10 Hammer Horror Movies You NEED To See

Continuing the countdown of Hammer classics is a criminally underrated vampire flick, Twins Of Evil, part three of the 'Karnstein Trilogy' (The Vampire Lovers and Lust For A Vampire make up the rest), very loosely based on the classic Gothic novella Carmilla by Sheridan Le Fanu. Twins Of Evil has received its fair share of flack over the years, it's not the most politically correct horror but it features one of Peter Cushing's greatest performances, in a movie bursting with camp, sexy, over the top blood sucking delights.

In seventeenth century Austria, identical twins (it's truly uncanny) Maria and Frieda are sent to live with their uncle, Gustav Weil, a puritanical type, who enjoys burning peasant girls at the stake on a nightly basis. Gustav has a lot to contend with though - the slimy, Satan worshipping Count Karnstein, recently vampirised by the resurrected Countess Mircalla (an anagram of Carmilla), has set his sights on the feisty Frieda. Can the lovelorn local music teacher Anton keep his mind out of the gutter and rescue Frieda from the clutches of the vampire in time? Is anyone paying attention to the story or just watching former Playboy models Mary and Madeleine Collinson jiggle around the set?

Burnings, beheadings, thunder, lightening, vampires, Satanic pacts, it's all here in spades. Cushing gives Gustav a chilling intensity, made all the more poignant by the fact that his wife had died a mere two months prior to filming - a true English gentleman if ever there was one.