TWINS OF EVIL (1971)

(Image from Wrong Side of the Art)

If we’re going to maintain our open and honest relationship here, I have to confess that I’m more a Hammer afficianado than an outright fan. Even during their heyday in the mid- to late-‘60s, their budgets were minimal and it showed all over the screen. My favorite of their dubious trademarks included towns located on some strange time-split where it was often and simultaneously daylight on one side and misty night on the other. But where they lacked in money their movies made up for in atmosphere and a sense of otherworldliness. More importantly, they employed a pair of actors who lent gravitas to the proceedings: Peter Cushing and / or Christopher Lee. As long as one or the other appeared in the film, you were guaranteed some level of enjoyment.

For me, Hammer movies seemed to follow a standard beat sheet: Intriguing opening, usually bloody; then came the long middle part where carbon-copy young lovers, usually star-crossed, are introduced, their family feuds established, and perhaps hidden amongst all of this you’ll get a fun set-piece involving fangs or monsters but always cleavage. Finally, an exciting climax and a bloody ending. Since Hammer was competing with larger companies they continually pushed their “blood ‘n boobs” formula as hard as they could against the membrane of censorship also known as the British Board of Film Classification. Long before the board caved to pressure from self-appointed Minister of Decency, Mary Whitehouse, the BBFC during the Hammer years were actually pretty progressive, as far as censoring outfits go. This is largely due to the presence of Secretary of the Board, John Trevelyan, who saw his role in and of the board as men who are “paid to have dirty minds”. From 1958–1971, Trevelyan attempted to work with filmmakers and explain what cuts had to be made prior to a film’s release.

Of course, that’s his point of view. Some filmmakers, naturally, felt that he was the ultimate enemy. Roy Ward Baker, who directed The Vampire Lovers and Scars of Dracula for Hammer, notoriously called Trevelyan a “sinister mean hypocrite”, who played favorites with those he felt were in the “art house crowd” as opposed to commercial film directors. Acording to Baker and echoed by others, Trevelyan “kissed ass” with the bigger names in British Cinema. This relationship was sorely tested by Ken Russell and his still-controversial masterpiece, The Devils. While the two men warred over a sequence dubbed “the Rape of Christ” (a ten-minute scene that has only recently been restored to prints of the movie), John Hough took advantage of the distraction as he readied Twins of Evil for screens.

Twins of Evil is the third film of the so-called “Karnstein Trilogy”—the previous being The Vampire Lovers with Ingrid Pitt and its follow up Lust for a Vampire—all based on J. Sheridan LeFanu’s ode to the sapphic vampiric, Carmilla. Adapted by future rabble-rouser and trade unionist, Tudor Gates, the “Karnstein Trilogy” are perceived by some to be the last “great” films of the Hammer era, before their slide into utter poverty, and are notable for daring depictions of lesbianism, a theme that had gotten ten minutes chopped from “art house” film, The Killing of Sister George, in 1968.

As a trilogy, the “Karnstein” storyline doesn’t really work, having no real continuity to speak of, except for the name of the evil family and their matron, Mircalla (aka Carmilla). The first film of the series, The Vampire Lovers, set film-goers all a-twitter with its boundary-leaping scenes of blood and nudity and girl-vampire on girl-vampire action. The next two installments were toned down for British sensibilities.

While tamer than its predecessors, Hough’s Twins of Evil exploits some of this newfound exploitative freedom by casting Playboy’s first twin playmates, Mary and Madeleine Collinson, as the titular characters (no puns, please, we’re British). Maria and Frieda Gellhorn arrive in Karnstein from Venice, two years after their parents died. They show up at their Aunt Katy’s house in green, instead of the customary black-for-the-rest-of-your-lives. This enrages puritanical Uncle Gustav Weill (Cushing). “What kind of plumage is this? Birds of paradise?” But don’t be too hard on Uncle Gustav, he and The Brotherhood have been busy burning witches all night, doing God’s work. And by “witches”, these Bible-weilding psychopaths mean “unmarried women”, “women walking alone on a road”, “old crones”, anyone who has ever thought about having sex—you know, witches. In fact, the title sequence portrays one of these boys-being-boys bonfires after dragging a teenage girl forcibly from her home, lashing her cruxifix-style to a tree and then setting her on fire. And she screams and screams as the “devils” flee from her “purified” body. In the back, Pat Buchannan nods approvingly.

Within seconds of arriving, the more-willful Frieda is ready to skip town as soon as she can find someone appropriately handsome and dangerous. One of Gustav’s primary adversaries is Count Karnstein himself (played by Damian Thomas, best-known as the baboon prince Kassim in Sinbad and the Eye of the Tiger), a decadent lover, vague ruler and admitted Satanist who takes great delight in humiliating Gustav and his puritanical ways. Which, this early in the film, is a point in his favor since thus far Gustav has failed to win the hearts of the minds of the viewer.

