Touches You

A film with more than the usual spoiler issues. Talking about it in any detail feels akin to handing you a gift-wrapped present and saying, "I hope you like it -- It's a thriller about a diabolical secret experiment."

All of these films share one commonality, that being a kind of emotional center that humanizes a cast of monsters.

By the time the dramatic fireworks start popping off, each one feels earned.

East meets west in this super entertaining horror/martial arts crossover film. This is a collaboration between two of my favorite indie movie companies, Hammer and Shaw Brothers. I would not regard this is the most well made project from either, but The Legend Of The 7 Golden Vampires is so much fun. Christopher Lee had enough of playing Dracula at this point, so enter John Forbes Robertson who gives the best worst portrayal of the Count with horrible make up f/x. The performance is brief, but totally over the top and hilarious. This however fits the ultra campy tone of the film. John Forbes Robertson was actually good as a vampire in another Hammer film, The Vampire Lovers. The cast is mostly Chinese but contains a British cast including the great Peter Cushing, who returns as Van Helsing. Cushing is always great and joining him is Shaw Bros. regular David Chiang, who also delivers excellent performances and is great here. The film was made in Hong Kong and has more of a Shaw Bros. feel than a Hammer film. While the Gothic ambiance may be minimal, it more than makes up for it with hopping vampires, ott special f/x, sweet titties, a good amount of blood spraying and kung fu. The fight choreography is awesome and there is a whole lot of it too. Seeing David Chiang and Peter Cushing together in a movie is worth the price of admission, but in the fight scenes Peter Cushing gets in the mix and does well. The Legend Of The 7 Vampires is a whole lot of fun and is a collaborative effort between directors Chang Cheh and Roy Ward Baker. Great stuff!

The story is OK, but not great. The acting was OK, Peter Cushing is always Peter Cushing. The color gels were OK, maybe a bit overdone. I just viewed Suspiria, which is a way overrated piece of crap, which uses color gels like it's going out of style, and maybe it is the movie that killed the color gels.This movie was fun, and funny in spots, the kung fu fights were OK. The walking dead and the vampires and the makeup were ridiculous.This was actually better than some of the other Dracula movies by Hammer. I was very disappointed with Lee's performance. Presence and atmosphere is not enough. We need a good script and good acting.

In 1804, in Transylvania, a Chinese walker heads to the castle of Dracula. He awakes Dracula from his tomb and explains that he is Kah, the High Priest of the Seven Golden Vampires in China that are powerless. He needs Dracula to restore their power and the vampire takes Kah's body and image. One hundred years later, Professor Laurence Van Helsing (Peter Cushing) gives a lecture at a Chinese university about the legend of the Seven golden vampires but the students leave the auditorium finding that the all the exposition is superstition. However the student Hsi Ching (David Chiang) meets Van Helsing at home and tells that the legend is true and he knows the location of the vampires. Van Helsing accepts to travel to the village in the countryside to help to destroy the vampires and the wealthy widow Mrs. Vanessa Buren (Julie Ege), who has befriend his son Leyland Van Helsing (Robin Stewart), offers to sponsor the expedition provided she may go with them. Soon they embark with seven siblings skilled in kung-fu in a dangerous expedition to destroy the Golden Vampires and Dracula."The Legend of the 7 Golden Vampires" is the worst Dracula's movie produced by Hammer, with a ridiculous story that combines vampires with martial arts. This movie is a co-production of the Shaw Studio from Hong Kong and was released with different titles. The Anchor Bay DVD presents also the American edited version "The 7 Brothers Meet Dracula" that I did not see. It is also funny to see Vanessa Buren and Leyland in a hard expedition dressed like they are going to a party. My vote is five.Title (Brazil): Not Available

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.