Kung Fu contra los siete vampiros de oro

The Legend of the Seven Golden Vampires marries two disparate genres - the period horror film and the martial arts film - with surprisingly entertaining results. It features a lovely performance from Peter Cushing, as Professor Van Helsing, who is travelling around China trying to convince its people of the worldwide threat of vamprism in 1904. Not many of the Chinese academics believe him, but one young man does.... he comes from a village in the Chinese interior cursed by seven deadly vampire warriors. He hires Professor Van Helsing to travel with him to this desolate place to rid it of its vampire curse. Guess who the main vampire is behind the horrid happenings in the village? Well, it wouldn't be a Peter Cushing/Hammer horror film without everyone's favourite Count Dracula, would it?

The film is badly acted by everyone except Cushing. Julie Ege plays a Norweigan noble woman, but her performance sucks. The Chinese and Hong Kong actors look distinctly uncomfortable in the talky scenes, chatting away about Transylvanian vampire lore but struggling to get their tongue around much of the dialogue. However, when the martial arts action kicks in, they are good value for money. It's a shame Christopher Lee wasn't available to play Dracula in this one.... I'm not sure who the guy is playing the evil count, but his performance is an embarrassment.

The Legend of the Seven Golden Vampires is unusual enough and fast-paced enough to be entertaining. However, it's not a classic, so don't expect it to be.

I usually try to avoid "defending" movies that I like. If people get it fine, if they don't, well them's the breaks. However I too profess to having been unsold on the charms of LEGEND OF THE 7 GOLDEN VAMPIRES for ages. But now after finally having seen a restored widescreen presentation courtesy of Anchor Bay I am convinced that one of the reasons why the effort left me cold the first few times through was due to the miserable, scrappy, fullscreen home video versions available previously which excluded as much as 12 minutes of footage.

I came of age during the home video years and heading out every week to the various rental shops in our area to see what Hammer or Hammer related flicks we could find became a regular past time. Certain movies were relatively easy to locate but we'd always heard about this legendary kung-fu/Dracula hybrid by Hammer that was made significant by Peter Cushing's final appearance as Professor Van Helsing, the world expert on the Undead. Rumor had it that the movie involved Van Helsing tracing the elusive Count Dracula to colonial era China where he'd set up shop and acquired a taste for the local food. Hijinx awaited in the form of supernatural kung-fu battles with a band of seven specialist martial arts masters, who were of course brothers, fighting off legions of vampiric barbarians. Somehow the combination sounded like trying to mix oil with water and when I finally managed to find the meager VHS release of the film my apprehension was proved well- founded by a muddled mix of Gothic horror chills with difficult to follow chop-socky interludes. The pan-and-scan compression of the widescreen shots was dizzying, the vampire interludes were anything but the dreamy "foggy castle on a hill" variety that Hammer had become specialists in, with lots of insert shots of Peter Cushing standing around looking concerned while Julie Ege's bosoms heaved, cruelly encased in her cleavage baring tops.

It turns out however that much of this muddling and cockamamie mish-mashing was due to the confinement of Roy Ward Baker (directing the talking scenes) and Cheh Chang's (directing the martial arts scenes) marvelous widescreen 2:35:1 Techniscope photography into a claustrophobic, nappy lookin' fullscreen image. Fading of color and reduction print distortions didn't help much, and my opinion now after seeing the widescreen print is that much of the disdain aimed at the film is in fact aimed at the miserable presentations that have been available until now.

Sure, it's still a bit cobbled together. Hammer's grip on the marketplace was tenuous at best by 1974, THE EXORCIST and NIGHT OF THE LIVING DEAD had happened and they were still banking on Gothic shenanigans to sell movie tickets. One result was the creation of these genre crossing hybrids like LEGEND OF THE 7 GOLDEN VAMPIRES mixing martial arts mayhem with Gothic chills, and CAPTAIN KRONOS - VAMPIRE HUNTER which effectively blended the Spaghetti Western, swashbuckling high-adventure and the Gothic nightgowns blowing in the wind. The public didn't seem to care but the result were two very charming movies that had the gall to be different, even if horror fans had moved on. Hammer was hoping to extend their life by coming up with some new series and their collaboration with Shaw Brothers productions was perhaps both ahead of its times while a year or three too late to save the company. It was a glorious failure that deserves to be seen again now that present day technology can give viewers a better estimation of the movie's intended form. It is surprisingly entertaining and compulsively watchable.

What I would recommend is that anybody who may have heard of LEGEND OF THE 7 GOLDEN VAMPIRES should give it a try, and anyone who had dismissed it before as a crummy home video oddity to try it again now that the original full-length widescreen version is readily available. It's still somewhat confusing if you are looking for a discreet, beginning-middle- end story progression. But when taken as it's individual moments strung together into a greater whole some of it is actually quite compelling: Slow-motion legions of the Undead riding horseback whilst slaughtering the populace & making off with all the hot chicks (the Blind Dead, anyone?), torture chambers with topless girls strapped down to a bizarre rack designed to drain their blood, the re-insertion of some amusingly clever gore shots, James Bernard's at times utterly surreal & way under-appreciated musical score recalling some of his Dracula themes while experimenting with more Eastern inspired sounds, traditional non-wire guided kung fu fights with all the bravado and forced sentiment of a classic martial arts film, and rest assured, plenty of insert shots of Peter Cushing standing there looking concerned.

