Captain Kronos, Vampire Hunter – 4K

Captain Kronos, Vampire Hunter
Hammer – 4K Ultra HD
1974 – 1.37:1, 1.66:1, 1.85:1
Starring Horst Janson, John Cater, Caroline Munro 
Written by Brian Clemens
Directed by Brian Clemens

Having established itself as the Cadillac of contemporary gothic horror by the early 60s, Hammer Studios suddenly found itself staggering into the 70s. Even the introduction of more explicit sex and violence in laughers like Lust for a Vampire wasn’t doing the trick. To reverse course Hammer didn’t abandon their core audience, they simply broadened their appeal by cross-pollination—call it the Hammer Multiverse. Soon bloodsuckers were  kung-fu fighting and a gender fluid Dr. Jekyll sashayed his/her way through London seducing victims of all sexes. In 1972, Brian Clemens, the scriptwriter for Dr. Jekyll & Sister Hyde, directed his own horror hybrid for Hammer, The Three Musketeers meet Dracula or, Captain Kronos, Vampire Hunter.

The German actor Horst Janson plays Kronos, a swash-buckling vampire-killer who dispatches the undead not with conventional cures for the occult but the old-fashioned way, with a broadsword. Kronos has a companion who tends to his itinerary, a hump-backed academic named Hieronymus Grost played John Cater. They’re an 18th century Holmes and Watson, firm companions used to finding trouble before it finds them. Their latest case; young women are dying of a grotesquely accelerated old age. Kronos naturally suspects the undead.

Clemens wrote and well as directed—Kronos was his sole directorial effort—and his aggressive eccentricity fuels every scene—for better and worse. Though that blend of cheeky humor and edge of your seat thrills made The Avengers an unexpected stateside hit, that balancing act becomes unwieldy over a full length film, particularly one with such a slight storyline. And it seems Clemens knew this; he peppers Kronos with so many standalone scenes that it becomes an episodic experience like Jason’s search for the fleece: Caroline Munro plays a gypsy girl saved from the stocks (she was caught dancing on the sabbath), Shane Briant and Lois Daine exude untold perversity as a sister/brother team with the key to the mystery and Ian Hendry achieves “guest star” status as a pub bully who gets his comeuppance in a scene that wouldn’t have been out of place in The Adventures of Robin Hood.

Clemens began his career in television in 1958 with ITC’s The Invisible Man and once he had his taste of directing he would return to writing and producing for the small screen. To say he kept busy is an understatement, working well into the 80s and the aughts with a typically overflowing plate; Hammer House of Mystery and Suspense, The New Avengers, even finding himself stateside for the revival of Perry Mason starring Raymond Burr, the cultish Dick Van Dyke series, Diagnosis: Murder, and Remington Steele. His last credit was for a Hallmark production of all things, 2007’s  Jane Doe starring Lea Thompson.

Kronos seems to have been released and quickly forgotten but a steadily growing fan base has kept the memory alive even if there’s not that much to remember. Or so you’d think; Kronos is part of Hammer Films new series of 4K renditions of “classic” Hammer horror, collections which are genuine keepsakes, elaborately packaged with a motherlode of supplemental material and lots of goodies stuffed in the box.

This deluxe box set of Krono threatens to overwhelm the film itself: it comes with five discs (two UHDs and three Blu-rays, and three iterations of Captain Kronos: the widescreen 1.66:1 UK theatrical Version, the fullscreen 1.37:1 “as-filmed” version, and the widescreen 1.85:1 US theatrical version

The “goodies” include double-sided poster art cards with facsimiles of the original US cinema lobby cards and a 136 page booklet featuring interviews, articles, and a reprint of the Kronos strips from1970’s The House of Hammer magazine. The centerpiece of all these extras is The House of Clemens, a new 59-minute documentary about Brian Clemens featuring his family, friends, and colleagues. Produced in and around Clemens’s own home nestled in the English countryside, it’s just where you’d expect a man of his imagination to live—each room painted a deep red and stuffed to the ceilings with toys, mementos, pictures, and bric a brac, all evidence of a life well lived.