Blog-o-ween 2022: Nightfall

Canada has given the world so much. From our friendly neighbors to the north, we've received the gifts of Rush, David Cronenberg, SCTV, Molson and poutine. Any one of those achievements by itself would have any other country bragging about how great they are. But does Canada go for any of that back-patting and self-aggrandizement. Heck, no, eh! They just keep on keepin' on, churning out the Soska Sisters, Drake, Pamela Anderson, back bacon, and Tim Hortons seemingly on their days off.

Well played, Canada! For you, there is beer on the sun!

Let's add another gold star next to Canada's name in the ol' gradebook, so to speak, and discuss one of the scariest radio programs ever, Nightfall.

Nightfall was created by Bill Howell and aired on CBC Radio from July 1980 to June 1983. The majority of the episodes were horror, but there were other styles and genres mixed in, including science fiction and mystery. Nightfall's opening voiceover ranks up there with the credit sequence for Tales from the Darkside for spine-chilling creepiness. Indeed, many listeners complained to the CBC that Nightfall was too scary and convinced certain affiliates not to run the program. If that isn’t a recommendation, I don’t know what is!

You can find many, if not all, of Nightfall’s 100 episodes on the Internet Archive. Later during Blog-o-ween, we will return to the airwaves of the Great White North to rhapsodize over Nightfall's adaptation of the W. W. Jacob's short story "The Monkey's Paw." Today, however, I want to focus attention on another fantastic adaptation: "Carmilla." Adapted by John Douglas and Graham Pomeroy from Irish writer J. Sheridan LeFanu's classic novella, this rendition has all the eerie trappings of a great Gothic story. You've got a remote castle, horse-drawn coaches, wind whistling through the trees, mysterious deaths, and lesbianism! As in other Nightfall productions, the sound design and music accompaniment hit all the right tones (pun intended!), and the acting is top notch. Indeed, the actress portraying the title character does a wonderful job of exuding sensuality and danger. At times, it feels as though we are listening to a Hammer Studios production -- which is perfect, because Hammer created an excellent cinematic version of LeFanu's story in 1970 as The Vampire Lovers.

You can listen to "Carmilla" here, and if you are interested in Hammer's film (and who in their right mind wouldn't want to see Ingrid Pitt strut her stuff as Carmilla -- and what stuff it is!) you can...look for it yourself. In the meantime, here's Ms. Pitt doing what she does best -- look Germanic and sexy!

22 October: Captain Kronos - Vampire Hunter

 

Slow burn horror is fine and dandy, but sometimes you just want your horror movie to feature a fanfare of trumpets on the soundtrack and a lot punch-ups on the screen. Today’s movie challenge for Cinematic Void’s 31 Days of Voidoween is “Action Horror,” and I’m all about Hammer Studios’ 1974 swashbuckling classic Captain Kronos: Vampire Hunter.

Captain Kronos is a straightforward tale of derring-do. The good Captain (Horst Janson) is called by an old army buddy of his, Dr. Marcus (John Carson), to help investigate a lot of strange deaths happening in his village. The victims have been found prematurely aged before popping off this mortal coil. Kronos and his road buddy, the hunchback Professor Hieronymus Grost (John Cater), suspect vampires are afoot (as you do), and they begin the process of snuffing them out. Along the way, Kronos and Grost free a young gypsy woman from the stocks. Her crime: dancing on the Sabbath! Carla (Caroline Munro) joins the duo in helping to rid the land of its bloodsuckers infestation.

Captain Kronos is a romp, a hoot, and a real humdinger all rolled into one. There’s swordfighting, bodices, and creepy old age make-up. Horst Janson is a pleasant hero who can swing a sword and toss off a bon mot with a flourish. Caroline Munro is, as always, beautiful and feisty as the gypsy girl Carla. Director Brian Clemens keeps everything moving at a quick clip. (Sadly, this would be his only film as director.) The look of the picture screams “Hammer!” with its muted colors (except for the red stuff, if you know what I mean), outdoor forest scenes, and 18th century British village sets.

Captain Kronos was to have been the first in a series, but unfortunately that never happened. Hammer was falling on tough times, and soon closed up shop. There’s been a novelization and some comic book adaptations that furthered the tale, but we never got more of Kronos, Grost, and Carla on the big screen, to which I say “Boo!”

It is 16 October. There are 15 days until Halloween.

One of the things I most love about genre is the way that it never stands still, never stays one thing for very long. It’s like a piece of chewing gum that falls on the floor. Before you can say “five-second rule,” that wad of gum has picked up a lot of stuff – hair, dirt, dust, fuzz, maybe a toenail clipping.

Genre is the same way. Start of with a horror movie, and over time, as it passes from filmmaker to filmmaker, from generation to generation, you get horror-comedies, sci-fi horror, romantic horror, action-horror, horror westerns. There as many permutations as you can imagine – and more.

Well some mash-ups can go too far...

Today’s movie is an example of this evolution. In the 1950s and 1960s, England’s Hammer Studios was a veritable horror movie factory. Movies like The Curse of Frankenstein (1957), Horror of Dracula (1958), and The Curse of the Werewolf (1961) starring actors like Peter Cushing, Christopher Lee, and Oliver Reed were bringing the classic Universal Studios monsters to a new generation of audiences. As the years passed, these movies, like our wad of gum, began to pick up bits of other movies. Before you knew it, Peter Cushing was in Hong Kong fighting kung-fu vampires, and Christopher Lee’s Dracula was being pulled into the Swinging London of the 70s by a bunch of hippies.

Another genre mash-up that Hammer developed was the swashbuckling horror adventure yarn. Captain Kronos, Vampire Hunter is a horrific slice of derring-do – and I mean that in a good way!

Horst Janson as Kronos is a pleasant enough hero, though his cheekbones do a lot of the heavy lifting. Caroline Munro, a veteran of the sword & sandal fantasy genre, is a wonderful co-star and sidekick. Everything has that “Huzzah!” feeling that you expect from a swashbuckling picture. On top of that, you get a pretty novel spin on the vampire myth. This was supposed to be the first in a series of movies, but Hammer closed soon thereafter due to financial problems.

Another level to the proceedings, and one that I was not aware of before, is that Captain Kronos, Vampire Hunter, is sometimes considered to be a fourth entry to the Karnstein Trilogy. Fans of J. Sheridan Le Fanu’s 1872 novella, "Carmilla,” will recognize the name. The saga of the Karnsteins, a family of vampires, is (very) loosely traced over three movies, The Vampire Lovers (1970), Lust for a Vampire (1971), and Twins of Evil (1971). If we consider Captain Kronos, Vampire Hunter to be a fourth installment, then it would seem that one of the Countess Karnsteins descendants made it out of Central Europe and into England. It’d be fun to see another of these bodice-rippers set on the shores of the New World.

Imagine: The Karnsteins in America! A colonial 'Salem's Lot!