East meets west in this super entertaining horror/martial arts crossover film. This is a collaboration between two of my favorite indie movie companies, Hammer and Shaw Brothers. I would not regard this is the most well made project from either, but The Legend Of The 7 Golden Vampires is so much fun. Christopher Lee had enough of playing Dracula at this point, so enter John Forbes Robertson who gives the best worst portrayal of the Count with horrible make up f/x. The performance is brief, but totally over the top and hilarious. This however fits the ultra campy tone of the film. John Forbes Robertson was actually good as a vampire in another Hammer film, The Vampire Lovers. The cast is mostly Chinese but contains a British cast including the great Peter Cushing, who returns as Van Helsing. Cushing is always great and joining him is Shaw Bros. regular David Chiang, who also delivers excellent performances and is great here. The film was made in Hong Kong and has more of a Shaw Bros. feel than a Hammer film. While the Gothic ambiance may be minimal, it more than makes up for it with hopping vampires, ott special f/x, sweet titties, a good amount of blood spraying and kung fu. The fight choreography is awesome and there is a whole lot of it too. Seeing David Chiang and Peter Cushing together in a movie is worth the price of admission, but in the fight scenes Peter Cushing gets in the mix and does well. The Legend Of The 7 Vampires is a whole lot of fun and is a collaborative effort between directors Chang Cheh and Roy Ward Baker. Great stuff!

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.

This is one of the best movies I have ever watched. It has everything that is awesome in one movie. It has zombies, vampires, bad ass kung-fu, hot kung-fu girls, Peter Cushing, great special effects, and a little bit of unintentional hilariousness.Don't mistake this movie for a massive camp fest though, while it is campy the movie can have some legitimate spooky vibes, you can tell that despite the crazy mashing of two genres they put a lot of effort into the movie.This is required viewing for all audiences, a true cult classic in every way.

When Peter Cushing as the stalwart, globe-trotting Professor Van Helsing arrives in 1904 Chun King to spread the word that vampires are "very real," the Chinese scholars to whom he's speaking dismiss his claims. David Chiang (doing double duty as an ancestor and his contemporary descendant) responds that "the truth deserves respect." He knows that the Evil of Dracula has come to the tiny village of Ping Kuei. With the financial aid of Englishwoman Juile Ege, Ching and his brothers ("Seven Brothers- and one SISTER," the trailer inform us) join Van Helsing in his quest. (Shih Szu, who plays Mei Kwei- and whose name, Ching informs us, means "as beautiful as a Rose"- is absolutely stunning.) (It's little wonder that Robin Stewart, as Van Helsing's son Leyland, falls for her en route.) There's enough action throughout to keep THE LEGEND OF THE 7 GOLDEN VAMPIRES from ever bogging down (in either the English version or the eviscerated American version, THE 7 BROTHERS MEET Dracula). Cushing as Van Helsing never just stands idly by when the going gets tough, and it's his performance more than any other that carries this film. No matter what the part, Peter Cushing was always believable- always- and he was never better than he was here. John Forbes-Robinson has a cameo as Christopher Lee as the dreaded Dracula. His minions- among them the hopping vampires of Chinese mythology- are appropriately fugly and the James Bernard score will sear its way into your memory. THE LEGEND OF THE 7 GOLDEN VAMPIRES continues to stand the test of time (it certainly holds up better than, say, Sammo Hung's MR. VAMPIRE or Tsui Hark's THE VAMPIRE HUNTERS, to name but a couple). Producer-writer Don Houghton and director Roy Ward Baker have crafted a masterpiece.