Les 7 Vampires d'or

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.

By the beginning of the 1970s, Hammer Studios, once a world leader in horror, found itself struggling to compete with the harder hitting, more explicit fare coming out of the US. In a last ditch effort to appeal to a wider audience, the ailing studio began to experiment with horror 'cross-overs', injecting their traditional Gothic fare with elements from whatever other genres were enjoying global success at the time.

In 1974, the studio released two such genre-bending 'mash-ups': The Satanic Rites of Dracula, an espionage/vampire film in which Dracula was reinvented as a Blofeld-style villain intent on destroying the world, and The Legend Of The 7 Golden Vampires, which saw Hammer join forces with Hong Kong's Shaw Brothers for some martial-arts monster fun.

For a Hammer film, Satanic Rites was an uncharacteristically drab affair, lacking visual flair and any sense of excitement; in fact, rather than turn the studio's fortune around, it probably helped to drive a few more nails firmly into its coffin. Legend Of The 7 Golden Vampires, on the other hand, was a much more enjoyable effort: helmed by Roy Ward Baker, it delivered stylish colourful photography, great fight choreography by kung fu legend Liu Chia-Liang, sexy ladies from around the world (Norwegian babe Julie Ege and Taiwanese cutie Szu Shih), as well as blood, boobs, bats and bonkers action set-pieces. Despite the high fun-factor, however, AND another quality performance from Peter Cushing, it too failed to lure back the fans.

Count Dracula, it seemed, had finally met his match, not in Van Helsing, but in chainsaw wielding maniacs and possessed girls vomiting pea soup—a pity, because I would have loved to have seen more joint ventures from Hammer and Shaw Brothers, two of the greatest studios in the history of cinema.

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

Although Hammer's audiences [and budgets] were declining in the 70s, they still made some interesting movies which are ripe for reappraisal. This film is a case in point. A collaboration with the Hong Kong martial arts film studio Shaw Brothers[ there was also another one, the very poor Shatter, a routine modern day thriller], it mixes horror and martial arts to extremely entertaining effect. Yes, the idea of mixing the two genres was done better in later Hong Kong films like Spooky Encounters, but there is a great deal of trashy fun to be had here.

Shot in extremely lurid colour, the first half hour has two amazingly vivid scenes- Dracula possessing a Chinese priest in Transylvania, and a terrific setpiece in China soon after with a peasant trying to rescue some women from a castle and encountering the wonderfully decrepit looking Seven Golden Vampires and than an army of zombies who come out of the ground in a stunning sequence, the use of speeded up film to convey their movement oddly effective. Thereafter, as our bunch of protagonists sets off to rid China of this evil, the film does tend to become a series of very bloody battles, but they are blisteringly staged. David Chiang has little charisma as the main hero, but Peter Cushing is solid as ever as Van Helsing ,and does look as if he his having fun. John Forbes-Robertson has quite a bit of presence as Dracula, but he's only in the opening and ending, and after all the terrific action beforehand, his death at the hands of Van Helsing is something of a damp squib. There are some somewhat stilted dialogue scenes, but James Bernard's music is typically exciting [Hammer fans will spot the cues from Taste The Blood Of Dracula though!].

Hardly classic Hammer, or Shaw Brothers for that matter, but this just sets out to provide a fun gory time, and succeeds.

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?