Friday, October 18, 2013

31 Days of Halloween - Day 18 - Movie 1



Orphaned identical twin beauties, Maria and Frieda (Mary and Madeleine Collinson), move in their cold, strict, religious fanatic of an uncle (Peter Cushing) who roams the countryside with his group, the Broterhood, burning young women as witches. The rebellious Frieda, determined to escape a life with her uncle, gets herself involved with the wicked, evil worshipping, hedonist, Count Karnstein (Damien Thomas) who turns her into a vampire that plagues the village and must hide her secret from her sister and especially her uncle.

I have to say I really enjoy Twins of Evil (1971). Sure it's very exploitive in the nudity and sex department, sometimes to the point of unintentional hilarity, but there's a really dark tone to this movie, where the hero is a hateful and detestable man who kills women as being evil sinners for the most spurious of reasons. Cushing is great in his role, probably the harshest character he's ever played, and I remain in awe of someone who is able to convincingly play such extremes as his gentle and kind characters such as Dr. Van Helsing and some really diabolical ones, such as Baron Frankenstein. I also really enjoyed the Collinson sisters as the twins. They were fairly mesmerizing to watch, and even though their characters did fall along the lines of good twin - wicked twin, because of their portrayals of these characters it was really easy to tell who was who throughout, even when they were neutral on screen.



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