THE LEGEND OF THE 7 GOLDEN VAMPIRES (1974) - Professor Van Helsing (Peter Cushing; who else?) is called upon to lend his expertise to a small village in China which is under the tyrannical rule of a cult of vampires; it turns out that Dracula is also involved... After the experiment of updating Dracula to the modern era failed to strike box office gold, the desperate producers at Hammer decided to try another course of action: kung fu films had become big business, so why not combine vampires with martial arts? A deal was reached with Sir Run Run Shaw and Hammer sent veteran director Roy Ward Baker off to Hong Kong to direct what would become the last of the Hammer Dracula films. Truth be told, it did not start off as a Dracula film, however; in an attempt to woo Warner Bros (who did decide to release the film in the UK, though a US release would not be forthcoming through them), a decision was reached to shoehorn Dracula into the plot. This had long been Christopher Lees complaint with the sequels--that the character had been added in as an afterthought--and there was no way he was going to go back on his decision to leave the franchise. In his place, character actor John Forbes-Robertson was brought in to appear in some bookend scenes as the lord of the undead. Sadly, the makeup artists overdid rather badly and he looks more like the drag queen of the undead... and in a final indignity, Forbes-Robertson was incensed to find that his entire performance was redubbed by David De Keyser. In that sense, its hard to really assess his performance fairly... but he doesnt make the same impression as Lee, no matter how you look at it, though he is given a good deal more dialogue than Lee had been in some of his entries. Oh well, no matter: Dracula is barely a presence here, anyway. Baker handles the material with considerably more flair and style than he had on SCARS OF DRACULA. The movie rattles along at a good pace and the lighting by John Wilcox and Roy Ford is awash with Bava-esque reds and greens. The story may be ridiculous and some of the acting on the stilted side, but it delivers where it counts: the horror scenes have a nightmarish quality to them--the inclusion of Chinese hopping ghouls in the Hammer universe is a novel touch--and the kung fu sequences are well staged and executed. Peter Cushing brings his usual class and professionalism to a role he could easily have walked through by this stage. He dominates the proceedings quite handily, though David Chiang is also engaging as the young man who is determined to rid the vampires from his village. James Bernard--his name misspelled in the opening titles as Benard--contributes another rousing score, though this time there are liberal helpings from his earlier scores for FRANKENSTEIN MUST BE DESTROYED, TASTE THE BLOOD OF DRACULA and SCARS OF DRACULA, indicating that he probably had a little less time than usual to complete the assignment. THE LEGEND OF THE 7 GOLDEN VAMPIRES did decent business in the UK, but for whatever reason Warners elected not to put the film out in the US. It would eventually be picked up by a smaller label, Dynamite Entertainment (headed by Milton Subotsky, the former co-head of Amicus), who released it in a heavily re-edited version titled THE SEVEN BROTHERS MEET DRACULA. It may not be the classiest note to end the series on, but no matter: its an imaginative and entertaining little movie and if it doesnt quite manage to successfully fuse Eastern and Western mythology, it scores bonus points for trying something new. In the years since Hammer discontinued their Dracula franchise, others have tried their hand at the character. Werner Herzog made a magnificent remake of NOSFERATU THE VAMPYRE (1979), with the great Klaus Kinski giving a remarkable performance as Dracula, while the BBC delivered a fantastic 2-part mini-series called COUNT DRACULA (1977), which featured Louis Jourdan as a smooth and sardonic Count. The big budget Universal remake from 1979 with Frank Langella and Laurence Olivier gets knocked a lot, but its a worthy film. Francis Ford Coppolas attempt at a faithful adaptation--BRAM STOKERS DRACULA (1992)--was bedeviled by hubris, a corny love story and some badly miscast actors. Most of these later films were shot on budgets which were far more lavish than Hammer had to work with--and yet, with the exception of the Herzog and BBC versions, most of them failed to come close to recapturing the special magic of the Hammer series. For this viewer, at least, theres simply no topping Christopher Lee and Peter Cushing in these iconic characterizations.
Posted on: Wed, 24 Dec 2014 21:54:00 +0000
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