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An intriguing gamble to reset Hammer vampirism, this bold re-imagining alas came too late. Brian Clements, a prolific screen-writer, did a surprisingly assured job of direction here (his only attempt).

But, if there's a fault, his screenplay is just too thin in terms of characterisation. Yes, an element of mystery is supposed to linger around vampire-slayer Kronos (Horst Janson), hunchback assistant Grost (John Cater) and gypsy temptress Carla (Caroline Munro). But their personas are just a bit under-developed and two-dimensional. You want to know them more but you don't get to. Still, there's strong support from ever-reliable John Carson and Ian Hendry, a gusty music score by Laurie Johnson, and even a slightly different take on the usual set-design by Robert Jones.

But apparently Hammer executive producer Michael Carreras, who'd taken over from his father James, disliked Clemens' divergence from the usual Dracula fare and the film wasn't released until two years later, without much fanfare. What a pity; with a bit more shading in of the characters it might have kept Hammer in the garlic-and-fangs business a bit longer.

It's now seen as a cult-film, and - unfortunately - perhaps an opportunity wasted.

Comic-strip Alistair Maclean adventure that whirls through the violence and action, quite content with its two-dimensional characterisation and clipped cardboard cynicism (Maclean wrote the screenplay himself).

Director Etienne Perrier handles the standard action sequences and thrills quite adequately with the help of brisk editing. He and cinematographer Arthur Ibbetson get maximum mileage out of the locations on Scotland's rugged north-west coast, with lowering grey skies, craggy cliffs, and tempestuous waves and whirlpools to the fore.

A young Anthony Hopkins makes a more than passable action-hero (like James Bond, a Royal Navy commander). But apart from Robert Morley as his snooty Whitehall boss, the rest of the cast (Jack Hawkins, Ferdy Mayne, Nathalie Delon) are reduced mainly to just mouthing clumsily dubbed clichéd ripostes. As villains, they're so sparsely developed by Maclean that they don't add up to anything much at all.

Apparently the producers had hopes of spinning off a series of sequels. Indifferent box-office returns nixed that. Although superficially entertaining, Hopkins' hero is perhaps too slight a character to sustain the interest further.