Individual Card from the "Hammer Horror - Series Two" Set - issued by Strictly Ink in 2010.
This card features Mary & Madeleine Collinson, stars of "Twins of Evil".
Twins of Dracula (also known as Twins of Evil) is a 1971 horror film by Hammer Film Productions starring Peter Cushing, with Damien Thomas and the real-life twins and former Playboy Playmates Mary and Madeleine Collinson.
It is the third film of the Karnstein Trilogy, based on the vampire tale Carmilla by Sheridan Le Fanu. The film has the least resemblance to the novel and adds a witchfinding theme to the vampire story. Much of the interest of the film revolves around the contrasting evil and good natures of two beautiful sisters, Frieda and Maria Gellhorn. Unlike the previous two entries in the series, this film contains only a brief vampire lesbian element.
Some considered the film a prequel to The Vampire Lovers and Lust for a Vampire.
Maria and Frieda, recently orphaned identical twin teenage girls, move from Venice to Karnstein in Central Europe to live with their uncle Gustav Weil. Weil is a stern puritan and leader of the fanatical witch-hunting 'Brotherhood'. Both twins resent their uncle's sternness and one of them, Frieda, looks for a way to escape. Resenting her uncle, she becomes fascinated by the local Count Karnstein, who has the reputation of being "a wicked man".
Count Karnstein, who enjoys the Emperor's favour and thus remains untouched by the Brotherhood, is indeed wicked and interested in Satanism and black magic. Trying to emulate his evil ancestors, he murders a girl as a human sacrifice, calling forth Countess Mircalla Karnstein from her grave. Mircalla turns the Count into a vampire.
Frieda, following an invitation from the Count, steals away to the castle at night, while Maria covers for her absence. In the castle, the Count transforms Frieda into a vampire, offering her a beautiful young chained victim. Returning home, Frieda threatens Maria to keep covering for her nightly excursions, but secretly fearing she might bite her sister.
Meanwhile, Maria becomes interested in the handsome young teacher, Anton, who is initially infatuated with the more mysterious Frieda. Anton has studied what he calls "superstition", but becomes convinced of the existence of vampires when his sister falls victim to one. One night, when Frieda attacks a member of the Brotherhood, she is captured by her uncle and put in jail. While the Brotherhood debates the vampire woman's fate, the Count and his servants kidnap Maria and exchange her for Frieda in the cell. Anton goes to see Maria, not knowing that she is actually Frieda. She tries to seduce him, but he sees her lack of reflection in a mirror and repels her with a cross. Anton rushes to rescue Maria from burning. Maria kisses a cross, revealing her innocence.
Weil now listens to Anton's advice on the proper ways to fight vampires, and the two men lead the Brotherhood and villagers to Karnstein Castle to confront the Count. The Count and Frieda attempt to escape, but they are surprised by Weil, who beheads Frieda. Maria is captured by the Count, who uses her as a shield. Weil challenges the Count and is killed, giving Anton the opportunity to pierce the distracted Count's heart with a spear. Anton and Maria are united as Karnstein crumbles to corruption.
Peter Cushing as Gustav Weil
Kathleen Byron as Katy Weil
Mary Collinson as Maria Gellhorn
Madeleine Collinson as Frieda Gellhorn
David Warbeck as Anton Hoffer
Damien Thomas as Count Karnstein
Katya Wyeth as Countess Mircalla
Roy Stewart as Joachim
Isobel Black as Ingrid Hoffer
Harvey Hall as Franz
Alex Scott as Hermann
Dennis Price as Dietrich
Sheelah Wilcox as lady in coach
Inigo Jackson as woodman
Judy Matheson as woodman's daughter
Kirsten Lindholm as young girl at stake
Luan Peters as Gerta
Peter Thompson as gaoler
Hammer was originally going to make a film called Vampire Virgins. However producer Harry Fine saw a Playboy spread involving the Collinson twins and decided to make a film focusing on them.
Ingrid Pitt was offered the part of Countess Mircalla but refused.
The same sets were used for Vampire Circus.
Harvey Hall and Kirsten Lindholm appear in all three films of the trilogy, although in different roles in each one. Peter Cushing also played one of the leads in the first, The Vampire Lovers. (A part was written for Cushing in the second film, but he dropped out of the production due to the illness of his wife. The role was taken over by Ralph Bates.) Luan Peters, who plays a small role in this film, also appeared in the second film, Lust for a Vampire, as did Judy Matheson.
The original film included a short scene, which is now edited out, in which the evil twin approaches her uncle. The scene is out of place as their uncle is busy burning the other sister; somehow he teleports back home and the evil twin gives him a show. Cut out for American audiences and possibly to maintain story line continuity, the original scene was aired on public television in the 1980s.
