The Hammer Film Productions company was a British studio best known for their gothic horror movies, enjoying quite a bit of success in the 1950's and 1960's with their takes on classic movie monsters like Dracula. But as the 1970's went on, due to a saturation of the market, Hammer saw their share of the horror movie financial pie diminishing, and so in 1974, they paired up with Hong Kong's Shaw Brothers studio to produce The Legend of the 7 Golden Vampires, a horror picture mashed up with kung fu.

Long-time Hammer stable actor Peter Cushing returns to the role of Van Helsing, which at this point was very familiar territory to him, having played the character in several Hammer productions. Van Helsing (along with his son) have traveled to China to investigate the titular legend, but the local academics dismiss the stories as rubbish. Just before he is set to head back to England, Van Helsing meets up with Ching (David Chiang, who was being heavily pushed by the Shaw Brothers at this time as the successor to Bruce Lee), who is from the village being terrorized by the Golden Vampires. Enlisting the aid of Ching and his siblings, Van Helsing begins a journey to the remote wilderness of China to find out the truth behind the legend.

Even in the world of vampire movies, the story here is pretty ridiculous. If these vampires have been terrorizing this village for generations, why didn't the residents just move? And why would a group of talented martial artists that can take on dozens of people (or vampires) at a time need the aid of an old white guy? Also, the vampires themselves don't seem to be all that threatening, not having the powers exhibited by most filmic representations of the creatures. Even Dracula himself goes down with barely any sweat raised on Van Helsing's deeply-wrinkled and disheveled brow.

The Legend of the 7 Golden Vampires was an interesting idea for the time, but it never quite succeeds. The horror elements are almost laughably bad now, with the Hammer version of fake blood being only slightly more realistic than the Shaws' ketchupy recipe. And, even with Lau Kar-Leung working as the martial arts director, the kung fu scenes feel fairly flat and uninspired -- perhaps it was shot and edited by a European crew. Still, despite its' flaws, The Legend of the 7 Golden Vampires has a sort of kitschy charm that makes it hard to actually hate it for very long, with the good outweighing the bad, albeit sometimes just barely.

RATING: 6

Note: many US home video versions of this movie are based on the Seven Brothers Meet Dracula edit, which cuts out all of the nudity and most of the gore. The Anchor Bay DVD currently still in print is the full uncut version.