Large Fierce Mammal

It will come as no surprise to you, Goode Reader, that I grew up with a voracious taste for the horror genre. Something I inherited from my Mother as a personal taste, but as such, a seed planted upon fertile soil. The advent of Hammer Films on the screen of Lunenburg’s lofty and creaky Capitol Theatre. was as a fever inducing anointment of my then still grey but steadily blackening soul. This was my first encounter with such notables as Christopher Lee and Peter Cushing, in beautifully framed and bloody vampire tales that stood decidedly apart from the formulaic and, to my mind, tame products of Hollywood. An excellent encapsulation of this new Hammer reality is this by Chris McEneany from his 7 October 2006 Captain Kronos – Vampire Hunter Movie Review:

“Taking a fresh look at the genre and realizing, quite correctly, that Hammer’s vampires actually appeared quite unthreatening — they were extremely easy to exterminate, for one thing — Clemens decided to create for them a new mythology, one that enabled the race to have many varied offshoots. His vampires, for instance, don’t just drink blood – which they probably view as a mere appetizer – they suck the very life essence from their victims, thus ensuring their own youthful vitality.”

The rotating stable of buxom, albeit doomed beauties didn’t hurt either, and my boyhood libido enjoyed each as long as she lasted. There was always that one who was saved in the nick of time, and I admit that my imagination grappled with any thought of Cushing’s stately and deadly serious Van Helsing accepting, graciously or otherwise, any and all gestures of pulchritudinous gratitude in the time honoured genre of, “What can I ever do to repay you?” To the victor go the spoils say I! Who’s with me?

By 1974, the fortunes of Hammer Films had gone into decline, for a number of reasons well chronicled in the review cited above, resulting in the spectacular and pioneering Captain Kronos – Vampire Hunter coming too late to the party to change anything but the future of its genre. But in this it excelled.

So tonight, gird your loins, join the hunt, and take an hour and twenty-seven minute deep dive into …