Customer Reviews

The Greatest Film Ever Made - By: Paul Ess., 15 Nov 2008
An extravagant claim but one I'm gonna endeavor to back up.
'Legend of the 7 Golden Vampires' is the last horror picture Peter Cushing made for Hammer, & is magnificent. He plays Van Helsing, (yes.. honest!) & to his eternal credit he looks believably close to tears every time he utters an emotionally-charged line like "In Europe it is the crucifix,in Asia; the image of the Lord Buddha".
I adore Peter Cushing anyway, & to see himin any film is good for me, but to see himin a work of this magnitude & gravitas is a real treat. He must be lying there now, thinking about his 50-odd year career, each performance building up to "My knowledge is restricted to the Western Hemisphere". Strangely, there's not muchin his autobiography about 'LOT7GV'- which is unfathomable.
Julie Ege is the female lead, a Scandinavian buxom-vamp fresh from her Oscar-nominated role as Voluptuain 'Up Pompeii-the Movie'; ("There's no decorum/in the forum/and they're quite at homein the hippy-drome, you can chose who you prefer/'coz Ben Him's just like Ben HER!!") & the biting satire-twins 'Not Now Darling' & 'Rentadick'.
Robin Stewart plays the 'young hero' role. He's a classically trained comedy actor, mostly seen with Sid 'Sir' Jamesin the abject Brit-Com 'Bless This House' & wearing a kaftanin the Michael Armstrong 60's slasher 'the Haunted House of Horror'; a gory travesty with Frankie Avalon & Mark Wynter (yes.. honest!). Viewing Stewart's performance as Leyland van Helsing (a FANTASTIC analogy with the Bolshevic-run 1970's car giant British Leyland, who's worker's spent the whole decade on pointless strike) is easy to criticise, but he isin fact, showing 'solidity' with his lion-hearted co-unionists. This is breathtakingly poignant & relevant, it's not every-one that can fight 50 heavily armed kung-fu zombie vagabonds with the conviction of a house-brick. 'Red' Ron & all the other commies backin Blighty held out at their braziers for another year on the strength of Stewart's subtly & deftly understated showing.
Count Dracula, presentin every scene & the central evil core of the movie, is played by John Forbes Robertsonin the campest make-upin British cinema, all pinks, greens, bat-eyebrows & lipstick. Much criticised among the unknowing (describedin one disreputable publication as a 'pantomime dame'), but it put mein mind of Olivier's Oberonin 'A Midsummer Night's Dream'(another - slightly lesser - work of feminism & sexual ambiguity) & JFR's performance as one of British literature & world cinema's most recognisable & serious characters, just HAS to be seen.
As the villain he has all the best lines; "A curse on you & your house!", "I am Dracula - Lord of Darkness, Master of the Vampires, Prince of the Undead, Ruler of the Damned!" (yes.. honest!) & "Right! van Helsing - you will once more see my face... before you die! Behold van Helsing - look on me, now." You'll fill up -as I did - at the magisterial impact of it all.
Music is by James Bernard, re-jigging themes from his previous scores, & even here 'LOT7GV' wins. Not many blockbusters were recyclingin the wasteful, excessive 70's. The Bond movies for example, had Sir Roger Moore flying all over the world, inadvertently ruining it. So well done Hammer!
The plot is so sophisticated & progressive, no-one can understand it. Unkindly scorn holds sway. Stupid critics pathetically concentrate on the appalling special effects,(post-modernism) atrocious action(satirical slapstick) & the cavernous holesin the script(delicious irony) as justification of universal condemnation. How wrong can you be?
The '7' of the title also refers to van Helsing's companions, 6 lads & a girl heading to their remote village to destroy '7' vampires that have plagued them for centuries, & this is where the feminism & sexual ambiguity comes in. The 'sister' can fight kung-fu nearly as good as the men (yes.. honest)in a film setin 1904(!) & only dies when she weakens for love. What a gal. Rest easy Emily, it seems chaining your bra to the railings wasn't for nothing after all.
Director Roy Ward Baker claims his masterpiece was flawed by studio interference (In this instance co-financiers the Shaw Brothers, basedin Hong Kong & who know nothing about making martial arts movies.) They should've just let the ex-English public school prefect to his vision, he was obviously so in-tune with the aesthetics of the medium, their pettiness could easily have ruined the film.
'LOT7GV' is deliberately hysterical. Some beautiful, screaming girls with their breasts revealed as they lie strapped down next to a bubbling cauldron of blood, is vital to the plotin a real sense, as well as the abstract that Ward Baker is delicately invoking. Tears rolled down my cheeks as the scene unfolded, so moved was I by it's multi-layered intensity & relativism.
So you see, there can be no doubt as to the claims of 'LOT7GV'. I've only scratched the surface here - the action sequences seriously challenge Kurosawa & the terror, so originally & tensely conveyed, is as full-blooded & awesome as any Jacobean tragedy. Acting is Welles-perfection & production is refreshingly minimalist & compact.
Much like '2001', 'Once Upon a Timein the West' or 'Jaws', the locations are so visual & forceful, you feel like you're actually therein Szechwan Province with Peter & the boys, vanquishing vampires & returning the world to safety & contentment. And isn't it wonderful that since Hammer/Baker's uber-treatise on cultural bonding & the futility of violence was releasedin 1974, there hasn't been a single war.
Now, you tell me, could anything but the greatest film ever made do that?

