Hammer House of Horror: Carpathian Eagle (1980)
Season 1, Episode 9
7/10
Hammer House Of Horror: Carpathian Eagle (Francis Megahy, 1980) (TV) ***
27 October 2007
This is one of the more original and intriguing entries (with a serial killer following the modus operandi of notorious, albeit fictitious, past criminals) – despite a bland title and some definite camp elements (silly Hungarian accent, transvestite cabaret act, outrageous production design). Actually, it would probably have worked even better stretched out to feature-length – as a lot of time is taken up here by the police procedural and the romantic complications at the expense of the central character's psychology. Still, I feel it was pointless to introduce a red herring after having already revealed the killer's identity! Besides, the series in general shows rather a lack of variety with its propensity for downbeat endings. There's a good performance by the attractive, statuesque leading lady – while "guest star" Sian Philips appears as the ageing last descendant of the Hungarian killer to which the title refers; future James Bond, Pierce Brosnan, also features in a smallish role as one of the lustful victims! Unfortunately, I experienced a few audio/video problems during playback of this particular episode – where the audio was slightly (if continually) out-of-synch and the image even skipped at one point; bafflingly, then, no glitches came up when I tried the disc on my other DVD player model!
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