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| SEVEN BROTHERS MEET DRACULA (aka LEGEND OF THE SEVEN GOLDEN VAMPIRES) (1974)  Directed by: Roy Ward Baker Starring: Peter Cushing, David Chiang, Robin Stewart, Shih Szu, Julie Ege, John Forbes Robertson, James Ma, Lau Kar-wing. | |
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With the ship's engines set on "Freak Out!" this clumsy vessels launches
from the ruined planet of drive-ins past and soars into our galaxy where
it blows the bourgeoisie minds of anyone married to narrative, middle-class
values, and the English language. This ship is on a dada mission to break
down the walls of good taste and open the doors of perception. It doesn't quite succeed but it sure makes you feel freaky while it tries. In 1974 the owners of the flagging Dracula franchise, England's Hammer Studios, contacted the evil geniuses at Hong Kong's Shaw Brothers studio to suggest a collaboration. Horror and Kung fu were hot, Dracula was not, so this might put some ducats in both parties' pot. Shaw, ever ready to share production costs, said "sure" and over to the Crown Colony came Hammer, checks in hand for an extended shoot on Shaw's el cheapo backlot. The shoot was fractious, but the results were groove-a-licious. Times were a-changing so the pix practically oozes with blood and carnage, most of it running down a pair of naked female breasts. Despite their best efforts to be au courant, when the movie was released audiences used to THE EXORCIST, LAST HOUSE ON THE LEFT and TEXAS CHAINSAW MASSACRE found it all terribly old hat. 
This was the last Dracula film for Hammer, but it was not the end of the tale. Oh no, for Shaw learned a thing or two from their English investors who slunk home hat in hand. They learned HORROR. And this was the beginning of Shaw's own slime-caked, grue-strewn and largely unseen horror cycle: BLOOD REINCARNATION, THE BOXER'S OMEN, and SEEDING OF A GHOST can all trace their roots back to this fecund collaboration. In the US, LEGEND OF THE SEVEN GOLDEN VAMPIRES was re-cut for the drive-in crowd, removing the boring parts and turning it into one long groove tube of slo-mo corpses rising from the grave, naked chicks being drained of blood, peasants hacked to pieces by rotting vampires, and long, bloody kung fu mayhem. And it was called: THE 7 BROTHERS MEET DRACULA. Christopher Lee wanted no part of this one, so John Forbes Robertson filled Dracs Buster Browns. Peter Cushing, quite infirm, does yeoman's duty, although his intrepidness is undermined by the inclusion of a shot of the elderly star accidentally tripping and falling into a campfire. On the Shaw Brothers side, Chang Cheh's bright star, David Chiang, is there as the head of the Seven Brothers and Lau Kar-leung choreographs the action. The One Sister is played by rising female star, Shih Szu. She was the successor to Shaw's top female star, Cheng Pei-Pei (Jade Fox in CROUCHING TIGER, HIDDEN DRAGON), and she gallantly upholds her part in this madness. 
But even these hardy psychonauts could not withstand the changing times. Now the movie stands, virtually abandoned in its current incarnation as a late-night drive-in crowd-pleaser. It's a rotting edifice, windows boarded over, bats flying in and out its belfries, laced with very badly delivered English dialogue and hammy performances. But the frission of vampires and zombies being chopped in half by a Chinese guy wielding two battle axes survives the era, beamed across the cruel years like a distress call from outer space. The sense of impending doom - doom for Hammer's stately version of horror, doom for many of the actors in this film, doom for a Chinese village laid siege by an army of the undead - closes its clammy hand around your throat and squeezes until you giggle. In 1974, the 7 BROTHERS MET DRACULA, and laid him in his grave. Come and watch the galactic ceremony. |
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