The great Peter Cushing goes around hunting witches and he is a full puritan. He creates an unpleasant character from the first scenes, which becomes hateful, when he tries to force his nieces Maria and Frieda to go around with high-necked dresses
and especially dressed in black.
It’s true that his ideas are only to protect the local community, but we can’t see Mary and Madeleine Collinson in all their beauty. The Collinson twins. From Malta. The first twins to pose for Playboy, protagonists of an interesting scene in "Some Like It Sexy" and later, of some other film in addition to this third and final chapter of the trilogy Karnstein. Then, they dedicate themselves to the family, Madeleine returns home, where she dies in 2014, while Mary, according to Imdb, would live in Milan.
The tits and vampires trilogy of the Hammer Film ends here in 1971, with John Hugh sitting behind the camera and with Tudor Gates who, as always, writes the screenplay, inspiring (so to speak) by the story of Sheridan Le Fanu.
The result is a film much more interesting than its direct predecessor, that is "Lust for a vampire" and that can be considered as a sort of prequel of the whole saga. A fascinating film thanks to the presence of the two actresses, but also thanks to a Peter Cushing in the role of a Van Helsing-not Van Helsing and above all thanks to a very well structured plot with some twists.
The usual super cast of Hammer productions continue with Dennis Price, Isobel Black, Kathleen Byron and "our" David Warbeck, all as always in an elegant production.
The twins Collinson interpret Frieda and Maria, who after some time go to the house of their Uncle Gustav (Peter Cushing). In this village the atmosphere is tense, Gustav and his associates hunt the witches and doubt about Count Karnstein (Damien Thomas) who lives in a castle that dominates the village from above. Frieda, much more rebellious than her sister (who falls in love with a simple teacher) ends up in the arms of the Count, who in the meantime has become a vampire. Gustav tries to stop the reborn bloodsucker.
Interesting closure for a trilogy that had to refresh the Hammer brand but only partially succeeded.