But then we are whisked away to Castle Karnstein where the Count is being bored out of his mind during an actual Satanic pageant. Once he angrily dismisses the players, he finishes the sacred “stab the naked girl” ritual himself, evokes Satan but winds up with Mircalla instead. She makes him into a vampire (in a nifty shot in which she stands behind Karnstein but he alone is reflected in the mirror, and he watches himself fade away as he turns fangy).

Before long, Karnstein is out to find something of Gustav’s to corrupt and sets his sights on Frieda. Frieda is loved and admired by schoolmaster Anton (David Warbeck of Fulci’s The Beyond)—literally, he can only see her, the rest is vaseline on the lens—when he really should be attracted to the more-demure Maria because… well, hell, she looks just like Frieda but she isn’t a bitch. Besides, as everyone—everyone—points out, the two sisters simply cannot be told apart. Frieda exploits this by sneaking about at night and making Maria pretend to be her, so that Maria gets beaten twice (it’s implied by not only Gustav but every patriarchal figure they’ve ever encountered). Strangely, Maria can sense when Frieda is hurt, but either Frieda can’t feel Maria or just doesn’t give a damn.

As typical of Hammer, no one heeds the vampire warnings (even though, apparently, there’s already one running around long before the Count is turned during sex with his dead relative), more busty girls are either bitten or are flame-broiled by Gustav, and Frieda tramps around with Karnstein until she, too, is a mistress of the night. Her first task is to bite into the plump breast of Luan Peters (aka singer Karol Keyes) before the camera quickly cuts to anything else lest Trevelan wield his scissors.

If you’ve seen a Hammer film—any of them—you know what’s going to happen. But Hough and Gates pull some nifty turns along the way. When Gustav catches neice Frieda feasting on one of the Brotherhood, he has her locked up so that he can make sure the rest of the family is safe, planning on burning her later. Sorry, purifying her later. But Karnstein manages to switch Maria for Frieda and soon it’s the nice slutty twin that’s heading to the stake and Hough plays this sequence to the hilt of suspense. 

The second twist is far more subtle and involves Gustav’s character, which more than proves Cushing’s a master thespian. After he almost turns the incorrect neice into jerk chicken, Gustav’s faith in his own crusade gets shattered. This is never discussed openly, but you can watch it work on Cushing’s face. Used to the seat of power, when Anton presents Maria with a crucifix and she kisses—rather than sizzling beneath it like Fried did—Gustav is visibly shaken. While he never says it, it’s clear he’s wondering how many other innocent women have been put to death under his pious wrath. We see a glimpse of his regret just as he’s about to put the torch to Maria, refusing to pass it to his second in command—this isn’t some random wench to be roasted for fun and, you know, “God’s will”; this is his neice, who he swore to protect. The realization that he could very well have killed his own flesh and blood in the same manner as he had “purified” so many others chills him.

After this sequence, Gustav still leads the Brotherhood but defers to Anton. “You’re sure a stake to the heart will release [Frieda]? That her pure spirit will be saved?” For the first time in the film, we see all his noxious, prideful bull-puckey summed up in a question. Maybe the others in The Brotherhood were just out for a rolicking witch-burning, but Gustav honestly—honestly—believed he was saving the innocent souls of the wicked. Without the subtlety of Cushing’s performance revealing the man beneath the zealot, Gustav could have remained a villainous figure for the rest of the picture.

While Count Karnstein is really the villain of the piece—with his fangs, his coiffure and cape—but more than anything, he’s just kind of a dick. He spends the climax in a vault, shoving out or dragging in one sister after another and locking the door again, taking few steps to take the upper hand. Gustav, for all his evangelical lunacy, was a man of action and principals. Yes, he shared Karnstein’s arrogance, but he wasn’t out burning witches every night because he was bored.

It’s this last-act transformation that allows Twins of Evil to rise above its formula. It’s not the first time Cushing has helped this elevation; each of his turns as Baron Frankeinstein in the Hammer series shows a different man beneath the madness. But beyond the sex, blood, atmosphere and pretty photography, Twins of Evil gives the viewer something to think about, namely: think long and hard before you’re convinced of your own righteous. 

BURKE AND HARE (2010)

Up the close and down the stair,
In the house with Burke and Hare.
Burke’s the butcher, Hare’s the thief,
Knox, the boy who buys the beef.

Burke and Hare,
Fell down the stair,
With a body in a box,
Going to Dr. Knox.

