the single Tar and Cement with musical heavyweights.
Nazi Eric Clapton oh no sorry that's just me saying no that's my opinion not anybody else Eric Clapton and his horrible racist views Cream's Ginger Baker and guitarist Steve Howe. I grew older, I had to roam Far from my family, far from my home Into the city, where life can be spent Lost in the shadows of tar and cement And appeared in music videos for Adamant and Meatloaf. Wow. He also recorded the single Pump Me Up with Gary Neumann, Well I Never.
Sounds bizarre, doesn't it? It's like Sam Fox's pop career in the 1980s. It's like a fever dream, isn't it, in a way? She can now, of course, be seen on Talking Pictures, the TV channel in the United Kingdom, introducing classic horror films
in the cellar club. And in the centre of the other night when I walked past and gave her a nod and she smiled at me. Hooray! Nice squeeze! Weirdly enough, I was going to say, Ross, when you were at the Hammer documentary, did you try and chat her up? No, I didn't. I just had a laugh. yeah hello crying so we're almost there right the film score was composed by laurie johnson who from 1960s to the 1980s composed over 50 themes and scores including the theme used for this is your life wow
I can't remember. So it's got the name of the song. That song is actually called Gala Performance. Gala Performance. Amazing. The Avengers, once again, British TV Avengers, from 1965. Animal Magic, Johnny Morris' Animal Magic, which apparently is entitled Las Vegas. Jason King, the new Avengers and the Professionals.
Though Captain Kronos was shot in 1972, it was delayed and eventually released in 1974. The film was intended to kick off a series featuring Kronos and his companions, but no sequels were ever made. Although there have been a number of follow-up... comics in comic book. Oh, no way. I think it's ripe for a big finish type series. Well, we'll leave this for after, shall we? Yeah, yeah. Okay.
was very enthusiastic about this. Were you jumping around your living room, swashbuckling? Yeah. Yeah. Stood on the table. Hell said, get down from there! Swung on the lampshade. So it starts like a Hammer film. But I don't think it progresses like a Hammer film at all, does it? I think he succeeds, and maybe that's why it was delayed. I've never seen a film quite like this. I feel like it's heavily inspired by Kung Fu films.
Yes, but I think that it's got much more knowing charm, ability, script content. Compared to the utter bullshit that is that stupid Seven Golden Samurai thing or whatever the hell it was called.
This is a really watchable film, and it starts with a kind of prologue where you meet John Carlson's character, the Doctor, walking through a park, and he comes across... a girl that he knows that's seen another girl going a bit weird yeah well there's two ghosts two ghosts were talking and yes and then one of them thinks her friends come up behind her turns around screams
And then she gets hypnotized. Hypnotized, yeah. Hypnotism is a big part of it, isn't it? And then the doctor comes over, touches her shoulder, she turns around, and it's like an old woman. An old woman. Which straight away I think is quite a nice twist to what we're probably expecting from a Hammer film, which is a bare neck with two holes in and some badly applied Kensington gore, as it's known. A Benny Hill punchline, because often there'd be like a sexy woman that'd turn around.
be like that old man well with a wig on yes spitting his false teeth out yeah um so it starts quite promisingly and then it goes into some swashbuckling music And a kind of very long title sequence where you... Yeah, which I loved. I just wanted to say that the reveal of the whole dun-dun-dun... Oh, my God. As you said, not... drained of blood from the neck, but suddenly very old
and kind of crony and, you know, very prune-like. And I put down, yikes, you didn't look like that last night in the nightclub. And this is the recurring theme of the film, that there are several women who perhaps...
Whilst you are refreshed in a darkened space, you might think, this is a very attractive woman. Whilst in the cold light of day, and I'm not talking from personal experience, of course, I would never be talking from personal experience here, that you may then find the next morning that you...
Turn your pillow and you're suddenly confronted with... um ethel from extend i would say to save your bluster shames it's more like the end of a disco when they knock the house lights on okay yes and you've been slow dancing with someone then you look at them and you're like oh jesus so she's covering in gravy
Exactly. I just feel sorry for those old ladies because they're like, okay, we want you... we want you to come up for a part is the part is someone who's really ugly and disgusting and old oh great thanks some of it is done with makeup and some of it is older people isn't it yes um so that's quite interesting why did their hair age
Well, it did sometimes. It did sometimes, yes. It's haphazard, Ross. It is quite haphazard. So then we've got the intro, and I noticed with Joy on the intro, Ian Hendry. who is one of my favourite lost, great lost British actors. I'd forgotten he was in this. He's in it as a cameo. And so I was very excited to see. He was someone that was very bitter in life.
And basically he's in Get Carter. He's in a load of other stuff. He was in the first series of the Avengers. So I presume he's come in here.
on the insistence of Brian Clemens. He's really good in this film, but also in some ways he steals the film in some ways. Is he the baddie in the pub? He's the baddie in the pub, yeah. But in real life, he was a big... big drinker and it's a really interesting story of like wrong career choices how bitter he was towards Michael Caine on the set of Get Carter and stuff like that so he's very interesting
So I've said at this point, so far, so hammer. Very romantic music. It's quite swashbuckling. Very long title sequence. Then you meet our heroes, who is this kind of weirdly dubbed handsome German guy.
and hunchback and at this point i thought point i thought it feels like multi python yeah it's really weird the bit where she's in the stocks and stuff i thought yes she's gonna look up and it'll be terry jones going ah hello give us a kiss i i was just really weird i also noticed that they established very quickly that he's he's got his own uh logo
and I put that is very very important for a hero you need to establish a strong logo by the time this episode comes out there will be a Captain Kronos t-shirt on our website I thought is he some kind of superhero or
is he it's quite mad isn't it i think it's ahead of its time you know yes you're trying to get a little bit of brandon in there and yeah yeah yeah and there's that vibe isn't it because we see later on that he's got a samurai sword yeah yes until he gets his second sword and there's never an explanation as to how he's suddenly got a samurai has he beheaded some kind of japanese
What are the hopping vampires? Yes. Which I think there's so much in this film to kind of unpick or unpack, whatever the phrase is. So Caroline Munro was in some stocks. You never know why. What do you do? She danced on the Sabbath. Oh, she danced on the Sabbath. You said, why are you in the stocks? And she says, I danced on a Sunday. And I put, dancing on a Sunday? Burning's too good for her. How dare you? On the Sabbath. On the Lord's Day.
He frees her. She just happens to be incredibly attractive. But she has to run after the coach as it drives off. Yes. And I put down the Captain Kronos grooming scandal. That's pretty much what he does. He grooms her. He says, come on. Come and get in my... flash car then we have a sequence of more killings but where one of the girls is wearing a crucifix so I have highlighted that and said
the crucifix here isn't working, which isn't the case in 99% of hammer films. And I think what is fun about this film is that it pays no heed to. a universe or a kind of it just sets its own kind of standard doesn't it i think in this one it's quite it's interesting because they said there's lots of different types of vampires
Yes. And they kind of established that they need to work out what will work on this particular vampire. Yeah, which is cool. Yeah. Again, which is really interesting because there's no mention of Dracula. There's no mention of any of that kind of... Stuff that sometimes feels a bit like, oh, here we go again. I wondered if, you two, I'm sure you probably are familiar with, what we do in the shadows. Yes. First of all, the film, and then lastly, the TV show. Okay, in the TV show.
