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    		•

    FILMS

    The Legend of the Seven Golden Vampires (1974)
  • Starring Peter Cushing, David Chiang, Julie Ege, and Robin Stewart

  • Directed by Roy Ward Baker

  • Guest review written by Stuart Bowen

    • Legend of the Seven Golden Vampires is the result of an unholy union between London's Hammer Studios and Hong Kong's Shaw Brothers. Each a master of trash cinema in the '60s and '70s, Hammer and Shaw Brothers managed to produce a movie with pretty much everything there is to love about the horror and kung fu genres. Decades before either Buffy or Blade started using "the fu" on the unholy armies of the night.

    There are apparently a couple of different versions of this film floating around. The one I saw most recently went by the alternate title The Seven Brothers Meet Dracula. There was some extra footage in this version, as well as a section at the beginning that appeared as a flashback in the version I'd seen previously. But basically it's the same movie one way or another.

    On to the plot. [Warning: Spoilers. But seriously, it's a kung-fu horror movie from the '70s. How much plot am I really going to be ruining here?!]

    Peter Cushing plays Abraham Van Helsing. At the opening of the film (thereabouts), he's engaged in a speaking tour of ... Nanjing, I think. Lecturing on vampirism naturally. His ideas are met with all the cynicism you'd expect from a room full of scholars. All but one of the attendees leave shaking their heads in bemused disapproval.

    The remaining attendee is Hsi Ching (played by kung fu genre regular David Chiang). In his lecture, Van Helsing lets on that there is a village in the interior of China plagued by a curse. Every year at the time of the seventh moon, the village is ransacked by seven golden vampires; its women taken to the temple of an evil priest.

    Not only is Hsi Ching not dubious of this story. He knows the names of the village (his ancestral home) and the villager (his grandfather) who managed to kill one of the seven golden vampires two generations ago.

    Hsi Ching proposes that Van Helsing and his son Leyland travel to Peng Gwei with he and his six brothers (one of whom is actually more of a sister when you get right down to it). With a little coaxing (in the form of a golden medallion torn from the neck of the first golden vampire), Van Helsing agrees. Add one more player to the list though. A beautiful, wealthy, and apparently single, Westerner named Vanessa Buren. (I'm guessing she's German given the accent and Germany's occupation of China. But that's never explicitly said.) She offers to fund the expedition to Peng Gwei on one condition. I expect you, gentle reader, can figure out what that condition might be.

    With the financing in place and their departure hastened by running afoul of a local gangster, the Van Helsings, Ms. Buren, and the seven brothers are off to Peng Gwei. And the cursed temple that serves as the headquarters of the golden vampires and their master, the evil priest.

    This is no ordinary evil priest, mind you. This is a Chinese priest who, at the beginning of the movie, travels in search of the tomb of Dracula. He finds it. In China (for reasons unknown). Instead of greeting him, though, Dracula kills the priest and assumes his form (again for reasons unknown). So the evil priest who directs the seven (er, six) golden vampires and their army of zombie warriors is, in fact, Dracula himself. Perhaps it's Van Helsing's preternatural connection to Dracula that led he and his son to China in the first place. Who can say? (The screenwriter doesn't explicitly say as much.)

    OK, there's the bare bones. Vampire hunters and kung-fu brothers coming together to rid a village of an ancient curse. But don't worry. I'm not done. [Spoiler refresher: If you wanted to know the basic setup but nothing more, stop reading.]

    The first look we get at the brothers in action (aside from a minor skirmish with two of the brothers and a handful of gangsters early in the film) is as the party is leaving Nanjing over land. Their caravan is ambushed by the gangster and his lackeys. Don't worry though. Each brother is a master of a traditional weapon. And lackeys are made for pummeling. So we get a pretty good introduction to each brother. (Really, characters in a kung-fu movie are defined by their fighting style more than by anything else. So when we see the masters of empty hand, double daggers, double axes, bow, wolf's head mace, spear, and swords, that's all we ever really need to know about the brothers.)

    The next 20 minutes of the film are spent watching the band cross hill and dale en route to Peng Gwei. Various camping scenes give us the opportunity to see individuals gravitating toward other individuals. (Leyland Van Helsing becomes quite smitten with Mai Kwei, the little sister of Hsi Ching. While Ms. Buren falls for Hsi Ching himself.) It also gives us the opportunity to see the Chinese protagonists fighting off attackers living and dead, cooking, cleaning, setting up defenses, and praying while the Europeans stand around complaining about "how ghastly the conditions are." Three cheers for imperialism.

    Fast forward a bit. The band arrives at Peng Gwei and sets up defenses against the golden vampires and their zombie minions. Said bad guys show up. And everybody starts kung-fu fighting. (And with vampires, zombies, and ineffectual British toffs mixing it up, it is indeed "a little bit frightening.")

    [Spoiler warning: This is your last chance. If you don't want to hear the outcome, move along.] The band of do-gooders is victorious. But the price is heavy. All but two of the brothers are dead. (The spearman and the archer, in case you're interested) And their sister has been abducted and taken back to the temple by the one remaining golden vampire.

    Worse still, Ms. Buren is turned into one of the undead herself. She manages to bite Hsi Ching before he impales first her and then himself onto a sharpened pole. They die together at least. (Yeah, that's a comfort. "Well, at least I'm not impaled with a sharpened piece of bamboo alone.")

    Will the remaining vampire hunters rescue Mei Kwei in time? Will they vanquish the remaining golden vampire? Will Van Helsing unmask and confront Dracula?

    ...

    Yes.

    Oh. Sorry.

    Quick word on the differences between the versions I've seen (courtesy of our friend Matt): The Seven Brothers Meet Dracula is actually a bit shorter and slightly rearranged to show Hsi Ching's grandfather destroying one of the vampires in the beginning. In Legend of the Seven Golden Vampires, that sequence occurs as a flashback as Hsi Ching is trying to convince Van Helsing to travel with him to Peng Gwei.

    Aside from that, as Matt pointed out, TSBMD is mostly a stripped-down (and more confusing) version. "Stripped down" is pretty apropos come to think of it. Much of the differing footage involves girls' shirts being ripped off as they're abducted from their homes in Peng Gwei. (I'm guessing that's the Hammer influence at work.)

    Either version gets the point across. (Pun unintended, but tolerated)

    I'd love to see a modern remake of this flick. Preferably with Jet Li. He's got the same quiet demeanor as David Chiang without being quite so effeminate. And the choreography could really do with a brush up. But that'll never happen. And the original is good fun all the same.

    To sum up: Legend of the Seven Golden Vampires is rubbish. But it's rubbish born of two of the most celebrated names in trash cinema. Hammer Studios and Shaw Brothers. So, if you're looking for the Reeses peanut butter cups of '70s exploitation cinema, this is it.