The Legend of the 7 Golden Vampires (dir. Roy Ward Baker and Cheh Chang)
This ninth and final film in the series was a co-production between Hammer Studios and Shaw Bros. Studios, which is, in many ways, the Chinese equivalent of Hammer. Shaw Bros. had been in operation since the 1920s, and are known today mostly for their high-budget, technicolor kung-fu flicks. These are two movie studios that any and all genre fans should be familiar with.
Van Helsing is called to China to track down some recently-appeared supernatural monsters. It turns out Dracula (played briefly by John Forbes-Robertson, not nearly as imposing as Christopher Lee) has been hiding out in China. When he’s awakened by a traveling peasant (Chan Shen), Dracula takes possession of his body, and goes about conducting a ritual to resurrect the seven Golden Vampires, a group of kung-fu fighting, mask-wearing, blood-drinking Chinese mummies. The seven Golden Vampires also have control over the dead, so there is also an army of skeleton warriors to deal with.
Anyone else think this sounds awesome? Dracula kung-fu is awesome. Oh yes, and this film features copious amounts of nudity, as young Chinese women are stripped for Dracula’s delight and sacrifice. This movie is one luchador and one kaiju away from being perfect.
The bulk of the movie is Van Helsing traveling the Chinese countryside looking for the nest of the seven Golden Vampires (who are never united in the same room; they only ever attack in groups as big as three). In tow, Van Helsing has his son Leyland (Robin Stewart), an ancillary white woman named Vanessa (Julie Ege), a capable fighting co-investigator named Hsi Ching (David Chiang), and a pretty kung-fu fighting bodyguard named Mei (Shih Szu). When them vampires attack, whoa mama, them kung-fus begin kung-fu’in’.
There’s also a roulette wheel of bloody sacrifice victims. Eventually, Dracula re-manifests himself in front of Van Helsing, and they briefly fight. Dracula is, of course, defeated.
I can criticize this movie for being a bonkers aside in the Hammer Dracula series. I can bemoan the loss of Lee as Dracula. I can even point to the outrage over the massive shift in genre from horror to vampire kung-fu. But I can’t bring myself to do any of that because of the cartoon joy of this film. Seriously, it was a wild delight. If you’re nine films into any franchise, it might be best to shuffle the genre a bit just to keep things fresh. Maybe that’s why Marvel studios is making a film version of the baffling and unpopular Guardians of the Galaxy. It’ll technically be the ninth in that franchise, and promises to be the most off-the-wall. Although I doubt it will have Dracula kung-fu zombies.