They go down the hole. There's lots of different vampires routes. There's the energy vampire. There's Colin Robinson, the energy vampire. And I always thought, oh, they probably just made that up for the TV series. And then I thought, oh, I wondered if...
Captain Kronos, is this the first time in vampire lore? Do you think that this notion of there's different sorts of vampires? Because if so, you've got to say... credit g no i think i think there's always i think it's really good to acknowledge that because um because we've kind of sort of like gone through like the dragon vampire and just took that forwards but yes all through
all different countries and different um folklore and stuff they have they have all these different things on there and i think it's great and i think if they were setting this up to be a franchise that's a really good thing to say okay well you know what type of vampire we got this time and then you've got that whole thing okay well we need to identify what type of vampire it is how are we going to kill it and then all that kind of stuff it just shakes it up a little bit doesn't it
Also, in what we do in the shadows, they lean very heavily on the whole, I'm going to hypnotise you and you will forget what you've just seen. There's plenty of that and there's plenty of that in this film. I think he's quite an iconoclastic. writer here. It looks like he's been given like a blank sheet of paper to do whatever he wants to do with the folklore, which I think is really cool.
watched it thinking why didn't they make more of these because it's it's an awful lot better than some of the later hammer films that i think probably people were like well this is not because it wasn't the same as i think what they were expecting yeah and i think it's such a miss a mix of lots of different things like you said it's a it's a bit western it's a it's a mystery it's a mystery it's a kung fu film it's a you know and it's so i don't think
They probably found it quite hard to sort of market it in those days because it's so different. Which is such a shame because it's quite superior to a lot of stuff. It's far superior to like Twins of Evil and films like that that are like... Well, one of the reviews I read, they said it was like a kid's film. And I think they took some of the nudity out of it. Yeah. I think it might have gone down well with a kid's audience. It's not a very horrific film. No. There's not...
Not many scenes of horror in it. And in that way, I found it more like, I've written somewhere, it's more like German expressionist cinema. And it's more like the universal horrors than a Hammer film. Because there's hardly any gore. No, that's great. You see a few dead bodies. It's much more about kind of iconography and imagery rather than just like blood and gore and stakes through the heart. I mean, there's a bit where later on we'll find out.
You know, there's a stake through the heart that doesn't work. And I can't remember quite why it didn't work, but I thought that was like, this is great because it's like someone saying, oh, you don't have to have this kind of rule book of... garlic and uh you know can't cross running water and silver bullets and all that kind of stuff so they turn up so the doctor has called them in because apparently they are professional vampire hunters and then they start talking about vampires and
And the doctor starts dismissing it and saying it's a load of rubbish. And you feel like, well, why did you bloody hire them in the first place? But also, they... But he kind of believes in vampires, but he does not believe in... being mesmerized which i was like what like it's just like yeah that was a bit silly but they do say one of them one of the most um outrageous things you can believe in is god and and yes and you believe in that don't they say
Again, it's obviously written by quite a literate and imaginative writer rather than some of the stuff. The Hammer stuff regurgitates itself quite often, doesn't it? We're coming back to the grooming, James. There is a point where they go, we'll go to bed now, but there's only two...
There's only two blankets. Yeah, which I thought was quite funny. Yeah, just sort yourself out. Does she go to sleep with the horses? Is that what's implied at that point? I felt that that was the case. Yeah. I've also put, as we're introduced properly to Captain chronos i've put that he looks very former formula one racing driver james hunt slash he smells of brutes the aftershave slash he's a shagger he's got very strong shagger energy hasn't he felt
to be late brit pop um with the with the whole sort of a military garb and stuff yeah um yeah the libertines etc yeah yes i thought he looked really cool and i thought he was quite a good hero I just think that he was a bit of a void at the centre of the film. Yes. That needed a much more kind of magnetic actor. Charismatic presence. For me, this feels very, very European cinema. From the same era, people like Mario Barfa and the Giallo Italian films. He was very much... Mario Brava, sorry.
Very much like Teddy Savalas in Horror Express. Yes! Same outfit. Same vibe. Smoking the same cheroot. What, he's smoking a spliff? Yeah, yeah. He disguised it as a... Chinese herbs. Yes. Yeah, which I thought, again, was brilliant. I thought, wouldn't it be amazing that he's smoking a spliff? And then he basically says, I'm smoking a spliff. And I was like, this film is wild. And it gets that kind of counterculture feel.
so much better than Dracula AD 1972, which is the same year, which is like where the script is like, hey, groovy baby. And it's all like, it's so badly. Whereas this is quite knowing and a bit nudge, nudge, wink, wink kind of thing. So then there's a really interesting scene where one of these kind of, you never get to know about the village or who the people are or anything. And to be honest, you don't really need to know because.
The way the film is set up, it's very much like tongue in cheek. And these are just the villagers that are there to be terrorized. Yeah. So a woman goes into a church. You see this kind of panning shot. where there's a shadow of a crucifix, you see the crucifix, or the implied crucifix that's making the shadow, then the shadow moves and becomes this kind of human figure.
And then she screams, and then that's the end of that. And I was like, that's absolutely brilliant. It's very expressionist cinema. It's really well done. And it's not like anything in any other Hammer film, really, I don't think. I kind of agree. However... They would notice the vampires stand in their, like, whistle-gummage. Well, they would, but that's not the point. I think in the world of cinema...
you have scenes like that where, you know, you suspend your disbelief and you go, well, you'd see the guy stood there dressed as a crucifix. And I quite like the game, like you said, you don't see much blood, but you do see... things like the um the chalice fall over with the wine in yes sort of like give that impression yeah yeah and i feel like maybe they were trying to get trying not trying not to get an x-rays in on this one
Because they're hardly showing any blood in it at all. And the nudity in it, they taped Cameron Monroe's hair over her boobs and stuff so you can actually see anything. Yes.
yeah it's it's heavily influenced by silent cinema i would say and i think that a lot of those aspects pre the haze code where you know people were nude in films and stuff this is harking back to eras like that which i find really interesting you see several times throughout the film this graveyard which is all these kind of different crosses on this kind of hillside and there's that nice um uh framing where you're seeing through like the a gap in like a
a tomb or mausoleum and stuff like that. And it works really well, but it's not like any other Hammer film before. It's really well done. And this was his only directed film. And I thought, fair play to him. Like, he's done better than a lot of Hammer directors. You know, films like Scars of Dracula that, was it Roy Wardbaker or someone like that did? A seasoned pro.
Which looks like absolute shit compared to this film. I've got to be honest. I would say, though, it's my common complaint. I don't know when it's night or day. because apart from people saying it's night, that's the only way they could get round up. The day for night shooting in this is terrible and I couldn't see what was happening. So yeah, then we get this disclaimer that we're professional vampire hunters.
And then we get this weird bit of backstory where they're in the carriage and you see the mother. Yes. But she's very, very old. And it's done really well. We haven't said who we're talking about. Oh, yeah. Sorry, James. Yes, of course. Yes. These are our other characters. There is a son and a daughter.
of a dead kind of swordsman and military captain called Hagen. And what I put is that they've erected a statue in his honour, but what I've said is that his hair, it basically looks like he was a mod. Yeah. He looks like he should have been on a Vespa. Yeah, and they've all got early 70s hyper-plugged eyebrows as well on the women. Yes, they do. And we discovered the general. Yeah, it is the general, isn't it? Something like that.
