Shaw Brothers meets Hammer horror in martial arts oddity The Legend of the 7 Golden Vampires
- ‘An absolute disaster’, the film’s director later said of 1974 Shaw Brothers-Hammer Films co-production about a troupe of kung fu vampires in China
- It didn’t help that US distributor Warner Bros demanded an appearance by Count Dracula. Misunderstandings between UK and Chinese film crews made matters worse
The idea of the aristocratic Count Dracula turning up in China and commanding a troupe of supernatural Chinese acolytes trained in kung fu sounds bizarre. But that’s just what happened in 1974’s The Legend of the 7 Golden Vampires.
The unlikely film, which was shot entirely in Hong Kong and primarily at Shaw Studios, was a collaboration between Shaw Brothers and Britain’s Hammer Film Productions, well known for lurid horror movies like Dracula and The Curse of Frankenstein during the late 1950s and 1960s.
It paired Hammer regular Peter Cushing, as the legendary vampire slayer Professor Van Helsing, with martial arts legend David Chiang Da-wei, who played the leader of a group of Chinese vampire hunters who help him track down the Count in China.
Performers like Shaw Brothers star Shih Sze, Chan Shen, and Lau Kar-wing also featured, although they were given few lines and very little to do outside of the action scenes.