The Seven Brothers Meet Dracula (1974)

• Year: 1974
• Released: 01 Jun 1979
• Country: United Kingdom, Hong Kong
• Adwords: 1 nomination
• IMDb: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0070297/
• Rotten Tomatoes: https://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/the_legend_of_the_7_golden_vampires
• Available in: 720p, 1080p,
• Language: English, Mandarin
• MPA Rating: R
• Genre: Action, Horror
• Runtime: 89 min
• Writer: Don Houghton, Bram Stoker
• Director: Roy Ward Baker, Cheh Chang
• Cast: Peter Cushing, David Chiang, Julie Ege
• Keywords: martial arts, vampire, vampire hunter,

	5.9/10
	40% – Critics
	42% – Audience

The Seven Brothers Meet Dracula Storyline

In 1804, in Transylvania, a Chinese walker heads to the castle of Dracula. He awakes Dracula from his tomb and explains that he is Kah, the High Priest of the Seven Golden Vampires in China that are powerless. He needs Dracula to restore their power and the vampire takes Kah’s body and image. One hundred years later, Professor Laurence Van Helsing gives a lecture at a Chinese university about the legend of the Seven Golden Vampires but the students leave the auditorium finding that the all the exposition is superstition. However the student Hsi Ching meets Van Helsing at home and tells that the legend is true and he knows the location of the vampires. Van Helsing accepts to travel to the village in the countryside to help to destroy the vampires and the wealthy widow Mrs. Vanessa Buren, who has befriend his son Leyland Van Helsing, offers to sponsor the expedition provided she may go with them. Soon they embark with seven siblings skilled in kung-fu in a dangerous expedition to destroy the Golden Vampires and Dracula.

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The Seven Brothers Meet Dracula Movie Reviews

The Legend of The Legend of the 7 Golden Vampires, or How Hammer headed East.

By the beginning of the 1970s, Hammer Studios, once a world leader in horror, found itself struggling to compete with the harder hitting, more explicit fare coming out of the US. In a last ditch effort to appeal to a wider audience, the ailing studio began to experiment with horror ‘cross-overs’, injecting their traditional Gothic fare with elements from whatever other genres were enjoying global success at the time.

In 1974, the studio released two such genre-bending ‘mash-ups’: The Satanic Rites of Dracula, an espionage/vampire film in which Dracula was reinvented as a Blofeld-style villain intent on destroying the world, and The Legend Of The 7 Golden Vampires, which saw Hammer join forces with Hong Kong’s Shaw Brothers for some martial-arts monster fun.

For a Hammer film, Satanic Rites was an uncharacteristically drab affair, lacking visual flair and any sense of excitement; in fact, rather than turn the studio’s fortune around, it probably helped to drive a few more nails firmly into its coffin. Legend Of The 7 Golden Vampires, on the other hand, was a much more enjoyable effort: helmed by Roy Ward Baker, it delivered stylish colourful photography, great fight choreography by kung fu legend Liu Chia-Liang, sexy ladies from around the world (Norwegian babe Julie Ege and Taiwanese cutie Szu Shih), as well as blood, boobs, bats and bonkers action set-pieces. Despite the high fun-factor, however, AND another quality performance from Peter Cushing, it too failed to lure back the fans.

Count Dracula, it seemed, had finally met his match, not in Van Helsing, but in chainsaw wielding maniacs and possessed girls vomiting pea soup—a pity, because I would have loved to have seen more joint ventures from Hammer and Shaw Brothers, two of the greatest studios in the history of cinema.

A ripping yarn…40 years ahead of its time!

Van Helsing goes to China…and the result is ripping good yarn!

When this movie first came out, many Hammer fans were appalled at the idea of Hammer producer Michael Carreras teaming with Hong Kong movie mogul Run Run Shaw to create a Hammer/Kung Fu hybrid; it seemed like a desperate attempt to revive the declining Hammer brand by grafting it onto the ascendant Kung Fu craze. Looking back from the vantage point of 2011–after seeing Batman, Hellboy, Iron Man, The Mummy franchise, et. al. go to China–Carerras’s cross-cultural gambit looks like genius, and 40 years ahead of its time…perhaps literally so, since the revived Hammer company is now talking about doing a remake.

If you fear this movie will be a Kung Fu actioner with lots of bone-crunching sound effects and nuggets of inscrutable wisdom, think again. It’s pure Hammer from start to finish, with a reliable anchoring performance by Peter Cushing as Van Helsing. It seems the venerable doctor is doing some anthropological field work in China; when he lectures at a university, his unwelcome discussion of vampires draws catcalls but finds one receptive listener who knows the truth of the Legend of the 7 Golden Vampires. Add a traveling European heiress with a taste for adventure and a fortune to fund an expedition into the hinterland, and the plot is off and running.