So he sees the son of this now deceased, inverted commas, spoilers, general at the general's graveside, in which we then get the bit of backstory. But he passed away due to an illness. The plague, wasn't it? The plague, yes. And he was like, oh, how is your mum these days? How is your mother these days? And is that her in the back of the carriage? I think that's a really good scene because it's story exposition, which is done in a way which isn't just troweled on.
kind of like oh this happened and then this happened and this happened it's done really well in a kind of organic way Well, they do also mention that this guy, people couldn't even see his blade because he was such a good fencer. Yes, he was so fast with his blade. And I think that's done really well. And then we go down to the carriage and basically the doctor isn't allowed to talk to...
The mum. The mum. She's in there. She's aged. She's terribly aged. And that's to do with grief, we're told, by Shane Bryant. So this is Shane Bryant, who we previously saw.
in um frankenstein and the monster from hell oh yes but this is actually shot before frankenstein and the monster from hell so he did quite a few hammers late hammers i think he's a good actor i don't know why he didn't go on to bigger things did we find out that he ended up in a stream or something yeah somewhere like that yeah um yeah so far it's all opened up in a really interesting organic way
And it's quite un-Hammer. I've noticed that in comparison to a lot of the Hammer stuff that we've watched, this is very bucolic. There's a lot of outdoor stuff. A lot of outdoor shooting. In comparison to it. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
real set would is like being the home of the the general yes yeah yes as in a studio set yeah some of the other sets looked kind of like dressed outdoor buildings and stuff spaces yeah it's quite weird so this is when the monster squad are doing all their different things to try and find a vampire so they're burying frogs under the ground i couldn't work out why oh there's a they tell you why they tell you why
They're toads, they're not frogs. Okay. And then they basically say that they've buried dead frogs. Right. According to legend, toads. According to legend, if a vampire passes them, the toad will come back to life. And then you see later on that they dig up a box and the last box they've dug up.
the toad has come back to life because they're trying to work out which direction the vampires come from yes the toad is ribbiting or whatever toads are meant and we have seen like this cloaked figure walking around the woods and it's like it's killing flowers and toast and stuff as well yeah yeah yeah They're also picking up really bright red ribbons with massive bells on and hoping that the vampires... I don't think we're at that bit yet, Cleve. The next bit you see is the village perv.
in the trees forces himself on a girl in a really kind of um really uncomfortable way to watch now in the and i nearly said in the 1990s then in the 2024s and you're just like oh Like, this is horrible. He watches her leave then. And in the time that she kind of walks into the distance.
She's already been attacked by the vampire. And that's when I think they do the thing with the bells and stuff. Yeah. The bells are ringing all around the forest, so they're all trying to work out which way the vampire's gone. And the doctor who's hired Captain Kronos goes through a bush, and then time sees the stance.
steel a river stops going um is there lightning i think there's thunder yes there is lightning and then he comes through it's taken from another hammer film the light yes and he's got one drop of blood on his glove which yes yeah And he's obviously been vampirised, but I don't think he realises it at this point, does he? Well, nor did I, because it wasn't obvious to me. No, no, no, I found out, I was like, what's just happened here? Oh, I thought straight away, well, he's been got now.
But in the meantime, what I thought was interesting about that bit is that you have horror in daylight, which people always say that Halloween is the first time you have horror in daylight. But I thought this was... You know, there's horror in daylight in this quite a lot, isn't there? Yeah, but maybe it's meant to be nighttime and they just forgot to put the filter over the lens. No, I think... I've also put that the poor girl who's the victim here...
Right. Under our ongoing, you didn't look like this in the club last night. This time, she looks a bit like Keith Richards. Weirdly enough, she looks a bit like Keith Richards now. I thought maybe there's something in this. I've got to go and hang out with Johnny Depp. I think it's worse than Depp. Yeah.
With millions of books on Amazon, there's a reading feeling for everyone. For example, Raquel's Whoa! when she first entered the kingdom by Dragonback. It's different to Ari's Whoa! when he found out there was more than one crime scene. Which is also different to Ava's. Whoa. The moment when the stable boy became a stable man. From whoa. To whoa. To whoa. Amazon Books. That reading feeling awaits. Cross, the new series only on Prime Video. You're going to be part of a masterpiece.
Evil knows his name. Detective Alex Cross. Where he lives. It was in my house. His darkest secret. And when I'm done the world will know the truth. Based on characters created by James Patterson. I'm not a monster. I don't kill for fun. This message comes from BetterHelp.
Can you think of a time when you didn't feel like you could be yourself? Like you were hiding behind a mask? BetterHelp Online Therapy is convenient, flexible and can help you learn to be your authentic self. So you can stop hiding. Because masks should be for Halloween fun, not for your emotions. Take off the mask with BetterHelp. Visit BetterHelp.com today to get 10% off your first month. That's BetterHelp.com.
Four quid, four lunch. For new cheeky little pizzas from Domino's. For hot and cheesy wraps. For you. For finning finance. For sit on security. For lunching at the laptop. Lunch for just four quid at Domino's. High fours all round. Order ahead on our app. Domino! Four pound per item. Collection and delivery. Minimum delivery spends. Charges and areas may apply.
And then you have this weird kind of almost like a middle eight to the film where you go and you have this really weird time out of mind bit in the pub. which is just like a western, but without guns. It's with swords. It's very weird. I love it. I loved it because it's like, this is insane. They've got a woman there who's blindfolded, just sat.
It's like a pop video. You're like, what the hell is going on? That was, for me, I put, that's the most interesting imagery of the whole film. And I thought she was supposed to be blind, not blindfolded. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
so there is a and i put down the blind woman in the pub and i said she looks very folk horror yeah and i kept expecting them to come back to her and it was going to be like a big reveal and then they never do which as you said gives it a real music video the wagon the carriage carrying um the vampire has gone gone through here and the carriage driver has paid these um free ruffians who have been terrorizing some guy in the bar to say yes basically if anyone comes looking for a carriage
Kill him. And he does so by, I said, we don't get enough of this anymore in the modern era, sliding things down a bar. Yes! Which, again, was very Western. It's very, very Western. And I think it's incredible that it works so well. For me, the whole sequence smells of we can get Ian Hendry in for a day. I'll write something. I'll write a scene that he can be in.
Yeah. It's not going to be in the main narrative of the film because it doesn't work, but we'll just get him in and it'll be great. Well, yeah, it's really good. And Ian Hendry is brilliant, but Ian Hendry is always one of those people who you think. He should have been Bond or he should have been a much bigger star than he was, but he never, he never made it. And his life story is quite fascinating that he had a lot of tragedy in his wife, in his wife, literally in his wife because she died.
He became an alcoholic. He died at like 50 odd in 1984. And I read a thing about him recently because he's in, he's in Get Carter and he's the guy at the end of Get Carter that Carter killed, I think. I'm sure he is. And it's just like, but he was really bitter at that point because of someone like Michael Caine had become this megastar. And then the year after he's, you know, doing a cameo in a Hammer film.
probably for like you know 500 quid or something in those days i just find that really interesting that's where i recognized him from yeah yes he it's great hair i love the way they cropped his hair I would like to go for that. He steals the film, I think, because he's so cool. And you're like, wow, this is mad. They've managed to shoehorn a bit like one of my favourite films, Moonraker.
where they shoehorn all these insane bits into the film. You're like, this isn't going to work. Why is this going to work? And then it works with this film. There's the bit in Moonraker where...