---

More fun than I expected - By: www.DavidLRattigan.com, 15 Aug 2008
I am a HUGE fan of Hammer horror, & I avoided this movie for a long time, expecting it to be a dud. I was very pleasantly surprised, however. It's no classic, but nor is it a bad movie.

The Legend of the 7 Golden Vampires is a joint effort by Hong Kong movie studio Shaw Brothers, famous for their kung fu films, & Hammer Studios, famous for their gothic horrors. By Hammer purist standards, it is lacking. Van Helsing, knowing everything about metaphysics & sweet nothing about martial arts, literally stands around for most of the movie watching everyone else fight. (He does suggest at one time that a statue of the Lord Buddha would be effective against a vampire, but we never see this - a quick whack to the neck seems infinitely more effective.) Peter Cushing is good, as usual, but he has little to do. Christopher Lee declined to star, & was replaced by John Forbes-Robertson as Count Dracula. His appearances are laughable - from a distance he looks like Lee, but close-up it looks like the makeup was for a pantomime villain. Awful.

However, despite its shortcomings, this movie is a lot of fun. There are some great fight sequences, & I found the zombies genuinely scary. There are lots of effects, ranging from nifty to a bit cheesy, but it's all entertaining.

---

Hammer's last stab at Dracula - By: Trevor Willsmer, 15 Dec 2007
The Legend of the 7 Golden Vampires is a less than successful hybrid, combining Hammer horror & chop socky movie as Dracula, for reasons never really explained, possesses the body of a Chinese bad guy to control six golden vampires while Van Helsing, on a far from successful Chinese lecture tour, finds himself teaming up with seven brothers & their one sister to rid a remote Chinese village of yada yada yada.. "Black belt against black magic" screams the trailer, & while it's not as poor as I recalled, the only things going for it are a few okay action scenes & a magnificent display of bosom heaving from Julie Egein one particularly memorable shot.

Unlike the extras-packed US Anchor Bay release, this does not include the butchered & often very bizarrely re-edited US version The Seven Brothers Meet Dracula (which sounds like a bad Howard Keel musical).

---

Worst film ive ever seen - By: S. Sharp, 22 Nov 2007
I like martial art movies, I like classic horror movies & I like Peter Cushing, so to me, this film was a no brainer! Unfortunately it is dire & a waste of 90 minutes of my life. Dont buy it, PLEASE

---

Entertaining Fang-Fu - By: J. C, 13 Nov 2007
Nobody watching a film called the Legend of the Seven Golden Vampires is expecting Bergman, & rightly so, some films are to be enjoyed for the simple pleasuresin life, like watching Peter Cushing take out Vampires. The head of a vampire sectin Hong Kong travels to Castle Dracula to ask the Count for helpin bringing back the Seven Golden Vampires, unfortunatley Christopher Lee isn't in, his replacement John Forbes Robertson-playing Dracula as a fancy dress store vampire who has been playingin his mothers makeup-soon decides to take on this mans guise & travel far away to Hong Kong unaware that the legendary Professor Van Helsing & his son & their kung-fu fighting aides are on the trail.
That's pretty much the story, but this is riotous fun if yourin the mood, the martial arts scenes are glorious & the vampire attacks are swift & brutal (director Roy Ward Baker having obviously seen Amando De Ossorio's Blind Dead films), some of the effects work seems a little poor but James Bernard's excellent score captures the feel of both the Hammer Horror & the Martial Art extravaganza.
This was Peter Cushing's final Hammer & he leaves with a flourish, as determined a vampire hunter as he was backin 1958 whether it be sporting a glorious pith helmet of getting to grips with Draculain the final showdown.
Admittedly a ridiculous film but you'll be hard pressed to find a more entertaining one.