As Sunday is the day of rest, I took a break from the Voodoo and rewatched this. Never one of my favourite Hammer films, I'd only seen it twice before, both times in a Spanish dub. Frankly the actor who dubbed Horst Janson in the Spanish release did a much better voiceover job than Julian Holloway did for the original.
Seeing the film for the first time in English, the only halfway decent performances come from John Carson, John Cater and Shane Briant. The whole film feels rather flat to me, most of the characters are sketchy, inspid ciphers and the muddled
story comprises one incident after another with no real sense of continuity or unity. Makeup and effects are not up to Hammer's glory days either, and it's immediately obvious that Lady Durward/Karnstein's old age mask is an old age mask way before the big reveal. Clemens' occasionally over-ostentatious direction fits the material well and the film is a visual treat. The relationship between Kronos and Grost is both amusing and touching and the scenes of the attempted extermination of Marcus add a touch of gallows humour. Likewise, the 'tooling up' scene before the final showdown raises a chuckle. The final swordfight is well realised but once it's over everything grinds to a halt, with only a desultory farewell scene remaining.
A shame that all the novel elements (vampire hunting team, alternative vampirology, swashbuckling, horror in broad daylight, epic score, etc) didn't gel into a satisfying and engaging whole. With more robust characterisations and a smoother narrative flow it could well have started a new Hammer franchise.