The First film in the ‘Karnstein Trilogy’, and one of the earlier examples of Hammers ‘Playboy’ era films. ‘The Vampire Lovers was a fine enough watch for me, but suffers from a lot of the recurring issues that Hammer films from this era seem to fall into.

The plot introduces us to the family Karnstein, a group of undead vampires who for centuries had preyed on the local inhabitants of the village, and anyone who happened to roam into the woods or graveyards at night. 40 years prior to the events of this movie, the family was finished by a rival family who realised they were vampires and wanted an end to it.

However, 40 years to the day a mysterious woman claiming to be a baroness arrives at the house of a respected General (played by Peter Cushing) asking for mercy in the face of a serious accident thats left her and her daughter Marcilla abandoned in the middle of nowhere for a few days while alternate travel is arranged.

The general agrees and Marcilla forms a strong ‘bond’ with the generals Daughter Laura. Very strong…its a pseudo lesbian relationship. I say pseudo because, Marcilla is ACTUALLY ‘Carmilla’ the daughter of the family Karnstein, and her and her mother have infiltrated the generals house using false identities to try and enlist servents and bolster their supplies to help ressurect the Karnstein family name…and…for a time, they appear to succeed; Killing the Generals daughter over several days while tormenting her in the process.

The General, on realising his Daughter has been murdered by Vampires, and totally bereft, leaves his residence to seek help from the family who dispatched the Karnsteins in the first place. The Karnsteins meanwhile flee the manor, fake a horse carriage accident and begin their grift again…Only, now time is working against them, as the General rallies the troops and word of the growing grizzly murders begins to spread.

And, Its been just over a Day since I watched this movie, and im already forgetting quite large chunks of it…Which is never a good sign for a movie in my opinion.

Dont get me wrong, this isnt a bad movie by any stretch. But I do rather feel that, while its fresh for early 70s Hammer…In the grand scheme of Hammer and Amacus’s work in this kind of field…it’s a bit lacking.

The scripts fine enough, but as mentioned it does hit the rather unfortunate Hammer tropes of rushing to the 2nd act with great pacing, interesting twists and turns and fun characters. Only to then grind to a halt for most of the 2nd and a bit of the 3rd act, as we get bogged down in runarounds, reams of exposition that dont really add anything to the film and padding which bloat the middle of this film right up to the closing 20-25 minutes or so where, once again, it picks up pace and ends in a pretty satisfying way.

The characters are a little flat in this one, while most of the characters in the latter entries of the Karnstein trilogy get a bit more complexity and interesting plot developments, a layered set of main cast members who all feel like they fit into a well lived universe. This has the OTHER Hammer trope, where the core 2-4 main characters DO have complex character traits and backstories…but everyone else gets one, at a push two charictaristics and basically get nothing to do with the plot itself other than vomit exposition and to take ANY line that the writers didnt feel comfortable giving to the developed cast. Which is a real shame.

I just dont feel this one has the same level of pull as ‘Lust for a Vampire’ and ‘Twins of Evil’ they both were interesting character driven pieces that played more on emotional resonence than plotting to drive the story. This films characters feel a little undercooked and it leads with several subplots that make it feel more like a horror thriller than anything else. and I wasnt really into it for that.

Outside of the scripting though its pretty by the numbers sailing. Cine and Direction are well up to the mark for Hammer standard (which is always above average) later films in this trilogy lean more into modern technical abilities to help keep the cine and direction fresh, experimental and creative…But this ones still quite firmly grounded in the ‘old’ style of Hammer direction, which didnt really evolve much past 1961. as such its VERY nice, grand and rich set and location work. But mixed in with very static, sequences, limited dolly and tracking shots and fairly by the numbers blocking. Colour use I felt was also a little drab here, I didnt feel this was a particularly vibrant film…especially compared to later entries.

Casting is altogether fine, I have no strong feelings on any of the performances, other than to ask the question of why Peter Cushing was even in this movie, hes on screen for probably somewhere in the region of 7-10 minutes and gets near top billing. Which is kind of crazy to me given he plays a character with one significant moment, who then leaves for the majority of the film and only comes back at the end. Wild.

The scoring is half decent too which is nice…Like I say, this is basically about as ‘Middle of the road’ as you can get with Hammer. I liked it, but I do think it definitely could have done with some tightining up on the script front and maybe a bit more experimentation with the compositions and colour work on this…I’d say the Karnstein trilogy on the whole is definitely worth looking into, and if your weakest entry is ‘passably’ good. I think thats a pretty good indicator that you may be onto a good thing.

source https://letterboxd.com/tytdreviews/film/the-vampire-lovers/