Like Western music is playing while Roger Moore turns up on a horse for no reason and then goes to see Q and I'm sure Q is like... perfecting a laser that melts someone's head or something it's like this bears no relation to the you know the actual narrative of the film but this you know this part is is the same isn't it it's got nothing to do with the film it's just like
No, but it's just as big up Captain Kronos' swordsmanship, isn't it? Basically, yes. So essentially, the bullies start picking on the Professor for being a hunchback. Captain Kronos calls him... Did you write down the three insults he caused them, James? I did. I did. Go on, John. Rat face. Rat face. Fatty. And big mouth. For me, I always prefer fatso over fatty. And if I see another driver, because I'm quite fat. If I have road rage and I see a driver, fat driver.
has cut me up or something, I will shout fatso at them. Because I think fatso is a great fatso. What does that mean? Fatso. Or fatso. And I think I'm alright to say it because I am fat myself, so fuck it. yeah and in bearing in mind you know as and as someone that deals with teenage boys on a regular basis i even i i will say
These are slight, very, very slight insights. Rat face. You hear a lot worse than this in the queue to break amongst the year eights, is what I would say. I've had to intervene on a lot worse than this. But those, yes. as I was going to say Captain Kronos moves so fast you don't even see him move and it's done really well proto Obi-Wan Kenobi in the original Star Wars the vibes that it gave me is the whole
I don't like my friend here doesn't like you. Yes. I'm sorry. I don't like you either. I'm sorry. You'll be dead. And then.
And then Obi-Wan Yeah, you got it puts them down in a second I thought it's very similar to that and the guys you know the one that they don't even realize they're dead vibe yeah yeah the samurai sword is out and it's so sharp yeah he's killed them all with a single swash of the buckle yeah and all that so but in star wars of course james now we're meant to say why why doesn't everyone in that place go
oh my god he's a jedi and all the aren't all the jedi meant to be dead and he's got a lightsaber yeah but everyone seems to forget within one generation that the jedi even existed even though they've been around for thousands of years yes that's right Maybe he's the Empire's misinformation campaign. Maybe he's kind of like, these aren't the droids you're looking for. Maybe he's kind of done it over the whole cantina.
Don't let us even ever open the Box Mark Star Wars podcast. Because if you ask for any excuse, I'm going straight in there. But I've always just gone for the fact that never will you find a more wretched hive of scum and villainy. You just keep your head down. It's not your business. You know, Han Solo kills someone. Han Solo just straight up kills someone. So where are we with this now? Ian Hendry's come in. It's a blindfold woman. Yep.
And then we meet the sister of the family, don't we? The vampire family. Yes, who shockingly dresses like a man. Well, yeah, that's what I thought. There's a bit of a weird androgyny going on here because they all talk about how beautiful she is. I don't think she's particularly beautiful. And she's got a very weird wig on to make her hair short. So she's just quite boyish and elfin in that kind of early 70s way. Is that Lulu?
yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah and do you reckon they were trying to give you because it's meant to be a mystery who the vampire is and you're pretty much sure why it's the woman you saw on the couch yes do they think they're trying to sort of wrong for you to say it might be her
I think they do a very good job at implying that the brother and sister are in some way vampires that are capturing... young women for the mother right okay which obviously at the end is a twist that they are not at all to give away they don't even know what They've no idea what's going on, which I think is really interesting because there's a bit where they're talking about how they won't age and they're saying that the daughter is saying, or his sister is saying,
You know, I don't want to look old. I don't want to look like a crone and all this stuff. And I think that's really well done. When then we see the mother in bed, I had a terrifying memory. from the early 90s where the image of the mother in the bed was in one of my horror cinema books that I had that was probably a 70s book that I bought from a car boot sale. And I used to be so scared.
and freaked out by the image of the old woman in bed, I used to have to avoid that page looking at it. Because it's like, you know, it's that classic thing. It's a weird image. She looks horrifying. She looks a bit like the guy that used to be... Beauty and the Beast with Linda Hamilton, if you remember that TV version. Is that who it is? Yeah. No way. In the makeup. Yeah.
I never knew that. So she looks a bit like the Beast in Beauty and the Beast with Linda Hamilton. A horrifying image, and I used to not be able to look at that page. And it's a bit like, you know, the Usborne book of ghosts or whatever. People of our age had those books at that age because, you know, they'd be 10p in a jumble sale and we'd be like, oh, cool. I think everyone that's kind of our age and certainly, you know, like Rees Shearsmith has said.
Everyone had those books, didn't they? And mine was the Dennis Gifford and then someone Frank, Frank someone. So it was two. So one was really about the universal horror films and really slagged off the hammer ones.
And then the other one, I think that was the Dennis Gifford one. And then the other one I had was more hammer. And that image of that, of wand of Anthem in that makeup was in there, which used to really give me the willies when I was a kid. So we find out later on, that's a mask she's wearing.
Is it a mask? Yes, because when Kronos comes through the roof, he puts the mask on himself. But I thought... Do you find that she shed her skin or something? I thought she'd shed her skin, because later on, as she dies, you see all that kind of... disintegrate don't you right okay it's very weird it's very weird but it's quite it's quite hard to really make out
what the fuck it is, but it's enjoyable. Especially on those awful print movies watching on Amazon Prime. And speaking of which, because we're barrelling towards the end now, but we have, and just to fill in the gaps, we do have this sequence where we discover, as John said earlier, The general has been turned into a vampire. Yes. And then they go through this kind of scientific process. The doctor. Sorry. The doctor has been turned into a vampire.
he's like kill me and they then go through this process of trying to figure out what sort of vampire is he because as John's mentioned earlier this is my favourite one of my favourite parts in the film talk us through it Oh, I can't remember. They... It's my favourite business. No, no, no. No idea what happened. One star. No, one of the...
First of all, do they try staking him? They try and stake him, and then they pull it out, and he doesn't bleed, and he's just got a hole there, which is quite well done. Then they try and hang him, but he comes back to life. And then they're trying to burn him, but...
they realise at that one point that Captain Kronos has whacked him in the chest. With his big iron crucifix. Yeah, so his crucifix has pierced his skin, and that's how he's died. So they're like, oh, right, so this is how we kill this particular... strange genus a vampire yeah so they need a new sword yeah so they go to the church and they get a big iron crucifix and they melt it down to make him a new sword and they make like a crucifix sword
But while he's doing it, there's a very weird process of his hunchback professors making it for him. He's... topless with a bag over his head yes hyperventilating yeah while caroline munro is on the floor asleep and i i genuinely didn't know what was happening at that point either apparently this is something which when knights would have to go through some kind of vigil before they go into battle and they
they would do sort of things where they would have to prostate themselves or pray and stuff like that so apparently that's what that is but if you've got no context it just looks like some kind of weird like fetish thing doesn't it it was very odd but still I just because I was enjoying the film I just went with it really and then when he's finished
There's one of the many things where Captain Cross moves so fast, so Caroline Monroe's sleeping against him, and then he moves so fast that she just falls to the ground and stuff. Which is very funny. Kind of a place he's got superpowers, doesn't it? Powers. In some ways, yeah. I think it's a kind of, what do you call it, like magical realism. I think this film has got a lot more magical realism than a lot of the Hammer stuff. So now he's got three swords, has it? Now he's got three swords, yes.
