The Legend Of The Seven Golden Vampires [1974]

RRP £13.99 Lowest New Price £3.06

Suitable for 15 years and over Warner Home Video Release date: Monday 2nd of August 2004 Starring: Peter Cushing, Julie Ege, Robin Stewart, Szu Shih, David Chiang, Director(s): Format: PAL, Number of discs: 1 Region code: 2 Running time: 85 minutes Language: English (Original Language)

RRP: £13.99
More fun than I expected
Review date: 2008-08-15 Rating: 8 out of 10

I am a HUGE fan of Hammer horror, and 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, and Hammer Studios, famous for their gothic horrors. By Hammer purist standards, it is lacking. Van Helsing, knowing everything about metaphysics and 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, and 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, and I found the zombies genuinely scary. There are lots of effects, ranging from nifty to a bit cheesy, but it's all entertaining.