The Legend of the 7 Golden Vampires

Geronimo1967

Apr 14, 2023

5/10

"Prof. Van Helsing" (Peter Cushing) is lecturing a load of sceptical Chinese students about vampirism. They are so unconvinced that they walk out of his seminar. One, however, "Hsi Ching" (David Chiang) is convinced that the legendary Count has reincarnated near his local village where "Kah", the high priest of the legendary seven golden vampires has offered him his soul in return for the vampires restoring the dominant position of his priesthood. Short of funds, they manage to recruit the wealthy "Vanessa" (Julie Ege) and alongside his just as eager son "Leyland" (Robin Stewart) and seven young kung-fu experts all set off to this remote community where they will hopefully be in time to thwart the evil that is looming. When they arrive they discover, though, that's there also an army of the dead facing them - and things look ominous. Well, actually they don't really. The whole production is a bit cheap and cheerful, and save for the gravitas brought by Cushing, this would quickly be written off as a rather poorly written and acrobatically staged, lightweight Hammer feature that tries to integrate a different, Oriental, culture into an hackneyed format that can be fun to watch - you can almost see the wires and the costumes are of the cheapest form of latex - but the story is all just a bit too join the dots. These themes were very much running out of steam by now, and probably just as well because this is really just all rather poor.

r96sk

May 8, 2024

6/10

/

r96sk

May 8, 2024

6/10

<em>'The Legend of the 7 Golden Vampires'</em> is fairly fun. A relatively quick watch at just under 90 minutes, this movie smashes together martial arts and vampires. It's cool that it was filmed entirely on location in Hong Kong! Peter Cushing leads the cast strongly, with the likes of David Chiang, Julie Ege and Robin Stewart doing well behind him. I found the whole run time to be decently entertaining, nothing that blew my socks off or anything but I did suitably enjoy it - the ending scenes are particularly positive. The martial art parts seemed well done to me, though I am admittedly no expert when it comes to that. All in all, it's worth a watch in my opinion. Side-note, this is the second time in consecutive days that I'm ending my day with a movie featuring Dracula! Unintentionally so, I picked <em>'Renfield'</em> due its short run time and this (having known nothing about it) because of the eye-catching title; I didn't even acknowledge the vampire bit. Yet, I've still not seen the Christopher Lee original, gotta get to that!