The Legend of the 7 Golden Vampires (1979)

Having already been the foil to a comic duo in "Abbott and Costello Meet Frankenstein" (1948) and a gunslinger of the West in "Billy the Kid Versus Dracula" (1966), why not have Dracula face off against kung-fu fighters? The ninth and final film in Hammer's Dracula series, "The Legend of the 7 Golden Vampires" takes Hammer's Dracula in a decidedly campy direction, which is good. Although a couple of the studio's sequels may standout ("Taste the Blood of Dracula" (1970) is my favorite), most of them are bad, so why not camp it up a bit by mixing the genres of horror and kung-fu in an international co-production by Hammer, Britain's specialists in horror, and Shaw Brothers Studio, Hong Kong's popularizers of the kung-fu genre? Although, as teaming up with Abbott and Costello spelled the end for Universal's monster movies, this similarly absurd genre mashup was the last of Hammer's Dracula series.Christopher Lee already saw the calligraphy on the wall, however, and bailed out of this production, but, fortunately, Peter Cushing returns once more as Van Helsing. Three actors replace Lee as Dracula, as the Count takes on the appearance of a Chinese man for most of the movie, and another actor provides the character's voice. For some reason, this Dracula takes on a greenish appearance in one scene, and he understands Chinese and, yet, replies to Chinese in English. He also floats during his introduction, which is nice, although it's not as impressive as the floating scene of Lon Chaney Jr's Count in "Son of Dracula" (1943).Meanwhile, the seven golden vampires are ugly devils who wear masks--assumingly because they're ashamed of their appearances--and, inexplicably, wear golden medallions shaped like bats, which if lost cause the vampires' bodies to smoke. For the first time in Hammer's series, I believe, we see vampires transform from bats to humanoid form in the cave fight sequence. These vampires are also into bondage, as they strap their female victims to tables and let their blood flow into boiling water, for further inexplicable reasons. They live in a pagoda and summon a herd of zombies by hitting a gong. And, of course, they know kung fu. Their trademark move is tearing open women's tops to expose their breasts.After "Drakula Istanbul'da" (1953), this is the second Dracula film I've seen where the Count travels East instead of West. One concern of Bram Stoker's novel was the fear of reverse colonialism, so it seems entirely appropriate that the foreign-invader vampire, as well as the Englishman Van Helsing, would travel East, among the many colonies of the British Empire. Ever the good imperialist, Van Helsing is introduced this time lecturing Chinese professors on their own country's history and myths, while he mixes it up with his own Western ideas. Justifiably, the professors all storm out of the auditorium. Van Helsing, then, goes about getting other Chinese men killed in a war, while his son offends a local in the pursuit of a woman, which gets more Chinese men killed. On the other hand, and representing the film's multicultural production, it features two interracial romantic relationships.Van Helsing gives his usual lecture on vampire hunting. This time, he informs us that, instead of crosses, images of the Lord Buddha can be used in China to ward off vampires--although this tactic is only used twice here. With all of the makeshift crosses in prior Hammer Dracula films, I'm a bit disappointed nobody here tries to improvise a Buddha statue. Van Helsing is also asked about fire, which means that's going to be important later. The Professor replies that fire doesn't work in the West (obviously he didn't watch "Scars of Dracula" (1970)), but it might in the East, which means it will. Anyways, the climactic battle of "The Legend of the 7 Golden Vampires" is actually quite good. The film, overall, benefits from an adventure/journey plotting, and the Hong Kong setting opens up a series that, at times, was claustrophobic in its locations ("Dracula has Risen from the Grave" (1968) especially). And, although the usual conflict between Dracula and Van Helsing is only ancillary to the martial-arts action for the most part, Hammer's fangs and Shaw Brothers Studio's fists, already absurdist on their own, are a good mix in this fun genre mashup.(Mirror Note: no mirror shots.)