I feel we should also point out that one of the things that we've just skirted over in our normal haphazard way is that we do also learn that the reason why Captain Kronos is doing all of this... Is that his wife and his daughter were turned into vampires? I think his mother and his sister. Oh, it's his mother and his sister. Yeah. Yes. And he had to kill them. He had to dispatch them, didn't he? He had to kill them as well, yes. Yes.
And we've missed out a few bits here where I've said Big Bell, question mark, bloody eggs, and John Carson punched in the face. So you do have a few bits where... He's out that he's turned into a vampire and he clocks in one.
What I will say, there's slightly too many vampire interludes where families are threatened by... Too many sexy ladies are killed, aren't they? Yeah, well, they're not even very sexy, are they, let's face it. And there's a bit where, like, a lame man and his... sister are kind of threatened in their house and stuff yeah um i say lame in the old-fashioned way like um
he's got a crutch and you know it's like that kind of classic peasants yes oh yeah oh oh we've also missed the bit as well when the persons of the village decide yes like captain kronos needs to be killed yeah yeah Because they think that... Because when they end up killing the Doctor, they think that they don't realise he's a vampire. Yes. And obviously these...
Travelling folk have turned up and just killed the town doctor. I can't remember. They turn on him and then he fights them all and basically just sees them off very, very easily. Yes. Barely breaks the sweat. And it's quite humorously done. I don't think he kills any of them. He just kind of makes them look stupid. Well, there's also a cool bit where he's having crosses drawn on his body before he goes in. I thought that bit was great. Yes. It just makes...
It's like a film where there's like a training montage when you know it's going to be a big battle because they get them ready. They have to make a special... It's like Rocky IV, basically. Yeah. And they put like a silver mirror onto the sword as well. Yes. Which is cool. And it's like, you know, it's like the A-team building a battle
battle wagon it's like it's like it's like um rocky get training for the big fight and stuff it's great it's building up tooling up sequence exactly and it's making up the big the final confrontation a big deal rather than just like van house and just walking into a room Exactly. And pulling a curtain down. Yes. That bit's also very good. So you kind of go through a sequence now where because of dead and living frogs and stuff, they've worked out.
who the baddies are. The only other characters in the film, so it's quite obvious. Yes, they use Caroline Munro as bait. She goes up to the door. It was a different time. Yeah, they carry her in. And then they put her to kind of sleep by the fire. And you're thinking, oh, the brother and sister now, they're the vampires. They're going to come back and get her while Captain Kronos is climbing up the drain pipe to get into the bedroom and stuff.
But then the reveal is that what we may or may not have suspected all along is that the mother is the vampire. But then for me, what is the really good twist is that they aren't vampires. which I thought was really good. And I genuinely, I was quite surprised by that because I've seen so many of these films in my life. I could probably plot one in my head in 10 minutes, but also the husband.
is coming back from the dead to have a sword fight with Captain Kronos, which is brilliant. He's not dead. The mod is back. And his face is all scarred and pockmarked with buboes. And what I... John and the Bubo. I love the Bubo. Are they like the monkeys who are like... there is more bands yeah unfortunately no they're pustules that would open on your lymph nodes and in your groin yeah incredibly painful and then they would burst
with pus. When I was a kid, I was absolutely obsessed with the plague. 1665 1666 so it was the plague into the great fire of London I used to get this thing I think was called Discovery which was a history magazine and a folder of things you can cut out yes yeah yeah yeah so I think one One was about Elizabeth I, and then one was the plague and the Great Fire of London, and blah, blah, blah. But I was, and still, in some ways, I am still obsessed with the plague, particularly that.
plague not the plague of justinian or um the black death so much i do quite like the black death that's quite an interesting play but the plague you My favorite plague is just the thought of, and it was probably on a TV show as well, like a TV show for schools. That, you know, it would just be like everyone left London. Lamb's blood cross on the door. Carts going up the road. Bring out your dead. Bring out your dead.
All this stuff, I thought, this sounds amazing. So where would COVID come in your top five? Very low down. Very low down. How about the play from the Satanic Rites of Dracula? That's quite a good plague. You know, that's a genetic mutation of the bubonic plague, isn't it? So that's a proper plague. And I'm going to say something controversial.
the seven plagues of Egypt. Oh, here we go. Here we go. Well, what are they though, James? Locusts. Go back to our episode on, um, what's his name? Phibes. Yeah. Yeah. They're in that, aren't they? All I can remember is locusts. I don't know what the rest are. Is there blood? Something to do with blood? Yeah, it rains blood, doesn't it? Yeah. Very bad. So they have a sword fight.
which is actually very well he freezes the mum in place through using the aforementioned you know sword mirror vampire hypnotism yes boom quite a good shot Yes. Her eyes reflected back on herself. And I've just put exclamation mark. She's hypnotized herself. Yeah. Yeah. It's kind of medusory, isn't it? In terms of. But also the two kids have been hypnotized. So while they're doing the sword fight.
pretty um uh full-on violent violent um yeah the sword fighting they're having to stand still with all these plays going around them it's very good it's very douglas fairbanks jr kind of swashbuckling yeah they they leap up onto the banquet table don't they and things
like that. And I think it's, again, it's very iconoclastic for Hammer because it's... It did look like Crickly Bottom a bit that set though, didn't it? It always comes back to Nolan. At one point they open a door, John Pertwee comes in, and then... And Boise. DLT turns up with a marching band. And then Bob Monkhouse comes in and makes Noel Edmund sing, You Don't Bring Me Flowers. So yeah, so basically then he...
stabs the man, the baddie man with his... He kind of falls on the sword, doesn't he? Yeah, and he's not very well, and he dies, and then he kind of, he moulders, and then... Wanda Vantham's upset because her husband's dead, who's just come back to life. Wanda Vantham, who, of course, is Benedict Cumberbatch's mother in real life. Oh, is it? Yeah, yeah, yeah. You didn't know that, did you? No, not. And then...
She gets done in, and that's about it, isn't it? But then, weirdly, there's a bit of a coder at the end where Caroline Munro doesn't go off with them for adventure. What's the point of that? He can't even be bothered to get off his horse to say goodbye to her. No! What a knob! I just thought it would be a good ending if the three of them went off to... to new adventures, you know, elsewhere. But different women, Karen Monroe, and he had her two...
pitch a deal with Hammer so that they can go on to another girl. So she shot this and Dracula AD 1972 same year, was it? Yeah, but also she was the only woman ever to get a contract with Hammer as well. No way. And she potentially wasn't dubbed. No. Because so many women were dubbed in Hammer films. It's insane. And bizarre, just kind of weird practice of dubbing women's voices, which was so odd at the time.
Okay, so what... Insane now, but even odd even then. So what name did you get down for who would you have playing from Captain Kronos? Mine would have been Timothy Dalton. Ooh, very well. Mine play alongside Timothy Dalton in a film once. Peter Duncan. Okay. Interesting choice, please. Not in the green and white checked suit. Oh God, that bloody suit. Who did you think, James? Charles Hortry. I just think, I was just wondering, like, why... Dalton would be good.
Why it wouldn't have been released at the time. And maybe they thought this guy isn't a big name. There's none of the hammer stars in it. John Carlson is a hammer star, but he's not a hammer star. You know, he's not Cushion or Lee or Andre Morel or someone like that.
