The ‘Official’ end to Hammers ‘Dracula’ franchise is a continuity destroying co-production with martial arts master studio ‘Shaw Bros’ and…its a tense relationship of a movie right off the bat.

Putting aside the fact they couldnt get Christopher Lee back to cameo as Count Dracula for a handful of scenes so they had to get his non union chinese equivilent. tensions between the Hammer team and the cast and crew provided from Shaw bros ran hot due to a mixture of language and cultural barriers. Which…y’know, nothing shows a sign of a surefire quality film like the director screaming at the actors in english when they primarily only spoke Mandarin because they wouldnt stop spitting on set. we’re in for a wild time.

So the film opens in 1804 and we’re introduced to a traveller who stumbles on the castle of Count Dracula, once awoken. Drac does a ‘Jason goes to hell’ and essentially ‘possesses’ this travellers body as a way to circumvent his inability to leave his castle grounds due to cleansing enchantments that have been placed around the perimeters.

Once free of the castle, Dracula travells to China, where he takes on 7 servents who are all highly trained martial artists and warriors. Its said that every full (golden) moon, anyone who dares set foot outside of the walls of the local village, will meet a terrible fate at the hand of the golden monsters.

We then jump forward in time to 1904, and Peter Cushing is once again back as Dr. Van Hellsing…which instantly botches the chonology because Dracula AD 1972 establishes that Van Hellsing dies fighting dracula in 1872. So how is he in 1904 China? AND that he was born in 1814, which would make him 90 years old at the time this film takes place…AND that ‘Horror of Dracula’ apparently takes place in 1885. Any which way you cut it the continuity is bollocks’d. Because even if you say ‘AD 1972’ isnt canon. and that ONLY ‘Horror of Dracula’ counts as continuity to this one, and lets say we timeshifted Van hellsing so that he was born at a point where he could be in his 40s at the point ‘Horror of Dracula’ took place. it’d STILL be screwed continuity wise because the average life expectency of someone born in the 1830s and 40s was 45. Even with the timeshift Van Hellsing would have been in his late 60s when the events of this film take place…Thats not even to mention that Van Hellsing has a son in this film that gets ABSOLUTELY NO MENTION in ANY of the other Dracula movies, and if he DID exist, then Van Hellsing is clearly a bad father because he has ZERO trace of his existence anywhere near him…

Anyway, im getting bogged down here. in 1904, Van Hellsing is over in china teaching students about history and mysticisms and uses the ‘Golden Vampire’ mythology as a way to try and convince the students that, with their being confirmations of Vampirism in Europe, it stands to reason similar events would be happening in Asia too. They dont believe him, but one student who does decides to stick around, and after discussing it further with Lee and sharing his own knowledge around the folk lore, the pair realise that if this is true, there are still 6 golden vampires out there to take out.

And! after a surprise attack by the vampires one night, Van Hellsing will team up with fighters from the village to take the battle of the vampires cross plaines to see an end to the remaining 6 golden vampires and to rid the world of the head vampire…who MAY ACTUALLY BE DRACULA?!?! SHOCK HORROR!!!

Yeahhh…this one didnt really do anything for me honestly, I like some Shaw bros films, I like Hammer…but it seems like we got the bits a dislike the most from both companies slammed together for this one.

The script has Hammers prolonged endless walking and exposition dumping, which creeps in around the end of the first act and basically stays with the film right up to the final fight. While also having to deal with the excessively long, drawn out and rather dull martial arts fight scenes that I get hung up with on the Shaw Bros part.

Dont get me wrong, I love a good fight scene, fight choreogaphy is a wonderful thing when done right. But here? its kind of generic, nothing to eye popping and it all feels very much like martial artists going through the motions.

I’ve read that there are 3 different cuts of this movie, a 73 minute version used for double features, an 87 minute version (which I watched) and a Shaw Bros edited 118 minute version that has a lot more extended fight sequences and exposition for the asian cast. I dont know if im missing a crucial part of the narrative here. But the 87 minute cut seems to get the main plot ‘kill the 6 remaining golden vampires’ out of the way in the first 20 minutes. and then the rest of the movie is walking, exposition dumping and elongated fight scenes that dont really enhance what was established in those opening 20-25 minutes or so.

The tone is played largely seriously, the pacing is glacial once again, theres very little charisma or charm here. its militantly shot to just, get what needed to be got and get out. Which really doesnt help warm the audience to the characters, their situation or their scenario.

Part of this may be on me. My copy had quite ropey audio that had everyones dialogue tracks on different levels. and my copy abruptly ended 8 minutes off the ACTUAL ending due to some random internet issue, meaning I had to source the final 8 minutes from youtube. But even with that being the case. I dont believe I missed so much of the depth and nuance of this piece to have made it unintelligable. I just think this film isnt that coherent and isnt very well structured script wise.

Cine and direction wise its a bit of a fudge, but it works fine enough, we get some really nice location and set work here, the composition of shots are a bit ‘run and gun’ ad hoc, it feels again like there wasnt enough time to run through sequence structuring while filming so they just shot what was needed, got as much Broll and coverage as they could afford and then moved on…which makes things feel a bit haphazard.

While I appreciated the rather nice coloured lighting work on this one, which was a genuine quality uptick for the production. Ultimately this one just wasnt my vibe visually which is a shame. Still! at least it did try a bit of experimentation and i’ll take this over Hammers tried and tested method of just…making the same film in the same sets and locations 3 times over stealing from themselves and stitching them together to create hybrids of scenes from their movies all rolled into a ‘new’ film…

Performance wise, Cushing is fine as van hellsing. But everyone else is dire. not dislikable…in fact, they do what they can to the point that it adds almost a goofy edge to this film. But these are not good performances by any stretch and I found myself kind of mesmorised by what I was seeing with the performances given. mixed to poor physical animation. and lacklustre fight choreography hamties this production HARD.

and the score is a mix of hammer and shaw scoring. its better than any one of them doing the whole score outright…but its still generic as hell and did nothing for me.

‘7 golden vampires’ is marginally better than some of the worst ‘Dracula’ entries Hammer ever produced. By the skin of its teeth i’d say it was better than ‘Satanic Rites’ if only because it does have some interesting moments going on in places. But this being the final ‘canon’ Hammer dracula movie? is insane to me. its a total nothing of a movie. ‘The Dragon Lives again’ has more of a claim to being the ‘final hammer dracula movie’ than this film does.

Worth watching at least once just for the history of the piece. I didnt much care for it honestly, but I can appreciate why others would like it.

source https://letterboxd.com/tytdreviews/film/the-legend-of-the-7-golden-vampires/