Widely criticised and panned by many critics over the past two decades, this is a film which deserves a lot more respect than it currently has, i.e. mainly serving as the whipping boy of late Hammer horror by critics who have watched the film on fast-forward. While plagued by some obvious flaws, THE LEGEND OF THE 7 GOLDEN VAMPIRES still manages to be one of the most enjoyable, trashy (and most of all fun) Hammer horror films that was ever made, with the tongue firmly in cheek this time around.The main problem with the film lies in the fact Dracula is no longer played by Christopher Lee, but instead the unknown John Forbes-Robertson (THE VAMPIRE LOVERS) with a ton of make-up on his face which makes him look more like a clown than any kind of threatening king of the undead. This really does make a mockery of Dracula and the film would have been a lot less embarrassing if they had made it without Dracula at all, let's face it, his presence is definitely a superfluous one. Why couldn't the leader of the vampires have been the bald Chinese guy, plain and simple, instead of dragging the Dracula character through the mud once more? I suppose the idea was to draw in the crowds, but by this time most fans were disappointed with Dracula 1972 AD and THE SATANIC RITES OF Dracula, and wouldn't bother anyway. The fact that Lee wasn't playing Dracula was yet another slap in the face and another reason to avoid this film.Still, let's forget about that minor miscalculation, and instead concentrate on what makes this film fun: the incredible mix of classic Hammer horror (blood drinking vampires, helpless girls chained up) and ferocious martial arts action, which is nowhere near as bad as the critics would have you believe and somewhat breathless on first viewing as huge battles take place. These martial arts sequences are the focus of the film, there are four in all, and they're all excellent in the famed Shaw Brothers style. The critics were just surprised by this film, in that it wasn't a typical Gothic chiller, instead more action-orientated, and acted in a hostile way because people just don't like change. Still, Hammer were desperate for success in the wake of popular horror like THE EXORCIST so anything would have been worth a try at this stage.Watching these Chinese guys run around with huge plastic weapons painted silver, like big axes, spears and bows, is just sheer cheesy brilliance. The special effects team went overboard too, so there is plenty of blood spraying from mouths and throats being slashed open in all the graphic, rubbery and far too bright detail we've come to expect from the '70s. Added to the copious red stuff, more exploitation was stuffed in, taking the form of topless maidens at the mercy of the vampires in their home. The rest of the special effects, apart from the bloodshed, mainly take the form of a number of decayings, where a vampire is killed and the body pulled through a hole in the ground underneath it, so it looks like the creature is rotting away quickly. I'll never get tired of these classic Hammer vampire deaths, although there are a number of deaths like this so less attention has been paid to each individual one, in the interests of time I suppose, some disintegrations do look a bit rushed. In the final disintegration, of Dracula no less, it even looks like they've stolen makeup ideas from THE REPTILE! It wouldn't surprise me.The cast is mainly Chinese, apart from a handful of British actors who obviously take centre stage. Robin Stewart, playing Van Helsing's son, comes across as a weakling and should have died early, but if it's some consolation, then it's great to have Peter Cushing on board, as he once again lends dignity to the proceedings, even if he doesn't really get in on the action until the finale, where he burns a few zombie slaves. Cushing is totally in command as the authoritative Van Helsing, as he lectures at a university, or informs his martial artists of ways to destroy the vampires. Once again he plays the character as slightly fussy, with a strong sense of humour and a total dedication to fight the forces of darkness. Julie Ege (CREATURES THE WORLD FORGOT) is on hand to supply the Hammer glamour, and she is awful as always, although her death scene is pretty good. Her sheer ineptitude remains a fascinating aspect to this actress' career - how did she get in films in the first place? However, it's David Chiang who comes across best as the loyal friend of the Van Helsings.This film has it all, and unfortunately I don't think that I'll ever find a film like it again. Amid the fantastic fight sequences, we have spooky images of undead zombies rising from their graves in slow-motion (an image previously used in PLAGUE OF THE ZOMBIES to equally good effect) to match anything that Fulci did, horrible scenes of blood being drained into a pot by the evil vampires, and the overall image of the undead themselves, as decayed yet regal, the make up is both horrendously cheap and tacky looking, but also slightly disturbing. It's the weird, single round eye that they have on the vampire's masks which does it. All in all, this is a great cult film, and one of the favourites in my collection.