I don't know if Ross is going to talk about this in a second, but on that Hammer documentary that has recently come out and was on Sky, they spent a good few minutes talking about Captain Kronos, and the suggestion from one of the interviewees is like... this would if they would have marketed this right this could have saved hammer i think this was a different way of doing things as we've discussed yeah you know during this said in many ways not
an x-rated horror a different way you know like a it's like a mystery a murder mystery it's yeah kind of almost spaghetti western-esque um but they said they just they just buried it they were just all over the shop though weren't they and it was released a year later after it sat on a shelf
as part of a dual feature, I think. Was it the Gorgon? I'm not sure. It's a real shame because I don't know if it could have saved Hammer, but I think it's certainly a lot better than the other stuff they tried, like Scars of Dracula, Horror of Frankenstein.
that are absolute shit that are just like like carry on hammer um this really does bring a load of fresh stuff to it you know it's not like rosemary's baby or stuff that the americans were doing at this point But it is something different to what Hammer became increasingly, which was bringing Christopher Lee and Peter Cushing in for their 10th film.
And you think how many films they made in like a 15 year period. There's no wonder that people stopped going to see them because they 60 years later, they're very kind of nostalgic. But, you know, imagine going to see one of these a week in the 50s and 60s. They're just. It's so repetitive, isn't it? And you just think they needed to bring some fresh stuff to the table. They did it with this film and they obviously buried it because they couldn't get their head around it.
Which is a real shame, you know, and I do, I love Satanic Rites of Dracula and I love Dracula AD 1972, but I just think that some of the other stuff they were doing at the time just didn't, just didn't move with the times at all. Yeah, but if you think of what... Texas Chainsaw Massacre came out the same year. Oh, wow. You know, it's completely... Well, it came out the same year that this came out rather than was shot.
But if you think this is what people were starting to see as horror movies, you know, Phase 4 came out then, you know. You had stuff like Straw Dogs as well and things like that. I think Straw Dogs is 71 maybe. So that's a very, very, very nihilistic. You could say that's a horror film, really, set in Cornwall. You know, that's really quite a horrible film, a very nihilistic film. Whereas this is, you know, quite jolly and entertaining.
And I think it's a real shame that it was just kind of lost. And I've never watched it. And I've watched so many Hammer films. And I've never even thought, oh, I'll give that a try because of how it's been kind of viewed. But now I'm like...
God, this is like one of their best later films, really. I think at that point, they were just so struggling with money. They were saying that they were just waiting for this guy from America to turn up with bags of money to make the next film and he would never turn up and stuff. One of the interesting things that came up, they were in talks with Stan Lee.
to start always further than talk yeah yeah yeah wait there's letters saying yeah let's do this yeah so they were gonna be doing like spider-man iron man all that kind of stuff and then but they didn't have the money to do it and stuff so imagine what it would have looked like i mean
It's just, it's a classic British story. It's like British Leyland. It's like everything. The British invented something. Then they never, they didn't want to put the money in to develop it or kind of make it into something good that had longevity. So eventually it just fell to pieces. You know, 1968, they had like the Queen's Award for industry because they'd made so much money, but they didn't seem to invest it in anything. So you're still making films that just look like they cost...
50 quid like this film looks like it costs nothing at all to make and it's a lot of fun but when you when you try and think what you know like what it was being up against with the exorcist yeah and stuff like that you just think oh gee oh the omen that came out a couple of years later it's just night of differences night and day isn't it really which is a real shame which is there's no difference between night and day as we know
Boom. Yeah, so what are you going to give it, John? I will give it a good solid four out of five. Nice. I don't think it's up there with the real... uh you know the road or the other whiz bangers that we've had um but i think it's got an awful lot going for it and i think it's a lot of fun and i think it's a lot more entertaining than it kind of deserves to be in some ways. Oh yeah. James.
I've gone for a two. Oh, really, James? I do enjoy it as much as you did, John, but I do think that it's, number one, it's an interesting historical curio. in that it's got all of these different said it's a very different sort of hammer film and it has got this it's a bit murder mystery it's a bit like a spaghetti western it's all these these different things in one and as i was saying earlier when you look at things like what we do in the shadows and a lot of the things
the mythos that we now have around vampires, or they can hypnotize you and make you forget stuff. There's different sorts of vampires, and you can kill them in different ways. It was really interesting to see, oh, okay, maybe this was one of the first films to really suggest that. But at the same time, I did feel at points. This is dragging.
This could have done with a bit of sharper editing. No way, really? Yeah. God, I thought it romped along. I think there was just too many, like we said, too many peasants getting killed in it. Yes. And I just wish that we had the money to buy the excellent...
4K restoration hammer put out with all the extras on it. But we haven't, unfortunately, so we had to watch it on Amazon Prime, which a lot of the time it was just black and you couldn't see what was happening. Of all the films we've watched, I think this would be the best attempt at... Being a modern reboot of something. Yeah. It's Tom Hardy is Captain Kronos. Oh, yeah, yeah. Something like that. I think people would love stuff like that. And it's really tongue in cheek. It's camp.
So what did you give it, Cleve? I originally gave it a two, but I bumped up to a three because you've talked me up. As usual. Well, yes, as usual. And I'm just going to name check that we are getting pretty fed up with Twitter, I think. So we're trying to get on to Blue Sky. We are Gemwitch.
BSky.social on there and I put a little note up to say what do people think about Captain Kronos Ray Newman says that it would have made a great Hammer TV series and I think it would have been good and I think it would be a good series now I think Hammer's back so come on Pull your finger out. Someone said, it's Carolyn Monroe. What more needs to be discussed?
Crash zooming on her suggested eyebrows at one point, isn't there? Someone asked, ah, one of my favourite vampire movies I own on DVD and VHS. Definite comfort viewing. Yeah, 100%. I think it is. One of those films you can probably watch again and again and again, actually, because there's quite a few set pieces in it, which are kind of amusing and kind of fun to watch a bit like with Nell and I or something like that in some ways.
James, you'll know the answer to this. Do you need a special Blu-ray player to play 4K films? Yes. Do you? yeah a 4k screen as well i presume uh well yeah well you need a high def screen yeah that can handle the you know the the resolution but if you tried to play on a normal blu-ray player would it work No. What you often get when you buy a 4K is it comes with the 4K disc and the Blu-ray.
Oh, I see. Okay. Okay, well, when this comes down in price... Grab one and shoot, so you can see. No, it's all good. That's all right. I can imagine that. So, has anyone got anything horrific to talk about? Yes, no, I went to the cinema to see the movie heritage. Yes, I've been reading a lot of good reviews Yes, it is now there are certain films that when I watch them I think oh my god the minute that's finished I want to watch it again. I need to watch that again
Because there was so much going on there. Like, for example, I'm just looking over, you know, so something like Blade Runner 2049, when I saw that for the first time, I was like, I need to see that again. Goodfellas. I need to see that film again. Carry on camping.
in all seriousness you know but it's not one of those films you don't come out going oh my god i need to go it's very much a done in one but what i would say is it is excellent in how it's written it ratchets up the tension you know something's not right and you know something's not good here but what's going on
Why is all this happening? It's very, very nicely done. Also, with my teacher hat on, it was really depressing. Well, not depressing, but at one point, Hugh Grant is talking to these two girls who are Mormons. And he's explaining to them about the history of religion. And he says, so you've got Judaism, Christianity, and Islam. the big three as i like to call them and in the cinema i went jesus because i thought that's exactly what i say so that was
But on top of that, I've read some people go, it's a bit like going to a lecture. But for me, it was superb. Everything he says is correct. And I can tell you everything he says is right and correct. And what he's actually doing in inverted commas. If you've read. Just any book on the history of religion or any critique on religion from Nietzsche onwards, you will go, oh, I see what he's doing here. It doesn't come as a, whoa, that's left field, but it's so well done.
and the ending is so and i always love a film where it's an ambiguous ending big but without spoiling anything for anyone i love an ambiguous ending in a film it's got a really and on top of that hugh grant is fantastic because he doesn't do the whole I'm being super nice and now I'm being horrible. He doesn't do that. He just kind of sort of keeps this consistent. Oh, no, of course.
