In a Nutshell. Mini reviews of movies old and new. No fuss. No spoilers. And often no sleep.

Wednesday 17 June 2015

The Legend of the 7 Golden Vampires (1974)

Golden Vampires was Hammer’s final Dracula film. They'd been struggling with the franchise through much of the 70s but they went out in style.
It’s unusual territory for the British company, being a joint production between them and Shaw Bros, set in Chung King and filmed in China, a country rich with its own night-time lore. It's a surprisingly well-implemented pairing. The Dracula mythos is adapted to fit its new home. The coloured lights of his tomb acting as a kind of precursor to the exotic nature of what follows.
You won’t see his name in the credits, but Cheh Chang, perhaps best known for One-Armed Swordsman (1967), shared the director’s chair. It’s likely because of Chang that the martial arts scenes are as good as they are, and that certain Chinese religious practices are respected throughout.

3½ dusty hearts out of 5

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