Just by turning his head slightly to the side and raising an eyebrow Peter Cushing is a treat, nobody can look concerned or impart a sense of dire urgency into an audience like Peter Cushing: It may be an odd movie but it does feature some of his best work at appearing concerned and some of the urgencies that he imparts within viewers are the most dire of his career. Yeah, he was getting old and tired and probably looked upon the movie as an expense paid trip to China to help him forget the sorrow of his wife's passing. But by golly he made the movie and if he means anything to you it simply must be seen because it is his last screen turn as one of his classic Gothic horror characters. Try it again, make sure it's a widescreen version, pop plenty of popcorn, perhaps an adult beverage or two, and put down the lights. Turns out it's not a bad movie after all.

7/10

Peter Cushing returns as Van Helsing once again but this time he's jumped across the pond and is a lecturer in China.

When an opportunity arises to investigate some local vampire mythology he teams with a group of martial artists to foil the scheme of the Prince of Darkness himself Dracula.

What makes this stand out from all the other Hammer Horror films is the attempt at genre blending. Hammer Horror blended with martial arts and with a proper martial arts movie studio to assist them.

Somehow it actually manages to work, the plot is credible and the action is fast and furious.

Peter Cushing is oddly stoic here and not on form at all and the absence of Christopher Lee is highly damaging. John Forbes-Robertson was just not up to the job at all.

Regardless this is a fun little Hammer Horror film that tries to break away from the usual mould. Less cheesy, tad more violent but the awful looking bats are still present.

The Good:

Decent choreography

Some nice ideas

The Bad:

John Forbes-Robertson

Some even worse than usual sfx

Things I Learnt From This Movie:

Women cannot go to unknown territories

Christopher Lee simply IS Dracula, replacing him is like re-casting Freddy Kreuger and nobody would ever do that! Right?

Well as you have been reading the reviews of this film, two definite trends seem to emerge. One is that this film has been critically panned for a couple of decades, and, two, this film seems to be genuinely liked by those that take actual effort to watch it. The film surely has its faults, but the overall effect it creates diminishes its shortcomings. The film is about a small town in China that has been ravaged for many years by a band of seven vampires. Professor Van Helsing, giving a lecture in China, is approached by someone from that village that requests Van Helsing's assistance. The rest of the story concerns Van Helsing, his son, a lady benefactor, and seven Chinese brothers and their talented sister trekking across China to get to the village and face the seven deadly vampires in the charge of the one and only European Count Dracula. Along the way, we the audience are treated to some first-rate martial arts, scary atmospheric settings which include zombie servants rising from fog-filled cemetaries, and the ultimate climax of good fighting evil. All in all it is one exciting piece of entertainment. The story at the end is a bit weak, as is the character of Van Helsing's son, who seems to manage to stay alive despite being a weakling.

Van Helsing goes to China...and the result is ripping good yarn!

When this movie first came out, many Hammer fans were appalled at the idea of Hammer producer Michael Carreras teaming with Hong Kong movie mogul Run Run Shaw to create a Hammer/Kung Fu hybrid; it seemed like a desperate attempt to revive the declining Hammer brand by grafting it onto the ascendant Kung Fu craze. Looking back from the vantage point of 2011--after seeing Batman, Hellboy, Iron Man, The Mummy franchise, et. al. go to China--Carerras's cross-cultural gambit looks like genius, and 40 years ahead of its time...perhaps literally so, since the revived Hammer company is now talking about doing a remake.

If you fear this movie will be a Kung Fu actioner with lots of bone-crunching sound effects and nuggets of inscrutable wisdom, think again. It's pure Hammer from start to finish, with a reliable anchoring performance by Peter Cushing as Van Helsing. It seems the venerable doctor is doing some anthropological field work in China; when he lectures at a university, his unwelcome discussion of vampires draws catcalls but finds one receptive listener who knows the truth of the Legend of the 7 Golden Vampires. Add a traveling European heiress with a taste for adventure and a fortune to fund an expedition into the hinterland, and the plot is off and running.

This is a work of high fantasy that draws not just on Bram Stoker but on a long tradition of English literature. The narrative brio reminds me of the adventure stories of H. Rider Haggard (here set in China instead of Africa). There's also a bit of Tolkien in the storytelling, with the 7 Golden Vampires reminiscent of the Nazgul, Dracula of Sauron, and Van Helsing of Gandalf, leading a motley fellowship on a journey to destroy evil. As the travelers draw ever nearer to their goal, they engage in repeated battles that take a terrible toll, right up to the final confrontation with the Evil One himself. (Lest you think the Tolkien parallel is a stretch, consider that the character of Van Helsing was one of Tolkien's inspirations for Gandalf, the keeper of secret knowledge who advises and motivates those who would rid the world of its greatest evil.)

The action scenes look quite dated, but only because we've grown used to seeing aerial martial arts performed with guy-wires against a blue-screen; in the old-fashioned Kung Fu films, acrobats were still subject to the laws of gravity.