Twins of Evil (1971) - film review

In the 17th Century, an insane fear of witchcraft has taken hold of the people of Karnstein and driven them to hunt down and burn any young woman who is suspected of consorting with the Devil.  The witch-hunts are led by Gustav Weil, a zealous Puritan who shows no mercy to anyone he suspects of being a witch.  Weil offers the coolest of receptions to his two young nieces, identical twins Maria and Frieda, when they come to live with him after the death of their parents.  Frieda resents her uncle’s sternness and immediately takes an interest in the Count Karnstein, a man with a bad reputation.  Unbeknown to Weil and his followers, the Count has been dabbling in the black arts in an attempt to awaken demonic powers.  During one of his Satanist ceremonies, the Count manages to revive the dormant Mircalla Karnstein, one of his vampiric ancestors.  Transformed into a vampire by Mircalla, the Count wastes no time in drawing Frieda into his evil cult...

Twins of Evil is the third instalment in Hammer’s popular Karnstein Trilogy, a cycle of films that broke the mould in the British horror genre through their more liberal use of gore and eroticism.  Lacking the overt references to lesbianism which featured prominently in the other two films, The Vampire Lovers (1970) and Lust for a Vampire (1971), Twins of Evil is far less controversial, although it is groundbreaking in other ways.  It represents one of the few successful attempts by Hammer to depart from its traditional Gothic formula, substituting realism for dream-like stylisation, and is widely considered one of the best and most frightening of the studio’s horror offerings.  The film is obviously influenced by Michael Reeves’ horror landmark Witchfinder General (1968), not just in its central witch-hunting theme but also in its far more graphic physical violence and overt eroticism.  This was a time when Hammer was frantically struggling to extend its horror franchise into new areas in an attempt to keep up with the competition, and Twins of Evil was one of the very few instances when the company managed to push the envelope successfully without completely alienating its audience.   

The film is certainly far darker in tone than virtually all previous Hammer horror films and has far more in the way of gruesome Grand Guignol bloodletting.  There is none of the familiar cosiness that we associate with Hammer’s Gothic horror films, and absolutely no comfort to be drawn from Peter Cushing’s presence in the cast list, as the actor plays his part as a single-minded zealot, an aloof coldness and intense religious fervour replacing his customary charm and gentility.  John Hough directs the film with panache and gusto, injecting much more energy into it than you will find in most Hammer horrors.  Hough was early into his career when he made this film - he had only directed a couple of a films and a few episodes of The Avengers - but would go on to score several notable successes, with such films as Escape to Witch Mountain (1975), The Watcher in the Woods (1980) and Biggles (1986).  Hough was precisely the kind of new blood that Hammer desperately needed to remain in business, but unfortunately this infusion of talent was not enough to reverse the studio’s inescapable decline.   Twins of Evil was pretty well the last gasp for Hammer, and a tantalising glimpse of what might have been if the studio had been more successful in the 1970s.

© Alex Sullivan 2010

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