cult film freak: MADELEINE COLLINSON AND MARY COLLINSON IN 'TWINS OF EVIL'

Madeleine Collinson in TWINS OF EVIL Year: 1971 Rating: ****

The last in what's called Hammer's Karstein Trilogy, bringing their Victorian-Era horror into the sensuous sensibilities of then-modern drive-in-era 1970's with sex, lesbianism and nudity, TWINS OF EVIL defines exploitation cinema by the novelty casting of real life identical twin sisters who had famously posed for Playboy Magazine...

As the good and bad siblings, both Mary and Madeleine Collinson are equally gorgeous with full lips and cherubic cheeks (resembling American starlet Leigh Taylor Young)...

Mary Collinson and Madeleine Collinson (billed as Madelaine Collinson) in TWINS OF EVIL

Madeleine is curiously-devilish, eventually becoming a naughty vampire while Mary remains in virginal puppy-love with the film's sole male hero... despite Hammer's headlining star Peter Cushing, usually cast as the chief vampire hunter...

While that particular aspect does occur at the last minute, Cushing fervently portrays a rather one-dimensional religious zealot who burns young women at the stake, and is more antagonistic than Count Karstein himself...

Damien Thomas and Madeleine Collinson in TWINS OF EVIL

Who, with the usual dark menacing prowess and just dying to be immortal, gets his wish after being bitten by a 200-year old/young-looking countess brought back after he tortures one of several sexy young ladies...

So basically, both Damien Thomas and Cushing have a penchant for slaughtering hotties, but for two different reasons... providing the only truly dashing hero in professionally-handsome girls-school teacher David Warbeck...

Isobel Black in TWINS OF EVIL

A decade earlier, his innocuously doomed sister Isobel Black was the antagonistically nubile neck-biter in Hammer's KISS OF THE VAMPIRE... and he has the usual enigmatic attraction to naughty sibling Madeleine Collinson while eventually racing against time to protect the innocent Mary but, overall, men don't matter much since TWINS OF EVIL is obviously about the twins... but there should have been equal time given for both contrasting personalities...

Overall, despite being dubbed in British having a thick Maltese accent, and aptly using facial expressions to dictate her character's crafty resilience, Madeleine Collinson relishes a tour-de-force performance as the deadly vamp-fatale while sister Mary mostly remains either frightened in bed or reacting in a chaste manner to her EVIL TWIN —who would have still stolen the picture had she been an only child.