dworldeater East meets west in this super entertaining horror/martial arts crossover film. This is a collaboration between two of my favorite indie movie companies, Hammer and Shaw Brothers. I would not regard this is the most well made project from either, but The Legend Of The 7 Golden Vampires is so much fun. Christopher Lee had enough of playing Dracula at this point, so enter John Forbes Robertson who gives the best worst portrayal of the Count with horrible make up f/x. The performance is brief, but totally over the top and hilarious. This however fits the ultra campy tone of the film. John Forbes Robertson was actually good as a vampire in another Hammer film, The Vampire Lovers. The cast is mostly Chinese but contains a British cast including the great Peter Cushing, who returns as Van Helsing. Cushing is always great and joining him is Shaw Bros. regular David Chiang, who also delivers excellent performances and is great here. The film was made in Hong Kong and has more of a Shaw Bros. feel than a Hammer film. While the Gothic ambiance may be minimal, it more than makes up for it with hopping vampires, ott special f/x, sweet titties, a good amount of blood spraying and kung fu. The fight choreography is awesome and there is a whole lot of it too. Seeing David Chiang and Peter Cushing together in a movie is worth the price of admission, but in the fight scenes Peter Cushing gets in the mix and does well. The Legend Of The 7 Vampires is a whole lot of fun and is a collaborative effort between directors Chang Cheh and Roy Ward Baker. Great stuff!

jacobjohntaylor1 This a prequel to The satanic rites of Dracula. The it is great movie. It is very scary. If you do not get scared of this movie. Then no movie will scary you. It is the ninth hammer Dracula movie. It takes please after the first six hammer Dracula movies. But before the seventh and eighth hammer Dracula movies. This movie has a great story line. It also has great acting. It also has great special effects. See this a movie. It is a must see. The first eight hammer Dracula movies are a little better. But this is one of the best horror movies ever. This a 70's horror classic. Dracula kills a c.h.i.n.e.s.e man. He shape s.h.i.f.e.s into a him. He goes to China to rise seven vampires that where gold mask and suits. Very scary.

fedor8 Van Helsing is back, but this time he mostly stands around while his team of chop-sokey Chinese pals do all the fighting. The sort of movie Bruce Lee could have made had he wanted to have a go at vampires.The 7 vampires may be a lot of things, but "golden" they are not. Shabby would be a better description. The masks are… well… rather pathetic-looking. In particular the not-so-golden vampire with the Marilyn Monroe wig looks absolutely ridiculous. Perhaps that's his strategy: to make the victim laugh so hard so as to weaken his focus and defense?Not very powerful, are they - these golden boys. Essentially, they get out-skilled by a band of regular humans. They also lack any kind of noticeable super-human strength – which, I guess, explains their need to flail about with standard weaponry rather than simply attack their prey and kill it with ease and without the aid of tools - as most vampires do.The 7 Goldilocks are in fact such pushovers that their surprise attack on Van Helsing's martial-arts-expert group failed COMPLETELY – in spite of a plethora of advantages they appeared to have had before the battle: 1) the vampires mounted a surprise-attack, 2) the attack was carried out when Van Helsing's bunch was asleep, 3) the vampires brought a bunch of zombie slaves to help them out – i.e. outnumbering VH's group, and 4) they're vampires!Nevertheless, none of that helped, because VH's group literally got away from the first battle with one scratch – literally just one scratch between the lot of them. On the vampire side, there were countless dead zombies and three successfully killed mud-faced Goldisuckers. Yet, DESPITE this crushing defeat of the forces of darkness, the Chinese leader makes an astonishing statement to Helsing: "we cannot withstand another attack." Say what? You just killed half of all the vampires without losing a single man – during a surprise attack - but somehow he reaches the absurdly modest conclusion that "we cannot withstand another attack". That's as dumb as it gets – at least up to this point. "Listen, Van… We totally annihilated them despite being caught off-guard, and already half of the golden vampires are now gone, but we simply cannot afford another battle – because quite clearly they are better than us." This would be a bit like the 80s Mike Tyson complaining to his manager that he needs to retire because all of his opponents are too tough for him.For some bizarre reason, Helsing's team fares far worse in the second battle. They were much better prepared this time around, yet oddly enough struggled a lot more: more bad logic from a fairly child-like script.The action scenes are silly rather than spectacular, as is so often the case with martial-arts buffoonery. The fights look more like well-coordinated dances, with the fighters using their ELBOWS and HANDS to block hits from sharp weapons. Yes, that kind of silly action nonsense.The ZAZ team could not have made zombies more laughable than these. They walk in "mini-hops" – for lack of a better term – so they essentially look silly at all times, and are almost as ineffectual as their mask-wearing Goldilock masters. The thin pushover droids from "Phantom Menace" experience more success than these clowns.

GusF This is the ninth and final Hammer "Dracula" film and the only one to feature an actor other than Christopher Lee in the role of Dracula. It's a decent film but not a great one. I've never been a fan of martial arts films so I found those (endless) scenes rather boring but at least they tried something different, which is why I enjoyed it more than "Scars of Dracula". I thought that that film was just a rehash of the best bits from the first five films. Even though Dracula had relatively little screen time in the previous films (bar "The Brides of Dracula" in which he doesn't appear at all), his presence was felt throughout and, consequently, anticipation and tension are built. That's not the case in this film, the only one in which he isn't the title character. His inclusion seems more like a late addition to the storyline. His final Hammer death is very underwhelming and rushed. Peter Cushing is as excellent as ever but it's just not the same without Christopher Lee. The series deserved to go out with a stronger film.