THE LEGEND OF THE 7 GOLDEN VAMPIRES
Aspect ratio: 2.39:1 (Panavision)
Sound format: Mono
Whilst lecturing in Chungking at the turn of the 20th century, Professor Van Helsing (Peter Cushing) is asked by a poor villager (David Chiang) to help defend his community from a plague of vampires controlled by Count Dracula (John Forbes-Robertson).
Filmed on location in Hong Kong under difficult shooting conditions, this Hammer/Shaw Brothers co-production attempts to meld the antiquated Gothic melodrama of Hammer's bygone glories with the new breed of kung fu thrillers emerging from a newly revitalized HK, spearheaded by the worldwide success of KING BOXER (1971) and ENTER THE DRAGON (1973). Roy Ward Baker (THE VAMPIRE LOVERS) took the reins from original director Gordon Hessler (THE OBLONG BOX) after only a few days, though his work was clearly hampered from the outset by co-producer Don Houghton's simplistic script, which describes events either in broad strokes or hasty scribbles, leaving most of the actors in disarray.
Cushing is urbane as ever, trading successfully on his established screen persona, but co-star Julie Ege (a former Bond girl) is merely decorative, while Chiang - an accomplished screen actor (also known as John Keung) whose work stretches all the way from STREET BOYS in 1960 to THE ADVENTURERS (1995) and beyond - is ultimately defeated by the English dialogue, which he's forced to deliver in a stilted, phonetic style. Robin Stewart (THE HAUNTED HOUSE OF HORROR) and Shih Szu are also featured as the juvenile leads, alongside hugely prolific actors Fung Hak-on (later a regular in Jackie Chan's movies) and Lau Kar-wing (an experienced performer and director in his own right). Elsewhere, Forbes-Robertson does a fair impersonation of Christopher Lee in Dracula-mode, though his first on-screen appearance is almost ruined by a comical makeup design. Les Bowie's special effects are also quite feeble, even for 1974. However, the studio sets are appropriately vivid, and the widescreen photography (by John Wilcox and Roy Ford) makes a virtue of Johnson Chow's atmospheric art direction - note the haunting prologue in Dracula's castle, where ghostly shadows billow softly on a multicolored wall just before the Count begins to stir from his coffin - and the fight scenes (arranged by veteran choreographers Liu Chia-liang and Tang Chia) are lively and energetic.
The film was subjected to major re-edits for its original US release, where it went out under the title "The 7 Brothers Meet Dracula". This shabby hatchet job rearranges most of the key sequences in a miserable attempt to reduce exposition and characterization to the barest minimum, thereby transforming a fair-to-middling potboiler into an 'audience-friendly' mish-mash of violent horror and kung fu skirmishes. Not only does it cheapen the production and blacken the name of all involved with it, this variant edition treats American viewers as dim-witted simpletons, emphasizing cheap thrills over plot development for the sake of a quick buck. The film was screened in HK - completely intact - under the HK-English title "Dracula and the 7 Golden Vampires".
Aspect ratio: 2.39:1 (Panavision)
Sound format: Mono
Whilst lecturing in Chungking at the turn of the 20th century, Professor Van Helsing (Peter Cushing) is asked by a poor villager (David Chiang) to help defend his community from a plague of vampires controlled by Count Dracula (John Forbes-Robertson).
Filmed on location in Hong Kong under difficult shooting conditions, this Hammer/Shaw Brothers co-production attempts to meld the antiquated Gothic melodrama of Hammer's bygone glories with the new breed of kung fu thrillers emerging from a newly revitalized HK, spearheaded by the worldwide success of KING BOXER (1971) and ENTER THE DRAGON (1973). Roy Ward Baker (THE VAMPIRE LOVERS) took the reins from original director Gordon Hessler (THE OBLONG BOX) after only a few days, though his work was clearly hampered from the outset by co-producer Don Houghton's simplistic script, which describes events either in broad strokes or hasty scribbles, leaving most of the actors in disarray.
Cushing is urbane as ever, trading successfully on his established screen persona, but co-star Julie Ege (a former Bond girl) is merely decorative, while Chiang - an accomplished screen actor (also known as John Keung) whose work stretches all the way from STREET BOYS in 1960 to THE ADVENTURERS (1995) and beyond - is ultimately defeated by the English dialogue, which he's forced to deliver in a stilted, phonetic style. Robin Stewart (THE HAUNTED HOUSE OF HORROR) and Shih Szu are also featured as the juvenile leads, alongside hugely prolific actors Fung Hak-on (later a regular in Jackie Chan's movies) and Lau Kar-wing (an experienced performer and director in his own right). Elsewhere, Forbes-Robertson does a fair impersonation of Christopher Lee in Dracula-mode, though his first on-screen appearance is almost ruined by a comical makeup design. Les Bowie's special effects are also quite feeble, even for 1974. However, the studio sets are appropriately vivid, and the widescreen photography (by John Wilcox and Roy Ford) makes a virtue of Johnson Chow's atmospheric art direction - note the haunting prologue in Dracula's castle, where ghostly shadows billow softly on a multicolored wall just before the Count begins to stir from his coffin - and the fight scenes (arranged by veteran choreographers Liu Chia-liang and Tang Chia) are lively and energetic.
The film was subjected to major re-edits for its original US release, where it went out under the title "The 7 Brothers Meet Dracula". This shabby hatchet job rearranges most of the key sequences in a miserable attempt to reduce exposition and characterization to the barest minimum, thereby transforming a fair-to-middling potboiler into an 'audience-friendly' mish-mash of violent horror and kung fu skirmishes. Not only does it cheapen the production and blacken the name of all involved with it, this variant edition treats American viewers as dim-witted simpletons, emphasizing cheap thrills over plot development for the sake of a quick buck. The film was screened in HK - completely intact - under the HK-English title "Dracula and the 7 Golden Vampires".