The Vampire Lovers (4½ Stars)

Now this is what cinema is all about. After being bored silly by films like "The Social Network" and "Sex and the City 2" you should watch "The Vampire Lovers" to remind yourself that cinema is an art form. Although it's 40 years old the film still shines as a masterpiece of storytelling today.

This is the first part of Hammer's Karnstein Trilogy. A vampire hunter has wiped out a family of vampires apart from one woman, Mircalla Karnstein, whose grave he couldn't find. Decades later a mysterious young woman stays at the houses of aristocrats, and wherever she goes young women die.

Ingrid Pitt plays the lead character, Mircalla. Her beauty is stunning throughout, though I find her character too cold. I realise that this is deliberate, but I would have preferred more warmth. I only found out today that Ingrid died last month, on November 23rd. Her life story would be good film material in itself. She was born in 1937 in Poland, and spent three years living with her mother in a German concentration camp. After the war she became a successful theatre actress in East Berlin. She suffered harrassment because she was an open critic of the Communist regime, and eventually she escaped to the West by swimming across the River Spree. She married the American soldier who rescued her from the water, and moved to California where she made her first films. After the break-up of her marriage she returned to Europe where she made a few films in Spain before settling in England. Apart from her film career she wrote about a dozen books, some of them horror novels, others biographical works. I bid farewell to a beautiful vampire. May she live forever in our hearts and on film.

Peter Cushing has a relatively small role in the film as General von Spielsdorf. Although he's a one-sided actor, he always manages to be placed in roles that fit his personality. There's no shame in only being able to play one type of role if you're the best there is for those roles.

Jon Finch is a brilliant but tragically underrated actor. Whenever he walks onto the screen in a film the other characters fade into the background. He claims that his lack of public recognition is deliberate. "I never wanted to be a big star. I usually do one film a year, so I always have enough money to enjoy myself and keep myself out of the public eye. It's a very pleasant life, not one of great ambition". This is our loss.

Madeline Smith could hardly be described as a good actress, but she's one of the most beautiful British actresses ever, and nobody can portray an innocent virgin as well as she can. Madeline boasts that she remained a virgin until marriage, so we can assume she was just acting naturally.