The one person they cannot seem to touch and yet want the most is the Count Karnstein, who is openly debauched and defiant but is protected by the emperor. Lobby-card for “Twins of Evil” (under its Stateside title of “Twins of Dracula”) featuring a young woman being “purified” by Weil and his band of miserable men. The story opens with Gustav Weil (Peter Cushing in the most intense role of his career), a sort of Witchfinder General and leader of a band of Puritan zealots in nightly raids where they accost young women on the roads at night or invade the homes of people whom they deem as devil worshippers (i.e., mostly unmarried women who are sexually active) and “…purify their spirits so they may find mercy at the seat of the Lord-by burning them!” What we end up with is an interesting juxtaposition of the evils of deviltry and debauchery compared to the evils of austerity and religious zealotry. Apparently, producer Michael Style saw their layout in said issue and approached writer Tudor Gates about changing their Current project, “The Vampire Virgins” (a/k/a “Village of the Vampires”, a sort of Witchfinder-General-meets-the-Karnsteins story) and convinced him to tailor the script to include the twin sisters. Madeleine and Mary Collinson are identical twins from Malta whom, jointly, had made a splash as Playboy’s first twin Playmates of the Month for their October 1970 issue. These cover scans are from the library of author Christopher Fulbright.October 1970 issue of Playboy featuring the Collinson Twins.

To view a list of his novels and stories available in print and ebook formats, please click here. Hutson claims to have since settled down, telling much of his personal story and plenty more on his official website. Hutson was known in those days as an unrepentant metalhead, and those who saw him on the street would likely have mistook him for a member of a metal band himself, with some aspects of the lifestyle to match. American horror fans from the 1980s and 1990s may know him best as the author of Slugs, Erebus, The Skull, and Spawn. In addition to his horror novels and thrillers, he has also written westerns, war novels, UFO novels, children’s books, and movie novelizations, including the novelization of The Terminator and Hammer films’ Twins of Evil. He has written over 50 novels under six pseudonyms including Nick Blake, Robert Neville, and Samuel P. He later moved on to writing fast-moving urban thrillers. Shaun Hutson is a British horror author, known in his early years as a writer of gory creature features and over-the-top novels of shock.

Twins of Evil by Shaun Hutson