 —19th-century Edinburgh jumping-rope rhyme

Between November 1827 to 31 October 1828, a pair of Irish immigrants named William Burke and William Hare, murdered seventeen people and sold their bodies to Doctor Robert Knox. An anatomy instructor to students of Edinburgh Medical College, Knox needed cadavers for his “hands-on” lectures, but was hobbled by a silly little law that limited the supply of medical cadavers to that of executed criminals. Tragically, Scotland was experiencing a severe reduction in executions due to the scaling back of “The Bloody Code” (aka The Death Penalty) in favor of transporting criminals to Australia. As a result, less than six corpses were available to the growing rate of medical students. This gave rise to the carreer of “resurrectionist” (grave robbers, body snatchers) and, very quickly, “anatomy murder”. Which brings us back around to our heroes, Williams Burke and Hare.

With the assistance of Hare’s wife Margaret “Lucky” Laird and Burke’s lady-friend, “actress” Helen McDougal, the Williams became quite skilled in keeping Dr. Knox’s lectures going. They even developed a method of murder wherein they would sit on their drunk or drugged victims and crush their chests, while also smothering them. It was quick and clean, did no damage to the body beyond, you know, death. It came to be called “burking” (a term still used in the United Kingdom today, though it’s applied more to the peaceful or quiet suppression of dissent).

Because neither of the Williams or their ladyfriends could keep their bloody mouths shut, particularly when they were drunk—which, being Irish, was most of the time—they were eventually caught after a certain night when Burke “casually”—as casually as one known for a “ferocious and malignant disposition” [Newry Telegraph, 31 March 1829—Correspondence from the Northern Whig] can be—asked about the health of every single family member of a local business owner. Oh, and when most of Knox’s students recognized the fresh body of a local boy nicknamed “Daft Johnny”. (Knox dismissed this as nonsense and hurriedly removed the face, hands and feet of the corpse.)

Soon, the perpetrators of the “Westport Murders” were arrested (on admittedly thin evidence, according to the local constabulary). The ladies were acquitted due to lack of evidence; Hare struck a deal and pinned then entire mess on Burke, who was then hanged on January 28, 1829. Dr. Knox was never implicated in the affair but lost his standing at Edinburgh and by 1842 had taken a position at the London Free Cancer Hospital. He died quietly in 1862, was buried and was not resurrected. As a direct result of the actions of these villains, The Anatomy Act 1832 passed, increasing the methods of legal means for acquiring medical corpses and putting a kibosh on the incentive for grave robbing and anatomy murder. Little is known of Hare’s post-burking career, but the remains of both Williams ended up at the Edinburgh College, where they can be seen today.

In 1884, the pair were immortalized in Robert Louis Stevenson’s story “The Body Snatcher", which was made into a film starring Boris Karloff and produced by Val Lewton n 1945. In 1953, Dylan Thomas wrote a play inspired by them called The Doctor and the Devils, which was made into a 1985 film directed by Freddie Francis, who had previously directed an adaptation of the story, The Flesh and the Fiends, in 1960 starring Peter Cushing as Dr. Knox. The pair has shown up in one form or another in episodes of Alfred Hitchcock Presents and Dr. Who, countless short stories, novels and, as seen at the beginning of this piece, children’s jump-rope chants. Which just goes to show that body snatching takes many, many forms.

Burke and Hare, the latest telling of the exploits of this wacky duo showed up in the U.K., starring your favorite and mine, Simon Pegg as Burke, Andy Serkis as “Hare” (and not a motion-captured creature for a change), Tom Wilkinson as Knox and Tim Curry as Knox’s nemesis, Dr. Monro (who loves nothing more than to carry around new pairs of “display feet” to show to the upper crust). Directing this bloody, nasty, dark and brutal tale is none-other than John Landis. The film also features cameos by Jenny Augutter, Ronnie Corbett, Bill Bailey and a surprise visit from Sir Christopher Lee. Actually, this go-around isn’t dark, or nasty or very brutal. In fact, Landis has described it as a romantic comedy and the titular characters are really the heroes of this film! …Kinda. Depending on your definition of “hero”, I suppose. At the very least, they’re the most loveable serial murderers you’ve seen in a long time.

The lovable, hapless rogues are at the end of their rope (although not yet, literally), failing at numerous con-schemes and snake oil sales, and just when it seems all is lost, they hear about the plight of the anatomy professor. Seeing a hole in the supply end of this particular economics, they ponder the potential when Hare’s wife, Lucky (Jessica Hynes), declares that one of their upstairs tenants has passed on. And needs gotten-rid-of. Stuffing the poor gent into a barrel, the pair roll the fresh body (albeit, one snapped in half in order to fit into said barrel) over to Knox’s castle. Upon inspection, the corpse-poor anatomist offers them a large sum of money to bring him two bodies per week, no questions asked.