This is a work of high fantasy that draws not just on Bram Stoker but on a long tradition of English literature. The narrative brio reminds me of the adventure stories of H. Rider Haggard (here set in China instead of Africa). There’s also a bit of Tolkien in the storytelling, with the 7 Golden Vampires reminiscent of the Nazgul, Dracula of Sauron, and Van Helsing of Gandalf, leading a motley fellowship on a journey to destroy evil. As the travelers draw ever nearer to their goal, they engage in repeated battles that take a terrible toll, right up to the final confrontation with the Evil One himself. (Lest you think the Tolkien parallel is a stretch, consider that the character of Van Helsing was one of Tolkien’s inspirations for Gandalf, the keeper of secret knowledge who advises and motivates those who would rid the world of its greatest evil.)

The action scenes look quite dated, but only because we’ve grown used to seeing aerial martial arts performed with guy-wires against a blue-screen; in the old-fashioned Kung Fu films, acrobats were still subject to the laws of gravity.

Talk about a bizarre premise…

This is a rather dumb but enjoyable melange of genres. I don’t know who thought to do this, but Hammer Films of the UK (known for Dracula and Frankenstein films) did a joint production with Shaw Brothers Films of Hong Kong (known for their martial arts films)! How and why this occurred is something that IMDb and the DVD for this film never explain–and I’d sure love to know more. Seeing Peter Cushing in such a Chinese film is pretty odd. One thing IMDb did say was that Christopher Lee apparently read the script and refused to play in the film. This make little sense, as he DID agree to be in THE SATANIC RITES OF Dracula the year before–and this probably is one of worst horror films Hammer ever made! Perhaps he didn’t want to hang out in Asia to make the film or perhaps he was still to embarrassed over TSROD to do yet another vampire film! While I can admit that this WAS a pretty silly movie, it had plenty of cool Shaw Brothers element–enough to breathe some energy into the moribund franchise–strange as the movie was!

The film begins with a Chinese vampire priest meeting Dracula and imploring him to return with him to China. Well, Drac isn’t all that hospitable and kills the guy, then assumes his form and goes to China. Shouldn’t he have just said “yes” and gone with the priest–as good minions are hard to come by (what a waste).

In the next scene, Van Helsing (once again, Peter Cushing) is lecturing to a group of Chinese scholars who think he’s some kind of nut (imagine that)! But, one of those in attendance is a man from a village where they’ve had seven evil vampires terrorizing them for centuries. One of the seven was already dead–killed by this man’s grandfather, but his place was taken by Dracula. He begs Van Helsing to accompany him to this rural town to rid them for good of the vampire scourge.

Oddly, these Chinese vampires aren’t quite like the usual Hammer variety. First, the makeup on them is pretty cheesy and their faces look like a combination of papier-mache and vomit. Second, the vampires ain’t so tough–needing to use swords and other weapons to fight. I’ve never seen Dracula and the like in other films resort to such tactics, as they are too bad to need any weapon! Third, they way they can die is much different–they’re a lot easier to kill. So much so that I wonder why they’d want outside help! This representative of the town has brought seven of his own assistants (including, for Chinese martial arts, the required lady kung fu expert) to escort Van Helsing and his son to the town for the final showdown.

A sexy Norwegian (Ms. Ege) is brought along to inject some more sex into the mix. She really is pretty irrelevant to the film and blathers about being emancipated (an odd anachronism but typical movie cliché), but seems to be there to show off bosom and cower in fear (so much for feminism). And, speaking of bosoms, since this was a 1970s Hammer horror film, you will also have a smattering of other topless ladies in the film–something the studio did in several of their later films to boost ratings. The only good thing about her was towards the end–this final scene with her was great.

Along with Ege, the character of Van Helsing’s son is in the film. He’s in his 20s and knows NOTHING of kung fu or any martial art–yet he somehow, magically, is able to fend off attack after attack by the minions of the seven vampires. He really isn’t all that necessary to the film either–especially since his fighting skills are dubious. He’s also pretty dumb, as he rushes into the vampire lair late in the film and doesn’t even bother to bring along some stakes or a sword or even a slingshot!

And this is the perfect segue into what’s best about the film–the fighting. While this is not the best of the Shaw Brothers’ films for this, it certainly is very good. The seven good guy fighters from the village are impressive as they fight the relatively wimpy vampires and their undead servants. In fact, they are so impressive you wondered why they traveled so far to see Van Helsing! In fact, the vampires seem a lot less tough than many of the Shaw Brother villains! I think the blind guy from MASTER OF THE FLYING GUILLOTINE was easily tough enough to kick the vampires’ butts all by himself! Heck, the same can be said for any of the One-Armed Swordsmen! Wimpy old Chinese vampires aren’t as much fun as Western ones–especially the loser three who were in the first “boss battle”!

Overall, while the film is far from perfect (often not making much sense), it is very high on the cool factor and is worth a look–particularly if you love horror AND martial arts films like I do.