By the beginning of the 1970s, Hammer Studios, once a world leader in horror, found itself struggling to compete with the harder hitting, more explicit fare coming out of the US. In a last ditch effort to appeal to a wider audience, the ailing studio began to experiment with horror 'cross-overs', injecting their traditional Gothic fare with elements from whatever other genres were enjoying global success at the time.

In 1974, the studio released two such genre-bending 'mash-ups': The Satanic Rites of Dracula, an espionage/vampire film in which Dracula was reinvented as a Blofeld-style villain intent on destroying the world, and The Legend Of The 7 Golden Vampires, which saw Hammer join forces with Hong Kong's Shaw Brothers for some martial-arts monster fun.

For a Hammer film, Satanic Rites was an uncharacteristically drab affair, lacking visual flair and any sense of excitement; in fact, rather than turn the studio's fortune around, it probably helped to drive a few more nails firmly into its coffin. Legend Of The 7 Golden Vampires, on the other hand, was a much more enjoyable effort: helmed by Roy Ward Baker, it delivered stylish colourful photography, great fight choreography by kung fu legend Liu Chia-Liang, sexy ladies from around the world (Norwegian babe Julie Ege and Taiwanese cutie Szu Shih),as well as blood, boobs, bats and bonkers action set-pieces. Despite the high fun-factor, however, AND another quality performance from Peter Cushing, it too failed to lure back the fans.

Count Dracula, it seemed, had finally met his match, not in Van Helsing, but in chainsaw wielding maniacs and possessed girls vomiting pea soup—a pity, because I would have loved to have seen more joint ventures from Hammer and Shaw Brothers, two of the greatest studios in the history of cinema.

Van Helsing goes to China...and the result is ripping good yarn!

When this movie first came out, many Hammer fans were appalled at the idea of Hammer producer Michael Carreras teaming with Hong Kong movie mogul Run Run Shaw to create a Hammer/Kung Fu hybrid; it seemed like a desperate attempt to revive the declining Hammer brand by grafting it onto the ascendant Kung Fu craze. Looking back from the vantage point of 2011--after seeing Batman, Hellboy, Iron Man, The Mummy franchise, et. al. go to China--Carerras's cross-cultural gambit looks like genius, and 40 years ahead of its time...perhaps literally so, since the revived Hammer company is now talking about doing a remake.

If you fear this movie will be a Kung Fu actioner with lots of bone-crunching sound effects and nuggets of inscrutable wisdom, think again. It's pure Hammer from start to finish, with a reliable anchoring performance by Peter Cushing as Van Helsing. It seems the venerable doctor is doing some anthropological field work in China; when he lectures at a university, his unwelcome discussion of vampires draws catcalls but finds one receptive listener who knows the truth of the Legend of the 7 Golden Vampires. Add a traveling European heiress with a taste for adventure and a fortune to fund an expedition into the hinterland, and the plot is off and running.

This is a work of high fantasy that draws not just on Bram Stoker but on a long tradition of English literature. The narrative brio reminds me of the adventure stories of H. Rider Haggard (here set in China instead of Africa). There's also a bit of Tolkien in the storytelling, with the 7 Golden Vampires reminiscent of the Nazgul, Dracula of Sauron, and Van Helsing of Gandalf, leading a motley fellowship on a journey to destroy evil. As the travelers draw ever nearer to their goal, they engage in repeated battles that take a terrible toll, right up to the final confrontation with the Evil One himself. (Lest you think the Tolkien parallel is a stretch, consider that the character of Van Helsing was one of Tolkien's inspirations for Gandalf, the keeper of secret knowledge who advises and motivates those who would rid the world of its greatest evil.)

The action scenes look quite dated, but only because we've grown used to seeing aerial martial arts performed with guy-wires against a blue-screen; in the old-fashioned Kung Fu films, acrobats were still subject to the laws of gravity.

Widely criticised and panned by many critics over the past two decades, this is a film which deserves a lot more respect than it currently has, i.e. mainly serving as the whipping boy of late Hammer horror by critics who have watched the film on fast-forward. While plagued by some obvious flaws, THE LEGEND OF THE 7 GOLDEN VAMPIRES still manages to be one of the most enjoyable, trashy (and most of all fun) Hammer horror films that was ever made, with the tongue firmly in cheek this time around.

