An expert at burning the witches that apparently plague the countryside surrounding his home, Puritan elder Peter Cushing has learned a few secrets over the years: 1) Witches tend to be young, attractive women. 2) It's best to surprise them in the middle of the night. 3) Witches burn best with parts of their clothing torn off. Having relieved much of the area of its beauties, Cushing is understandably upset to find that the twin nieces (Playboy Playmates Mary and Madeleine Collinson) sent to live with him after their parents' death also fit the profile. Could they also be witches? The local wicked Count (Damien Thomas) knows better than to buy into such nonsense: He can't find a decent necromancer for miles, much less a coven of witches. "Is this your manifestation of the devil?" he barks after a particularly flimsy excuse for a black celebration. "I exorcise him." Dismissing the would-be evildoers, he decides to carry on with a human sacrifice of his own, unwittingly calling forth his dead wife in the process. Soon, it's vampires galore, a change that doesn't sit well with Cushing, who's prepared to deal with evil only when it takes the form of the defenseless and the weak. Madeleine Collinson, on the other hand, loves the change, and she goes against the advice of both her sister and her uncle, befriending Thomas while wearing a variety of outfits with plunging necklines. After making the occupational shift into vampirism, she joins Thomas in his reign of terror. Perhaps hoping to make sense out of the title, Thomas then pursues Mary, the still-virtuous twin, kidnapping her and bringing her back to his castle high on the hill. When it becomes clear that he has no choice, Cushing teams up with a kindly choirmaster to send the devil back to hell. In a massive Puritans-vs.-vampires battle royal, Cushing and Thomas finally do each other in, greatly reducing the chances that their community's comeliest members will die either tied to a stake, or at the end of one.
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