Elated at the prospect but unsure how to go about achieving their weekly goal, the Williams stop off for a pint and it’s there that Willie Burke meets and falls in love with Helen McDougal (Isla Fisher). The former prostitute is currently pursuing a career in acting, hoping to some day produce an all-female version of MacBeth. If only she could find a financier...

Returning home, joy-upon-joys, a drunken Lucky declares that their last tenant is so close to death he just needs to be reminded to shove-off. And that’s when the duo sits down (upon dying Joseph) and invent “burking”. Out of tenants but not ideas, our heroes set out to ply their new trade to greater or lesser success. Soon the money is rolling in. Hare begins saving up for his own funeral parlor, while Burke fancies himself as Helen’s future backer (and fronter, if he plays his cards right and you get my meaning).

Landis’ Burke and Hare follows the timeline and methods, more or less, of the real duo’s history, but plays around with the rest of the details for additional fun. For instance, while it’s true that Charles Darwin was a student of Dr. Monro’s for a time, rather than assisting in acquiring legal corpses for the obsequious surgeon, he was so disgusted by the man’s attitudes toward dissection—including showing up for business meetings still covered in the red of his trade—that it turned Darwin off medicine entirely, switching his attention to Naturalism and Natural History. (So you creationists out there should focus a little more of your bitterness onto Monro.) There is no evidence to support the film’s depiction of Monro’s literal foot fetish, and even less evidence to support that Hare did anything with his life following his betrayal of Burke, let alone establish a thriving funeral parlor. And the idea that Willie Burke was just a sweet, lonely lad with flexible scruples may well be the biggest fabrication of them all. But none of that should bother you unless you’re one of those anal compulsive experts on resurrectionists. And if you are, you undoubtedly have much bigger things to worry about.

Much has been made about Burke and Hare being John Landis’ first feature film in over ten years, but while that’s true, it isn’t like the famed director has been treading water all these years, what with his work on documentaries, episodes of The Masters of Horror, etc., so don’t call this a “comeback”. At least not to his face. Burke and Hare is a far cry from the chaos of The Blues Brothers and An American Werewolf in London. Instead, it has the restrained absurdity and dignified slapstick of the classic Ealing Studios like The Lavender Hill Mob. 

In fact, Ealing has had a bit of a resurgence in the last decade, thanks to the remake of the mysteriously-popular “St. Trinian’s Girls” movies. For further connection, “St. Trinian's” writers Piers Ashworth and Nick Moorcroft penned the B&H screenplay, Pegg’s (and Wright’s) landmark Shaun of the Dead and Neal Marshall’s The Descent were shot on the Ealing lots. By Landis’ own admission, “This is very much my attempt to make an Ealing comedy, in the very black tradition of Kind Hearts and Coronets and The Ladykillers, where the whole cast murders one another.” (“Burke and Hare behind the scenes”, The Telegraph, Horatia Harrod 04 Oct 2010) According to Serkis (in the same article), Landis wanted the Burke and Hare dynamic to be “like an evil Laurel and Hardy”, and since the actors are getting along so well, we, as an audience, can forgive the nasty murder and corpse-abuse.

One final bit of geekery before we move on: most of the gory body parts were supplied by none-other than friend-of-Landis-and-horror-fans-all, Greg Nicotero. “You gotta pull favours in this industry, there’s no money”, said Pegg (same piece).

Like the majority of the Ealing Studios’ films, Burke and Hare is amusing but not hilarious, romantic but not saccharine, and has a slower pace than our modern deficient attention spans are used to without being boring. Sometimes the European and American sensibilities clash—we’re much more appreciative of the emptying of bed pans onto characters, moreso when the gag is repeated. We also appreciate it when our anti-heroes drop the “anti” in the third act, so that instead of one William betraying the other, the latter makes a noble sacrifice for the former. Whether or not we Yankees get the cameo by William Wordsworth or the numerous anachronisms is really beside the point. So, too, is the film’s message “who’s more evil, the killers or the doctors?” It’s not like those things will stifle enjoyment.

What will stifle enjoyment, or even the opportunity to decide, is the fact that Burke and Hare has come and gone in the United Kingdom, available on PAL DVD and Blu-Ray, the closest we here in the states can come to the film is to stream it on Amazon On-Demand. No formal DVD release date has been announced, let alone a theatrical screening. We, as a nation should protest. May I recommend petitioning the holders of the U.S. rights, IFC Films? We should all send them a fresh corpse to make our point.