The main problem with the film lies in the fact Dracula is no longer played by Christopher Lee, but instead the unknown John Forbes-Robertson (THE VAMPIRE LOVERS) with a ton of make-up on his face which makes him look more like a clown than any kind of threatening king of the undead. This really does make a mockery of Dracula and the film would have been a lot less embarrassing if they had made it without Dracula at all, let's face it, his presence is definitely a superfluous one. Why couldn't the leader of the vampires have been the bald Chinese guy, plain and simple, instead of dragging the Dracula character through the mud once more? I suppose the idea was to draw in the crowds, but by this time most fans were disappointed with Dracula 1972 AD and THE SATANIC RITES OF Dracula, and wouldn't bother anyway. The fact that Lee wasn't playing Dracula was yet another slap in the face and another reason to avoid this film.

Still, let's forget about that minor miscalculation, and instead concentrate on what makes this film fun: the incredible mix of classic Hammer horror (blood drinking vampires, helpless girls chained up) and ferocious martial arts action, which is nowhere near as bad as the critics would have you believe and somewhat breathless on first viewing as huge battles take place. These martial arts sequences are the focus of the film, there are four in all, and they're all excellent in the famed Shaw Brothers style. The critics were just surprised by this film, in that it wasn't a typical Gothic chiller, instead more action-orientated, and acted in a hostile way because people just don't like change. Still, Hammer were desperate for success in the wake of popular horror like THE EXORCIST so anything would have been worth a try at this stage.

Watching these Chinese guys run around with huge plastic weapons painted silver, like big axes, spears and bows, is just sheer cheesy brilliance. The special effects team went overboard too, so there is plenty of blood spraying from mouths and throats being slashed open in all the graphic, rubbery and far too bright detail we've come to expect from the '70s. Added to the copious red stuff, more exploitation was stuffed in, taking the form of topless maidens at the mercy of the vampires in their home. The rest of the special effects, apart from the bloodshed, mainly take the form of a number of decayings, where a vampire is killed and the body pulled through a hole in the ground underneath it, so it looks like the creature is rotting away quickly. I'll never get tired of these classic Hammer vampire deaths, although there are a number of deaths like this so less attention has been paid to each individual one, in the interests of time I suppose, some disintegrations do look a bit rushed. In the final disintegration, of Dracula no less, it even looks like they've stolen makeup ideas from THE REPTILE! It wouldn't surprise me.

The cast is mainly Chinese, apart from a handful of British actors who obviously take centre stage. Robin Stewart, playing Van Helsing's son, comes across as a weakling and should have died early, but if it's some consolation, then it's great to have Peter Cushing on board, as he once again lends dignity to the proceedings, even if he doesn't really get in on the action until the finale, where he burns a few zombie slaves. Cushing is totally in command as the authoritative Van Helsing, as he lectures at a university, or informs his martial artists of ways to destroy the vampires. Once again he plays the character as slightly fussy, with a strong sense of humour and a total dedication to fight the forces of darkness. Julie Ege (CREATURES THE WORLD FORGOT) is on hand to supply the Hammer glamour, and she is awful as always, although her death scene is pretty good. Her sheer ineptitude remains a fascinating aspect to this actress' career - how did she get in films in the first place? However, it's David Chiang who comes across best as the loyal friend of the Van Helsings.

This film has it all, and unfortunately I don't think that I'll ever find a film like it again. Amid the fantastic fight sequences, we have spooky images of undead zombies rising from their graves in slow-motion (an image previously used in PLAGUE OF THE ZOMBIES to equally good effect) to match anything that Fulci did, horrible scenes of blood being drained into a pot by the evil vampires, and the overall image of the undead themselves, as decayed yet regal, the make up is both horrendously cheap and tacky looking, but also slightly disturbing. It's the weird, single round eye that they have on the vampire's masks which does it. All in all, this is a great cult film, and one of the favourites in my collection.