Go Retire Psychiatrist

Svengoolie Intro: “Calling all stations! Clear the air lanes! Clear all air lanes for the big broadcast!”

Well, this movie is all about Captain Kronos, a real swashbuckler and we are going to by god buckle some swashes, so hang on to your codpiece because, as Kronos himself says about his hunch-backed buddy, Grost, “What he doesn’t know about vampirism wouldn’t fill a flea’s codpiece!”

The players are: Horst Janson (plays Kronos); Caroline Munro (plays Carla); John Cater (plays Grost); John Carson (plays Dr. Marcus); Shane Briant (plays Paul Durward); Lois Daine (plays Sara Durward); Wanda Ventham (plays Lady Durham); William Hobbs (plays Lord Hagen Durward).

One thing you need to know about Kronos is that he’s definitely not the Kronos of Greek mythology, the king of the Titans (not the football team) and the god of time who swallowed all his children because, well, he was hungry.

But there is a connection because Captain Kronos has to kick the butt of whatever vampire is stealing the youthful vitality of the people in whatever village this adventure takes place.

Vampirism is a multifaceted thing and you can read a very long Wikipedia article about it if you’re interested. The strange point is, vampires can suck whatever out of their victims, not just blood, and you have to use your imagination to figure out how they can suck abstractions like youth, vitality, energy and the like out of them. Apparently, you still need fangs for that. Don’t overthink it.

The only jokes about this special kind of vampirism I could find were by Artificial Intelligence (AI). The only pictures of vampires on the web are the Dracula type creatures. You gotta make it up.

Anyway, Marcus calls up Kronos and asks for help tracking down whatever is causing young women to suddenly get old and decrepit in the village. Kronos and his little hunchback buddy, Hieronymus Grost are pro vampire hunters and Kronos has mysterious little scars on the back of his neck. They pick up a woman named Carla who was arrested for shoplifting candy cigarettes and then she quickly becomes Kronos’s main squeeze and spends the rest of the movie basically leering at everybody and everything.

Dead toads are important in this movie because they spring spring back to life whenever a vampire moves into the vicinity where the boxes in which they’re placed by Grost are located. Dr. Marcus gets waylaid by a vitality vampire and you can guess what happens to him. He begs Kronos to kill him and then a wild, dizzying series of fang-infested scenes signaling vampire-type stuff starts up, leading to a puzzling Perseus vs Medusa-like encounter between Kronos and Lady Durham with the latter reciting a complicated, dramatic explanation for why things are the way they are in the village and I’m not going to drop any spoilers about that.

The best part of the show was the Too Drawn Out puzzle guessing game in which Svengoolie draws pictures that refers to something about the movie which Nostalgiaferatoo has to figure out. He didn’t.

I think this movie got pretty contrived and I give it a Shrilling Chicken Rating of 1/5.