Hammer's Dracula series is nothing more than a bunch of old dusty vampire films with pathetic low budget, laughable effects, and ridiculous plots in which the vampires are nothing more than a bunch of weak-ass turtles. This belief was firstly established by watching the trashy "Horror of Dracula" (a film that should be called "A Horrified Dracula"), and a few follow-ups (a series of rubbish) like "Brides of Dracula", and further made solid by this abomination.The story had potential. The idea of Dracula having cross-cultural communication with the Chinese vampires seems interesting. Watching a Chinese priest who's dressed like a Chinese monk speaking Chinese to Dracula and Dracula having no trouble with communicating got me intrigued and made me laugh. A vampire film with Chinese elements would be fun, I thought.Oh gosh. How wrong I was, thinking this piece of crap could have been fun!

This is a rather dumb but enjoyable melange of genres. I don't know who thought to do this, but Hammer Films of the UK (known for Dracula and Frankenstein films) did a joint production with Shaw Brothers Films of Hong Kong (known for their martial arts films)! How and why this occurred is something that IMDb and the DVD for this film never explain--and I'd sure love to know more. Seeing Peter Cushing in such a Chinese film is pretty odd. One thing IMDb did say was that Christopher Lee apparently read the script and refused to play in the film. This make little sense, as he DID agree to be in THE SATANIC RITES OF Dracula the year before--and this probably is one of worst horror films Hammer ever made! Perhaps he didn't want to hang out in Asia to make the film or perhaps he was still to embarrassed over TSROD to do yet another vampire film! While I can admit that this WAS a pretty silly movie, it had plenty of cool Shaw Brothers element--enough to breathe some energy into the moribund franchise--strange as the movie was! The film begins with a Chinese vampire priest meeting Dracula and imploring him to return with him to China. Well, Drac isn't all that hospitable and kills the guy, then assumes his form and goes to China. Shouldn't he have just said "yes" and gone with the priest--as good minions are hard to come by (what a waste).In the next scene, Van Helsing (once again, Peter Cushing) is lecturing to a group of Chinese scholars who think he's some kind of nut (imagine that)! But, one of those in attendance is a man from a village where they've had seven evil vampires terrorizing them for centuries. One of the seven was already dead--killed by this man's grandfather, but his place was taken by Dracula. He begs Van Helsing to accompany him to this rural town to rid them for good of the vampire scourge.Oddly, these Chinese vampires aren't quite like the usual Hammer variety. First, the makeup on them is pretty cheesy and their faces look like a combination of papier-mache and vomit. Second, the vampires ain't so tough--needing to use swords and other weapons to fight. I've never seen Dracula and the like in other films resort to such tactics, as they are too bad to need any weapon! Third, they way they can die is much different--they're a lot easier to kill. So much so that I wonder why they'd want outside help! This representative of the town has brought seven of his own assistants (including, for Chinese martial arts, the required lady kung fu expert) to escort Van Helsing and his son to the town for the final showdown.A sexy Norwegian (Ms. Ege) is brought along to inject some more sex into the mix. She really is pretty irrelevant to the film and blathers about being emancipated (an odd anachronism but typical movie cliché), but seems to be there to show off bosom and cower in fear (so much for feminism). And, speaking of bosoms, since this was a 1970s Hammer horror film, you will also have a smattering of other topless ladies in the film--something the studio did in several of their later films to boost ratings. The only good thing about her was towards the end--this final scene with her was great.Along with Ege, the character of Van Helsing's son is in the film. He's in his 20s and knows NOTHING of kung fu or any martial art--yet he somehow, magically, is able to fend off attack after attack by the minions of the seven vampires. He really isn't all that necessary to the film either--especially since his fighting skills are dubious. He's also pretty dumb, as he rushes into the vampire lair late in the film and doesn't even bother to bring along some stakes or a sword or even a slingshot! And this is the perfect segue into what's best about the film--the fighting. While this is not the best of the Shaw Brothers' films for this, it certainly is very good. The seven good guy fighters from the village are impressive as they fight the relatively wimpy vampires and their undead servants. In fact, they are so impressive you wondered why they traveled so far to see Van Helsing! In fact, the vampires seem a lot less tough than many of the Shaw Brother villains! I think the blind guy from MASTER OF THE FLYING GUILLOTINE was easily tough enough to kick the vampires' butts all by himself! Heck, the same can be said for any of the One-Armed Swordsmen! Wimpy old Chinese vampires aren't as much fun as Western ones--especially the loser three who were in the first "boss battle"! Overall, while the film is far from perfect (often not making much sense), it is very high on the cool factor and is worth a look--particularly if you love horror AND martial arts films like I do.