Film critic Leonard Maltin gave the film a passing grade of two and a half stars, calling it "engaging" and "inspired" in its use of the Collinson twins. A.H. Weiler wrote in The New York Times that the Collinson twins made the film interesting, but "The rest of the costumed crew... hardly give Twins of Evil a good name."
A novelisation of the film was written by Shaun Hutson and published by Arrow Publishing in association with Hammer and the Random House Group in 2011, ISBN 978-0-09-955619-0. The book contains an introduction by the film's director, John Hough.
The film was adapted into an 18-page comic strip for the January–February 1977 issue of the magazine House of Hammer (volume 1, # 7, published by General Book Distribution). It was drawn by Blas Gallego from a script by Chris Lowder. The cover of the issue featured a painting by Brian Lewis based on imagery from the film.
The British music duo Collinson Twin (formed 2009) are named in tribute to the Twins of Evil stars. Another British music group The Twin Dracula are thought to be named after the characters.
One evening near the small Serbian village of Stetl, early in the nineteenth century, schoolmaster Albert Müller witnesses his lovely wife Anna taking a little girl, Jenny Schilt, into the castle of Count Mitterhaus, a reclusive nobleman rumored to be a vampire responsible for the disappearances of other children. The rumors prove true, as Anna, who has become Mitterhaus' willing acolyte and mistress, hands the innocent Jenny over to him to be drained of her blood. Men from the village, led by Müller and including Jenny's father Mr. Schilt and the Burgermeister, invade the castle and attack the Count. After the vampire kills several of them, Müller succeeds in driving a wooden stake through his heart. With his dying breath, Mitterhaus curses the villagers, vowing that their children will die to give him back his life. The angry villagers then drag Anna outside and force her to run the gauntlet, but when her husband intervenes, she runs back into the castle where the briefly revived Count tells her to find his cousin Emil at "the Circus of Night". After laying out his body in the crypt, she escapes through an underground tunnel as the villagers blow the castle up with gunpowder and set fire to it.
Fifteen years later, Stetl is now being ravaged by a plague and blockaded by the authorities of neighboring towns, with men ready to shoot any villager who tries to leave. The citizens fear that the pestilence may be due to the Count's curse, though the new physician Dr. Kersh scoffs at the notion, dismissing vampires as just a myth. Then a travelling circus calling itself the Circus of Night arrives at the village, led by a dwarf and an alluring gypsy woman who are equivocal about how they got past the blockade. The villagers, appreciative of the distraction from their troubles, do not press the matter. While his courageous son Anton distracts the armed men at the blockade, Dr. Kersh gets past them to appeal for help from the capital. Neither he nor anyone back in the village suspect that one of the circus artists, Emil, is a vampire and Count Mitterhaus's cousin. Emil and the gypsy woman go to the remains of the castle, where in the crypt they find the Count's staked body still preserved, and they reiterate his curse that all who killed him and all their children must die.
At the Circus of Night, the villagers are amazed and delighted by the entertainment. Despite his wife's concerns over their wayward daughter Rosa's physical attraction to the handsome Emil, the Burgermeister takes her to the circus and, at the gypsy woman's invitation, visits the hall of mirrors where he sees in one called "The Mirror of Life", a vision of a revived Count Mitterhaus which causes him to collapse. Frightened by this event, Schilt tries to flee with his family from the blocked village with the circus dwarf Michael as their guide, only to be abandoned by him in the forest to be mauled to death by the circus panther. Müller's daughter Dora, whom he sent away earlier for her protection, has slipped past the blockade and is returning to the village when she discovers the Schilts' dismembered bodies, arousing suspicions about the animals of the circus. Anton, having been deputized by his father to stand in for him, insists that wolves or wild boars are responsible, unaware that several of the circus animals are vampire shapeshifters, including Emil, who is the panther, and twin acrobats Heinrich and Helga. That evening, Jon and his brother Gustav, two village boys whose father Mr. Hauser helped instigate the killing of Mitterhaus, are invited by the gypsy woman to enter the hall of mirrors. While looking in the Mirror of Life, they are magically drawn in by Heinrich and Helga who whisk them to the Count's crypt and drain them. After the boys' bodies are found near the castle, their grieving father and the sick Burgermeister begin to shoot the circus animals. After an encounter with Emil, the Burgermeister dies of heart failure while his daughter runs off with the vampire who then bites and kills the girl.