And I like overly friendly way, even when he's doing horrific stuff. So that works. And it also, the main protagonist in it is Sophie Thatcher, who is fantastic in yellow jackets as well. You guys know I'm a big, big fan of yellow jackets. Is that the sequel to Heidi Hart? but yeah so it's she's really good in this again so bearing in mind that really without giving away too much it is really three actors they it works extremely well don't hear too much about it
Just go for it. Try it out. It's a treat. Brilliant. So, my stuff, I really luckily got invited to go to the premiere of the Hammer documentary for their 90th anniversary. So... Went up there after work to Leicester Square. Met my friend Dylan, who does the Dot Who Too Hot for TV podcast, which I've been on recently. Go and listen to, I did a Halloween special with him.
about a vampire story, a mummy story, and a werewolf story. So go listen to that. But it was great. Green Doctor Who? Yeah, but they're like big finishes and stuff like that. Yeah, yeah. Not...
Not the ones on TV? No, but that's what it's called, Too Hot For TV. Oh, I see. Yeah. But yeah, so we have the guy who's bought Hammer there, and he's basically said that they've got a whole... roster of films ready to go and they can be announced to them soon oh that's good wow so we watch this space to see what's gonna happen it's that in my lifetime i can think of probably three attempts to do this
one in the nineties and then one in the noughties and then the one with like the woman in black and stuff. So I really hope that something does happen now because I think 1993, they were going to do. Quite a mass experiment as a remake. Nothing ever happened. Don't do any remakes. Do something new. I thought Woman in the Black was really good. I thought it was great. They did some other films that were just utter shit. Yeah, but then they did this other one which was set in Ireland with...
The guy from Queer as Folk that was bloody awful. I think it was called Witchwood. So boring. So mine, and have we mentioned this on the podcast? We've mentioned that book series lots of times, but that one has got, I think I mentioned, but you can do it. Do it again. So I can't remember if we've mentioned this. Because I can't remember. I don't listen back to the episodes because I'm not insane.
But I've got Eerie East Anglia here, edited and put together by Edward Parnell, who I think maybe follows us on Twitter. Does he, Cleves? Yes, we have to bring to the show. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. So I, I think he's put together a really excellent set of stories here. Um, I've really enjoyed all of this. My only quibble would be that instead of, um, Whistle and I'll come to you.
I would have gone for Warning to the Curious, which is my favourite, kind of. I think that's just, because that was myself a horrific last week, man. Was it, really? And I think you said the same thing about it then. Did I? Well, that's all I've got here next to me at the moment. Well, it's a double recommendation. Okay. Well, I bought 13 Cornish ghost stories on holiday, but I haven't read any yet.
So I can't tell you anything about those whatsoever. But I did, as usual, I enjoyed rereading M.R. James in October, ready for Halloween. And I'm rereading a few of the earlier ones now because I do like the later ones more. But I reread number 13 the other day, which is bloody brilliant. And it's such a great idea for a story that basically there is no room 13, but then it magically appears at night.
Yeah, you can see the light from it on the wall opposite. Yes, which is a brilliant idea, and I just bloody love it. It's a great, it's a funny story. There's loads of humour in it, and it's just really clever. And I just wonder where he got his ideas from. If there was anyone I could go back in time and interview, it would be M.R. James and say, where did you get all your ideas from? Because he had so many ideas in his stories.
And I think that's always fascinating to know where. And authors love it when someone asks them that, don't they? Yeah, I would just, I think there's a lineage in horror and it's like, you know, he was a big fan of Sheridan Le Fanu. And I just wonder if, you know, but the stories aren't particularly similar. So I just think, where did he get that kind of mechanism from? Oh, there's going to be a room there that disappears.
It's a bloody amazing idea. And have you heard what the ghost story for Christmas this year is going to be? Mark Gates, this one? Yes. So it's Man Sizing Marble by Edith Nesbitt, which I really love. James tweeted me this the other day because I'd missed the announcement. And I'm over the moon because I love that story. It's a brilliant story. So I'll be really interested to see what Mark has done with it. Celia and Marie in it?
Yes. And it's going to be called The Woman of Stone. Senior Emery, who I have worked with. I photographed her once. She was in the third series of... Do you remember Keeping Faith? That was a very big hit a few years ago with Eve Miles. nope um you don't remember that cleaves she was hey she was also one of the uh naboo star starfighter pilots in She had a yellow coat on it and then every woman in Wales bought a yellow coat that looked the same, like a wind cheetah kind of marks and sparks.
I'm surprised you can't remember that, Cleves. I don't watch normal TV, do I? For fuck's sake. What the fuck is wrong with you? I don't watch normal TV. Constantly text, watch Channel 472. John, I don't have television. Why not? What's wrong with you? Just get a normal telly. All you talk about is telly and then you're like, I don't watch telly.
so next time it's christmas is it and um we will be doing our traditional um bbc ghost stories for christmas and there's only only three of the originals left and which two did we say we're going to do john i can't remember wasn't the ice house it was the other two um it was the something tree the other the ash tree yeah and the one with the kids oh lost hearts yeah fantastic the ash tree
beautifully shot, lost heart, very weird and miserable. Cool. How fitting for the festive season. But until then, thank you very much for listening. Yes, as always. And we'll see you at Christmas. Love, light and peace. Hang in there, everyone. Happy day. You have been listening to The General Witchfinder. Support the show and continue the conversation at patreon.com forward slash General Witch Finders. Farewell. And don't have nightmares.
millions of books on amazon there's a reading feeling for everyone for example raquel's whoa when she first entered the kingdom by dragon back it's different to ari's whoa when he found out there was more than one crime scene Which is also different to Ava's. Whoa. The moment when the stable boy became a stable man. From whoa. To whoa. To whoa. Amazon Books. That reading feeling awaits. Where he lives. It was in my house. His darkest secret. And when I'm done, the world will know the truth.
Based on characters created by James Patterson. I'm not a monster. I don't kill for fun. Cross. New series. Watch now only on Prime Video. hello listener during the recording of this episode as you're always well aware we do sometimes go off at tangents via one of these tangents one of these tangents today involved one of my great loves in my life which is the star wars movies
The discussion is quite frankly, not essential. And if you're not a Star Wars person, you really don't need to listen to this part. But in the interest of completion, we've included the discussion at the end. If you don't want to listen, stop now. That's the end. Otherwise, here we go. Why are you so slow, please? And also, that sounded exactly like the William Tell overture at the start. That's what he ripped it off from.
I will list the last Star Wars film as one of the worst travesties of human justice ever perceived by humankind. Which one is that called, James? Is that the Rise of Skywalker? That's the worst. Yes, John. It was called Episode 9, The Rise of Skywalker. What do you think of that one, James? That's terrible, isn't it? Oh, no. We're going to have to cut off it, Ross. This is going under... Cut it all out. Yeah, post-credits.
