What Kind of Plumage is This?

Twins of Evil (1971)

Twins of Evil, or Twins of Dracula, was initially released in the USA alongside Hands of the Ripper as a double feature, and was without doubt, the most substantial box-ticker amongst my initial journey into Hammer horror. I unintentionally completed “the Karnstein Trilogy,” purely by accident—or more honestly, by seeking out the most explicit of the saucy ’70s entries—and apart from the tedious Countess Dracula, I wasn’t disappointed. Twins of Evil has a relatively modern feel, it’s easily accessible as an entry-level Hammer picture; the ideal “in,” for newcomers, and currently reigns as my absolute favourite of the bunch. It’s brief, sexy, and the Kensington Gore flows a bit freer.

The low-lying, woodland mist—both on location, and in the atmospherics of its Pinewood sets, screams Hammer. Director, John Hough (Dirty Mary, Crazy Larry, Escape to Witch Mountain) knows precisely how to invigorate a scene, and not only boasts a fine eye for a shot, but also an impeccable taste in alluring actresses. The staging, blocking, coverage, and evocative, European, emotionally-motivated camera moves, are ahead of anything I’ve seen so far in the Hammer canon. Fiery, incandescent imagery, and precision photography, sumptuously lit by dictatorial DoP, Dick Bush—the lighting cameraman later fired from Aliens by Jim Cameron for chucking his weight about behind the lens, and failing to keep the xenomorphs hidden deep in the shadows. Here, Hough employs a crash zoom here and there, and even ends the film with an almost imperceptibly subtle contrazoom—I think.

Along with the previous year’s The Vampire Lovers, two instances of (partially obscured) full frontal nudity here, help mark the moment Hammer went starkers. Damien Thomas portrays the petulant, perpetually discontent, Jimmy Fallon lookalike lothario, Count Karnstein, and Peter Cushing is a baddie—which I tend to prefer—as misplaced masculinity magnet, Gustav Vile—a presumably impotent, or plain repressed, religious, God-fearing puritan, terrified by femininity to the degree that his nightly excursions predominantly feature the burning of women who don’t take a husband, and are therefore dark arts-dabbling, satanic witches—outright exclaiming, “What kind of plumage is this?” when confronted with the unashamed, borderline bare-chested, parading female forms of softcore sauce pots, Mary and Madeleine Collinson—the first identical twin Playboy playmates, who previously played together in the 1969 British sex comedy, Some Like It Sexy—in their frequently nip-slipping nighties. This dynamic fuels a reactionaries versus plunging necklines, religious repression versus a zeitgeisty, girls will be girls, female lib bent. Keep your pervy eyes peeled for an audacious and hilarious, glaringly symbolic hand gesture, with a lady wax-grasping, and stroking the shaft of a sizeable candle during a love scene.