Dora and Anton, who are in love, are lured by the twins Heinrich and Helga into the hall of mirrors where they try to whisk Dora through the Mirror of Life, but the cross she is wearing saves her. Later, the vampires enter the school house where Dora and Anton have taken refuge. Emil, in panther form, kills the boarding students, diverting Anton while the gypsy woman (now revealed as the twins' human mother by Mitterhaus) tears the cross from Dora's neck, enabling Heinrich and Helga to attack her. Dora, however, escapes into the school chapel, where the twins are overwhelmed by a giant crucifix which she topples on them, destroying them. Nevertheless, with the help of the circus strongman, who being human is impervious to crosses, Emil and the gypsy woman succeed in having Dora kidnapped and taken to the crypt at Castle Mitterhaus. There they extract drops of her blood, which they use with blood left over from the previous child victims as part of a ritual to restore the Count back to life. Meanwhile, Dr. Kersch returns from the capital with an imperial escort and medicines for the plague. He also brings news of vampire killings in other villages, all of them toured by the Circus of Night. The men attack the circus and set fire to it, killing the strongman when he tries to stop them. As Hauser starts to burn down the hall of mirrors, he sees in the Mirror of Life a vision of Emil and the gypsy woman bleeding a helpless Dora over the Count's body. This horrifying sight distracts him long enough to be fatally burned by the fire, though he lives long enough to alert Anton and the other men to Dora's plight.
Back in the castle crypt, the gypsy woman is killed when out of a sudden attack of remorse she attempts to save Dora from Emil. As she falls down dead, the gypsy's face is transformed, revealing her to be Anna Müller. Anton, finding his way through the underground tunnel into the crypt despite a deadly ambush by Michael the dwarf, attempts to rescue Dora but is halted by Emil. When Anton holds the vampire back with a crucifix, an attacking bat summoned by Emil causes him to drop it, placing him at the monster's mercy. Just then Müller, Dr. Kersh, and a soldier break into the crypt and battle Emil, while Anton fends off the bat with a torch as it continues to attack him and Dora. Emil kills or disables all his attackers but Müller, having dropped the crossbow he brought, pierces him with the stake from the Count's chest as he dies. Revived at last, the Count rises from his sarcophagus and advances on Dora and Anton. Then Anton seizes Müller's crossbow which is shaped like a crucifix, repelling the Count long enough for the young man to throw the crossbow over his head and fire an arrow into the vampire's neck, decapitating him. As Dr. Kersh leads Dora and Anton from the tomb, he and the villagers set the ruins alight with torches, ending the curse. Or so they hope, but Dora and Anton see a bat fly out of the tomb into the night and are left uncertain.
Adrienne Corri as Gypsy Woman
Laurence Payne as Professor Albert Müller
Thorley Walters as Peter, the Mayor of Stitl
Lynne Frederick as Dora Müller
John Moulder-Brown as Anton Kersh
Elizabeth Seal as Gerta Hauser
Anthony Higgins (billed as Anthony Corlan) as Emil
Richard Owens as Dr. Kersh
Domini Blythe as Anna Müller
Robin Hunter as Mr Hauser
Robert Tayman as Count Mitterhaus
Robin Sachs as Heinrich (twin brother of Helga)
Lalla Ward as Helga (twin sister of Heinrich)
Skip Martin as Michael the dwarf
David Prowse as the Strongman
Mary Wimbush as Elvira
Christina Paul as Rosa
Roderick Shaw as Jon Hauser
Barnaby Shaw as Gustav Hauser
John Bown as Mr Schilt
Sibylla Kay as Mrs. Schilt
Jane Darby as Jenny Schilt
Dorothy Frere as Granma Schilt
Milovan Vesnitch as the erotic male dancer
Serena as the erotic tiger-woman dancer
Sean Hewitt as First Soldier
David de Keyser as the voice of Mitterhaus's curse (uncredited)
Three of the cast—Laurence Payne, Adrienne Corri and Lalla Ward—would be reunited in the 1980 season of the British sci-fi/fantasy series Doctor Who in the serial The Leisure Hive. The film also heralded the screen debut of Lynne Frederick, who would later marry comic Peter Sellers. David Prowse, who later played Darth Vader in the first Star Wars trilogy, appears in a silent role as the circus strongman. Robin Sachs would later appear later in his career as a recurring villainous character Ethan Rayne in Buffy the Vampire Slayer and as the space conqueror Sarris in the science-fiction comedy Galaxy Quest.
Vampire Circus has been well received by modern critics, and currently holds an 80% approval rating on movie review aggregator website Rotten Tomatoes.
AllMovie called the film "one of the studio's more stylish and intelligent projects". PopMatters also called it "one of the company's last great classics", writing, "erotic, grotesque, chilling, bloody, suspenseful and loaded with doom and gloom atmosphere, this is the kind of experiment in terror that reinvigorates your love of the scary movie artform".
Critics at the time of its original release weren't quite as impressed. New York Times film reviewer Howard Thompson dismissed it outright without even the courtesy of a proper review in favor of its double-billing Hammer counterpart "Countess Dracula". His curt review measured two sentences, "Wise horror fans will skip 'Vampire Circus' and settle for 'Countess Dracula' on the new double bill at the Forum. Both are Hammer Productions, England's scream factory, but the first was dealt a quick, careless anvil." before continuing with semi-praise for Countess Dracula.
An 'updated' novelization by Mark Morris was published in 2012.