A Gilded Guilty Pleasure
There are many critics of this film who would probably claim THE LEGEND OF THE 7 GOLDEN VAMPIRES invokes the old adage, "All that glitters is not gold." And while this may not be Hammer Films' most memorable movie, to me it is still a fun way to spend an evening...which cannot necessarily be said for a lot of the high tech, big budget films of today. Hammer and its usual distributor, Warner Bros., were not on the best of terms at the time this film came out, so it--like several of Hammer's final films--did not get the distribution they might have enjoyed just a few years earlier. Realistically, the film does seem in search of an identity, possibly because co-producing studios Hammer and the Shaw Brothers had drastically different approaches to making a movie. In trying to appeal to a broader audience, Hammer attempted to merge two popular, but diverse, genres: Horror and Martial Arts. (Hong Kong cinema would continue the trend in the following years, producing a number of vampire and supernatural-themed kung-fu films.) Hurting the film's reputation even more was that one distributor took the film, retitled it THE SEVEN BROTHERS MEET DRACULA, and chopped the film up into a senseless mess. Like BRIDES OF DRACULA, the film was originally conceived as a Van Helsing tale, but investors felt Dracula was one of Hammer's hottest properties, and insisted the character be worked into the plot. While the filmmakers managed to work Dracula into the narrative, they weren't able to lure Christopher Lee back into the cape and fangs again. In spite of that, however, we do have the benefit of Peter Cushing's final performance as Dr. Van Helsing and that, alone, makes the film worthwhile viewing. Poor performance/distribution scrapped plans for further such ventures, and Hammer shelved the proposed follow-up feature, KALI: DEVIL-BRIDE OF DRACULA. (Which, based on descriptions, might have been a better film than this.) Christopher Lee and Peter Cushing are often linked in our minds as Dracula and Van Helsing, so it seems strange to realize they only played those roles TOGETHER in only three films, HORROR OF DRACULA, DRACULA AD 1972 and SATANIC RITES OF DRACULA. It would have been nice to have seen Cushing cast in the role of vampire slayer in further films, perhaps battling the Karnstein films or teamed up with Captain Kronos in Hammer's other vampire sagas.
Anchor Bay's DVD of this film is well worth seeking out. In addition to containing both versions of the film, as a bonus the DVD also includes the audio adaptation of the story, which was released as a soundtrack album in the 1970s, in which Peter Cushing and another actor present the tale like a radio dramatization. (There had also been plans to do a similar album for FRANKENSTEIN AND THE MONSTER FROM HELL, but the project was scraped. I don't know if Cushing actually recorded the Frankenstein narrative or not.)