VERONICA CARLSON
(18 September 1944 – 27 February 2022)
For a few years the British actress and former model Veronica Carlson was one of Hammer Films' glamorous leading ladies, appearing in a Dracula sequel and two Frankenstein films from the noted house of horror. She also featured in other companies' horror movies plus some other films and television series. However, her main acting career was fairly short-lived from 1967 to 1975, although she came back twenty years later for a few further appearances. On television she worked on The Saint, Randall and Hopkirk (Deceased), Hine, Spyder's Web and Public Eye.
Veronica Carlson, who has died aged 77 of natural causes, was born Veronica Mary Glazer in Yorkshire but was brought up in West Germany where her father, an RAF officer, was stationed. She later studied at the High Wycombe College of Art & Technology and became a successful painter. She appeared in college stage productions and did modelling work before making a couple of uncredited 1967 appearances in Casino Royale, with David Niven, and The Magnificent Two with Morecambe and Wise. She also had another brief appearance in Desmond Davis' Smashing Time with Rita Tushingham and Lynn Redgrave. Her first named part (as Ulla) was in David Miller's spy thriller Hammerhead (1968) with Vince Edwards, Judy Geeson and Diana Dors. It was not a great success, although Quentin Tarantino admitted he was a fan.
When Carlson was discovered by James Carreras of Hammer Films, he offered her a part in Freddie Francis' 1968 production, Dracula Has Risen from the Grave, appearing opposite Christopher Lee and Rupert Davies. She played Maria Mueller, widowed sister-in-law of Monsignor Ernst Mueller (Davies) who sets out to exorcise Dracula's castle. Then Terence Fisher cast Carlson for Frankenstein Must Be Destroyed (1969) in which she was Anna Spengler, a boarding house landlady who rents a room to the Baron who is in disguise until he reveals he is after a secret formula from Anna's fiancé. Her final film for Hammer was The Horror of Frankenstein (1970), produced, directed and co-written by Jimmy Sangster, who re-invented the genre as a black comedy by having Victor (Ralph Bates), the son of the original Baron, kill his own father and also the father of Elizabeth (Veronica Carlson), the woman who loves him, and his friend too in order to collect human body parts for his fiendish experiments. In her Hammer roles, Carlson demonstrated not only how beautiful she was but also her ability for screaming, always an essential part of any Hammer horror.
The other films that Carlson made were not up to Hammer's level of competence. Clive Donner directed her in Vampira (aka Old Dracula, 1974) in which the Count (David Niven) is a veteran reduced to giving tours of his castle before setting off to collect the blood of Playboy playmates. Freddie Frances directed The Ghoul (1975) in which Carlson played Daphne who gets killed and eaten by Peter Cushing's Indian servant! Earlier she had been in Crossplot with Roger Moore, Pussycat, Pussycat, I Love You with Ian McShane and, when she returned to films in 1994 she played a mad psychiatrist in Black Easter, and appeared in the portmanteau horror collection called Freakshow. In 2019 she joined former colleagues from her Hammer days, Caroline Munro, Martine Beswick and Christopher Neame for House of the Gorgon, but it was not up to Hammer's standards. Still to come is The Rectory, another version of the Borley Rectory story about the most haunted house in Britain.
Veronica Carlson retired when the film business was going in for more sex and nudity and, following her marriage to Sydney Love in 1974, she moved to Florida where she opened an art gallery. With her husband she has three children, daughter Carly and sons Adam and Marcus.
MICHAEL DARVELL