What I would say is out of the three new ones, it was the one I liked the least. I think they had a very difficult decision in that Disney had decided the film had to come out that year. Oh, really? Yes. And so they had made the decision, first of all, they had done this thing where they had said to, first of all, okay, JJ Abrams, you're doing episode seven. Ryan Johnson, you're doing episode eight.
And then Rian Johnson went onto the set, spoke to JJ Abrams, and then based on JJ Abrams' scripts and ideas and Lawrence Kasdan's scripts and ideas, developed episode eight. Then... um they gave it to um episode nine was i forget his name give me two seconds oh it was another guy was it because i didn't like episode eight at all
It's great. It's one of the best ones. I thought killing Luke Skywalker and not even telling him that Han Solo is dead. Yeah, but he does. He learns it off screen, doesn't he? He says, where's Han? And then with that, it cuts to Kylo Ren. That's telling you straight away, oh yeah, Kylo Ren killed him. But anyway, Colin Trevorrow. Colin Trevorrow. That's right. Wow.
What happened was, so Colin Trevorrow was then, during the making of The Last Jedi, said, okay, so this is where all the characters are at the end of episode nine. He then develops a script, John, called...
Jewel of the Fates. And... Should you care, should you be bothered, if you go onto YouTube, a mega nerd has got hold of his script and basically done an animated version of... no way and disney got really twitchy about it really twitchy it is not a particularly satisfying end to the saga oh interesting um in that i think
you know, if you understand sort of hero's journey and hero's quest and all that sort of stuff, it is absolutely clear that the whole idea, and I think what JJ Abrams intended and what Lawrence Kasdan intended was. At the end, Kylo Ren gets redeemed. That's the whole, he does the reverse. And that apparently is what Adam Driver was sold on. The notion that in the first film, you're the bad guy. But over the course of the, by the end of the movie.
by the end of the night film, you are now the good guy. You know, the badness has to be undone. And I think in Colin Trevorrow's script, he just remains relentlessly the bad guy until the end. And it also featured Luke. Skywalker coming back from beyond the grave as a ghost Manifesting and catching his lightsaber blades. And he's then blinded for a period of time. There's all sorts of very weird stuff that as they started making it, I think Disney went...
this isn't crowd-pleasing enough. No. And this hasn't... I wonder why they started it without a story arc already in place. Well, again, and that's what us mega-mega-fans would say, don't do that.
Stop and think about what you're doing. But once again, capitalism, the Disney machine. And so then J.J. Brams was called back at the 11th hour to basically cobble together an ending. And I think... given the yeah those films how loved they are especially by me of everyone all the rest of it is like well if it's the ninth and final chapter you make that film three hours long make it you know so you can properly tie everything up
look at the last you know the return of the king the lord now some people say that's too long but what i think is you've earned it by film nine so i feel that within the rise of skywalker there's the bones of a good film i also yeah I've read lots of people saying, oh, there's loads of stuff that got filmed that's been cut out. There's about a good 45 minutes worth of stuff that's been cut out.
So I think somewhere sat around in Disney's vaults, there's probably a far superior version of that film. So I don't think it's attractive. I think, oh, given the context of circumstances, I think the only thing is, is someone at Disney. should be, add a word with saying, why don't you just stop it? And wait till the script was right before you carried on. Anyway, there you go. End of extra. Excellent. No, I enjoyed that joke. I had re-share stuff sitting in front of me.
Charles Dance sitting behind me. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Looks like my brother. And what was Reece Shearsmith doing? He was just like nodding and smiling. Facing you though. He had his back to the screen. Yeah. But he wasn't even in one of the VIP seats with the names on everything. You're joking. He was a punter. What the hell are you sniffing, Cleaves? It's marmalade whiskey. Oh, it looks like...
It looks like a little bottle of vinegar. Nick Briggs, the voice of the Daleks, he was there. Oh, God, of course he bloody was. Hello, hello, hello. hello hello yes sorry about that sorry sorry i thought i've got like an i've got like an hour and a half well what should i do i thought i'll have a little nap so weird john's just going to get some squash
We were ringing you, and it was answering, and there was this weird whispering noise. Oh. So we've recorded it, so you can hear it back. Okay, what it will be... It will be... I'm alive. It's because I had headphones in, so I think it answers, but then what you were hearing is what was on YouTube. Right, okay.
It's not you whispering in your sleep. We thought you'd been kidnapped and using the back of someone's car. Weird ghostly voices, James. Sorry. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I was just saying to Ross, I had headphones in. So I think what happens is if you've got a headphone... when people ring it, it just answers automatically. And then, because I had YouTube on and I fell asleep with YouTube on, it's probably whatever YouTube had also played to. So you got a hot cross button?
Brioche. Oh, okay. I thought you was eating a hot cross bun and telling me off having a mince pie. No, no, I was just feeling, um, feeling fly. Whatever that means. Oh, what's your t-shirt, James? Oh, nice. Is it Led Zeppelin? Well, yeah, yeah. It's the one that features on Led Zeppelin. Yes. Cool. So, yeah. All right.
are you feeling with it enough now james oh yeah i'm absolutely fine i was just ross i thought oh because i was in london yesterday i went up to london to see uh max rexer the composer and musician and i thought who's that now Oh, he has done the music for several sort of films and TVs. Was he on with Jules Holland the other night? Yes, he was. Yes. Yes. Oh, interesting. Yeah. So I saw... He did a rival, didn't he?
Yes, yes, yes, yes. Yeah. So I went to see him. Um, and by then I was James. So I thought it was brilliant.
he really really enjoyed it it was fantastic it was it was a welsh kind of joke then james i think you went to see him see him personally yeah i saw you driving out but yeah because of that then you know i didn't get back to later um and then i went around to see the parents and then i got back from the weekly visit to the parents i thought i've got like two hours before we do to start podcasting what should i do and i thought you know what i'll have a little nap so i'm super fresh
Oh, good fault. And then just slept straight. So I'm very, very sorry. It's all good, Ben. It's all good. We were just worried about you. No, I'm fine. Thank you. Thank you. Thought you were in the back of a... someone's boot or um a helicopter james it was such a weird it did oh we were just we just were watching we have recorded it so it's going it's going out as a patreon exclusive yeah brilliant all right so
Don't forget, Cleaver, I've already done the intro. Oh, well, we can do it again. What? We'll do it again. Right. Are we ready? At Matalan, red is the new black. The up to 50% off Red Friday sale is still going strong. And there's 25% off selected nightwear and party wear too. Shop in store and online at matalan.co. Decencies apply. Excludes selected brands. Small Changes, the critically acclaimed new album from Mercury Prize winner Michael Kiwanuka is out now. For the days of you
Hello, this is Makita and Andy from Stirring It Up, and we're currently sponsored by Drambui Scotch Whiskey Liqueur, serving up a taste of the unexpected. Oh, the unexpected, what every great dinner with friends needs, you know, Makita. I think I've found what I'm going to use to jazz up my next dinner party with friends. The Drambui Iced Espresso. That sounds delicious. I love Dramburi and espresso over ice. That is the perfect welcome drink. Or...
You could have it in the middle of the course, of course. And not something anyone will be expecting, I like that. Yes, for dinner with friends, choose the Drambui Iced Espresso. Please enjoy and share Drambui responsibly. Visit drinkaware.co.uk for more information.