Fun premise, good actors, bad writing. This film seemed to have potential at the beginning but it quickly devolves into a trite action film. Ultimately it's very boring.

This is a coming of age storyline that you've seen in one form or another for decades. It takes a truly unique voice to make yet another one worth watching.

The movie's neither hopeful in contrived ways, nor hopeless in different contrived ways. Somehow it manages to be wonderful

Watching it is like watching the spectacle of a class clown at their best: you laugh at their jokes, instigate their defiance, and "ooooh" when they get in trouble.

Worth seeing as an an interesting twist on the vampire legends. Here the vampires drain the victim of their youth, not just their blood, leaving them aged looking and dead. The vampire in return stays young. The lead characters are well acted and intriguing. I especially like the scene where Captain Kronos teaches some bullies in a bar a deadly lesson about manners and swordsmanship. My only complaints are it's slow moving at times and the characters have a 1960s/70s hairstyle and makeup look to them. They don't all look like they belong in the period that is supposed to be the film's time. One character even looks like a Twiggy look-a-like. Also, the good captain sure waited till the last second before rescuing the women he used for vampire bait. Still the film is over all fun to watch. and worth your time.

Captain Kronos – Vampire Hunter is written and directed by Brian Clemens. It stars Horst Janson, John Cater, John Carson, Caroline Munro, Shane Briant, Lois Daine and Wanda Ventham. Out of Hammer Film Productions, music is by Laurie Johnson and cinematography by Ian Wilson.Swashbuckling vampire slayer Captain Kronos (Janson) answers the call of his friend Dr. Marcus (Carson) to investigate the mysterious goings on in the village of Durward. Young women are being drained of all their youth, left at deaths door old and haggard. Aided by his trusty hunchbacked assistant, Professor Grost (Cater), Kronos' search for the truth takes him to the Durward family estate…One of the last great Hammer Horror movies, Captain Kronos – Vampire Hunter has done well to rise through the decades as a sort of culty camp horror classic. Initial plans were for it to hopefully kick start a series that would see Kronos fighting evil at any given place in time; Doctor Who with a sword and a taste for the ladies if you like. Clemens had some grand ideas for the movie, but was quickly brought down to earth when he was handed the production's paltry budget. Barely released in Britain with little to no publicity, and this nearly two years after the film had wrapped! Kronos has had to fight more than one battle just to get recognised. Thankfully the advancements in home entertainments have ensured it a deserved place in the upper echelons of Hammer's output.The film is a collage of genres, part horror, part comedy, part swashbuckler adventure and part saucy seaside postcard romp, but it all works so well in the pursuit of making the audience have a good time. The writing flips the vampire legend away from the norm, infusing the narrative with a new vampyric foe. This crafty sod can operate in the daytime as it drains not blood, but youth! As the genius Professor Grost tells us, there are many types of vampires, and different methods are needed to execute any of them on any given day. So this isn't a case of Kronos tracking down the guilty and using one of the trusty old methods used on Drac, oh no! Kronos and Grosty have to use trial and error to see what will work for this particular beastie. Wonderful!On his journey Kronos liberates a beauty from the stocks, poor Carla (Munro) was found guilty of dancing on a Sunday, she can count herself lucky it wasn't a stronger punishment. So cue mucho sexual shenanigans and barely concealed innuendo between the two pretty ones, with suggestive conversations about having each other and some fondling of the sword. Kronos will also waylay bullies, he has no tolerance for meat heads and cuts them down faster than Zorro ever could. This guy is a hero to the common people, an action man of substance and cunning guile, he likes to drink and toke, it's criminal that he didn't get his own series or sequels.Under scrutiny the low budget is evident, where bare minimum of set dressing for the interiors and extended exterior shots are a necessity, while you might be surprised to realise there actually isn't that many people in the story! But Clemens does a marvellous job with what he had to work with, really zipping it along and blending so many genre flavours with consummate ease. It's a shame this was to be his only film directing effort. He even gets sparky performances from his cast, managing to sexualise Munro without flashing the flesh and turning Janson's stiffness into one of the film's assets!Captain Kronos – Vampire Hunter, a ball of fun that sticks its tongue firmly into its pulpy bloody strewn cheek. 8/10

A master swordsman and former soldier (Horst Janson) and his hunchbacked assistant hunt vampires.I was sold on this film as soon as a character said, "What could be more improbable than God? And yet, I believe in him." It was such a great reversal of atheist thought (that God is just as believable as unicorns) by saying if there is God, why not vampires and other ghouls? Clever! I also liked when Kronos called the various people "rat face" "fatty" and "big mouth". That was pretty funny, both for his choice of words and the way he delivered those words.

If you buy boxes of Hammer you almost never come across this flick. It's not very known and I guess the reason is simple, it doesn't have Christopher Lee or Peter Cushing in it although regular Caroline Munro is in it. But back then Caroline wasn't a big name, she made it a few years later with a few horrors. She did appear in earlier hammers like Dracula A.D. 1972 (1972). The acting was rather good and the effects used were very simple but where this flick do fails a bit is the fact that we don't see that often the vampires. It's more a story about Kronos himself, played by Horst Janson. You surely will recognize a few popular faces like Shane Briant and Ian Hendry.Was it scary? No it never was although we do see severed arms and heads but it is low on the horror factor for the year it was made. If you look at The Exorcist (1973) then this flick here is a big laugh. It's also made at the end of the Hammer era. They tried to move further from the Gothic horror and this here shows but they failed. During the late 1960s and 1970s the saturation of the horror film market by competitors and the loss of American funding forced changes to the previously lucrative Hammer-formula, with varying degrees of success. The Legend of the 7 Golden Vampires (1974) was a big flop and even To The Devil A Daughter (1976) failed too. In 1979 they stopped with a remake of Hitchcocks The Lady Vanishes. In fact Rosemary's Baby (1968) started a new era in horror.Still, it's worth watching for the typical Hammer effects and for Munro going full frontal in one scene. Gore 0/5 Nudity 1/5 Effects 2/5 Story 3/5 Comedy 0/5