If memory serves me correctly, this is the first official Hammer Horror film that I have ever seen. Twins of Evil takes place during the great witchhunts of central Europe when thousands of people were wrongfully executed for witchcraft and the dark arts. Maria and Frieda, two recently orphaned twin teenagers, move to central Europe to live with their uncle Gustav Weil (played by Hammer regular Peter Cushing). Weil is the leader of a group of Puritans who periodically spirit away single women in order to burn them for witchcraft. However, he is periodically thwarted by the evil Count Karnstein, a local aristocrat who indulges in Satanic rites. During one of his blood offerings, he resurrects a vampress who turns him into a vampire. Frieda, resentful of her uncle's rule, runs off to be with him and is also turned into a vampire. Now, the local village must stop Karnstein and Frieda in their reign of terror and from framing innocent Maria for crimes she did not commit. Being a Hammer film, it is not a subtle film. The blood runs quicker and more red, the women are more pale-skinned, and the evil puritans are more sinister and foreboding. This could have easily been a work of kitsch, but director John Hough is so confident in the story that we believe it and feel thrilled to be along for the ride.
7/10
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