The Legend of the 7 Golden Vampires

The Legend of the Seven Golden Vampires

七金屍

Directors – Roy Ward Baker & Cheh Chang

Writers – Don Houghton, Bram Stoker

1974, UK-Hong Kong

Stars – Peter Cushing, David Chiang, Julie Ege

 

From the moment that Dracula decides to possess the form of the minion that has awoken him from his tomb (Huh?), it’s evident that logic – internal or otherwise – won’t be Hammer’s last Dracula’s strong point. Then Peter Cushing is Van Helsing, teaching vampire history to a Chinese university class. They aren’t impressed (a moment that asks more than one question: he’s been invited to whitesplain? They walk out, but why did they choose and attend the lecture in the first place? Van Helsing doesn’t have any evidence but believes it anyway? How on earth would he know the details? So he battled Dracul a hundred years ago? What kind of university is this?). And it’s true that Van Helsing really isn’t needed on the following vampire-killing mission, although he is convinced to join a Chinese student and his siblings on a mission to rid the student’s village of the curse of golden vampires - one of the seven is already destroyed/dead, which kind of crimps the title from the start. And also these vampires and minions are pretty easy to kill.

John Forbes-Robertson makes for an unimposing Dracula (again: who can apparently body-swap-possess now?) and Robin Stewart is a little embarrassing as Van Helsing’s son when fighting alongside serious martial artists. Speaking of which: none of the kick-ass brothers get anything to say, although as a girl and therefore a love interest, the sister does.

 

Rather, it’s the Shaw Brothers studio Hong Kong Kung-fu half that wins out in this mash-up as the Hammer Horror side is lazy and weak. However, the mass fights are fun if dated, the weapons look plastic (especially those axes… oh, and the ridiculous bat-medallion thingies), and the traditional Chinese hopping vampires don’t seem to be really trying. More successful are the vampires that ride at night, raiding villages for female victims and gratuitous exploitation toplessness, giving off a decidedly ‘Blind Dead’ vibe; and even better are the zombie minions rising from the graves. Otherwise, It’s up to Cushing to reliably deliver the exposition and bad dialogue with a gravitas it doesn’t deserve, and the charm of David Chiang and Julie Ege to carry it all (although she does nothing). It’s all very comic-booky, with the primary colours, occasional vista and Asian setting as bonuses. A curio it may be, but it doesn’t really deliver much more than a “Wha…?!” Doesn’t make a lick of sense: goofy fun but not good.

 

Flesh for Frankenstein

Paul Morrissey & Antonio Margheriti, 

1973, USA-Italy-France

Andy Warhol presents Paul Morrissey’s version of the Frankestein story as a mixture of Hammer Horror, ‘The Rocky Horror Picture Show’, Herschell Gordon Lewis and Carry On. Baron Frankenstein here is an unabashed deviant and madman, wanting to create a master race of pretty zombies to return Serbia to greatness as he fist-fucks corpses. Frankenstein is played by Udo Keir who starts on maximum ham and then tries to dial it up. But this is not a place for want of decent acting. Indeed, the line-readings of the pretty boy protagonists are often flat and laughable. But being laughable both intentional and unintentional is apparently the name of the game; that, and maybe causing vomiting as it offers a gluttony of atrocities as Frankenstein experiments in his lab and decapitates the wrong head for his monster. The head belongs to a dull gay farm hand that has no interest in procreating a master race with a zombie bride. It’s high camp for horror fans.

Kim Newman calls Morrissey’s films ‘Flesh for Frankenstein’ and ‘Blood for Dracula’ “the definitive trash/kitsch horror movies.”* The Aurum Encyclopaedia of Horror is unabashedly scathing, concluding that the tongue-in-cheek and throwaway tone is “designed to absolve filmmakers and viewers alike from blame in for indulging in this venal spectacle of macho brutality.”** Exploitation often works in the realm of both the disposable and the extreme, with the knowing disposability relating to the so-bad-it’s-good get-out clause and earnest extremism as code for the poignancy of showing-it-like-it-is. ‘Flesh for Frankenstein’ perhaps looks too good to be totally disposable – and Aurum cites Antonio Margheriti as the true director with Paul Morrissey mostly as supervisory – but too weak overall to be taken seriously. Although it does end on a high note with a wealth of gore and corpses heaped in the laboratory in a scene that reaches Horror farce.

Dr Frankestein is presented here shorn of all pretences of the sophisticate and shown as a ranting and snobbish necrophiliac. His wife is his bigoted and nymphomaniac sister – the films spends a lot of time with her berating the lower classes – and they have two children who watch all the goings on but have no dialogue at all (oh, the boy says “No” a couple of times). The children are ultimately Frankenstein’s true zombie offspring, which would quite possibly be poignant if the film wasn’t as daft as it is gory. 

         * Kim Newman, ‘Nightmare Movies: A Critical Guide to Contemporary Horror Films ‘ (Harmony books) 1 Oct 1989, pg 129 

**    ed. Phil Hardy, ‘Aurum Ency of Horror Hardcover’ (Hamlyn)  – 18 Sep 1986, pg 279