I learned a few things during Hammer Horror Week. Sure, I watched some new films and learned some spiffy new facts about these movies but I also learned a few things about the readers of this blog. The Angry Lurker has seen every Hammer film ever made. Ever. And Chris from Simply Scotches wants to see the booby rating in every review.
Previously I had been posting two types of reviews. One was a short feature of a film describing whether it was good or had to be seen while inebriated to get the full experience. I included the trailer and poster art but those were not really reviews at all. The second type were longer with lots of screencaps and a movie summary with a handy violence and booby rating system. During Hammer Horror Week I combined the two. The reviews were longer with a screenshot or two and the trailer and poster art included. This is now the format that I'm going to use for every review but I'm going to add the booby and violence/gore rating, as well. Basically, look for the booby and violence rating in every review from now on.
Also if you guessed The Devil Rides Out as the answer for the mystery screenshot the other day, you are correct! I would also accept The Devil's Bride as that's how North American audiences would know it. The Devil Rides Out sounded too much like a western so the name was changed.
Hammer Horror! Dragon Thrills! The First Kung Fu Horror Spectacular!
The Legend of the 7 Golden Vampires
We shall end Hammer Horror week with the grindhousiest of the Hammer films; the last of the nine Hammer Dracula movies; the movie so excellent that Christopher Lee turned it down after reading the script...
The Legend of the 7 Golden Vampires, of course, is not just another Gothic vampire yarn. It has kung-fu! It also has nine different titles and some of you may know it as the edited North American version, The 7 Brothers Meet Dracula. Hammer Film Productions teamed up with the legendary Shaw Brothers Studio in Hong Kong to capitalize on the popularity of the kung-fu films of the early 1970s. So now the dreaded bloodthirsty creatures are no longer lurking in some dank Transylvanian castle or crypt, they are duking it out in China.
There isn't much of a plot and there doesn't have to be because it has kung-fu dammit! Dracula rises from the grave after being summoned by a Chinese disciple. He takes the form of this Asian guy and travels to China to help six vampire brothers who are distressed at losing the seventh member of their gang. Meanwhile, Professor Van Helsing (Peter Cushing) is teaching a university class in China to a group of skeptics who ridicule him for suggesting that vampires are real. One student does believe him because he and his
"Shawty wanna l-l-lick me like a lollipop."
brothers and one sister are vampire hunters. They need Van Helsing's expertise to eradicate the golden vampire minions from their town where these monsters are draining the blood of the local maidens. The brothers and their sister team up with Van Helsing, his widower son and a wealthy European debutante to confront the six Chinese vampires and the Count Dracula himself... with kung-fu!
I really like this film. It has Dracula, kung-fu and topless Chinese girls. What's not to like? Who cares if some the characters are wooden and irrelevant or that Dracula isn't frightening or really even necessary to the plot. Somehow it all works for me, but my standards are pretty low.
Here is the trailer for The Legend of the 7 Golden Vampires but I must warn you, because of the topless Chinese girls, it's NSFW.
Hammer Horror Week is will soon come to an end. Tomorrow will be the last review but I saved the best for last. Well, it may not be the best but it's the most "grindhousy" of them all. Until then, here is some Hammer movie poster art to peruse at your leisure. Have a great weekend everybody!
Also, here's a screenshot from a Hammer film that I did not showcase during Hammer Horror Week. Can anyone guess which movie this comes from?
Happy St. Patrick's Day everybody! At least the poster for today's movie is green.... Today we continue Hammer Horror Week with a bit of a change from the usual vampire fare with The Plague of the Zombies. But these are not the zombies that we think of when we think of zombies - for those are actually ghouls. The shambling, rotting, flesh eating monsters that we are used to seeing on the silver screen are not zombies at all. This idea became popular with Romero's Night of the Living Dead in 1968. Traditionally, zombies were men and woman who had no will of their own but were undead servants of a sorcerer who had enslaved them with Voodoo magic. The zombies in this 1966 film are of this traditional type.
A plague has taken the lives of twelve people in twelve months in a quaint village in the Cornish countryside. Dr. James Forbes arrives with his outspoken daughter Sylvia in a town plagued by more than disease after being summoned by former student and local physician Dr. Peter Thompson. Dr. Thompson's efforts to discover the the cause of these mysterious deaths has been hampered by the superstitious beliefs of the villagers and the meddling of the town's wealthy and controlling Squire, Clive Hamilton. Because autopsies have been forbidden by the locals, the two doctors decide to examine the most
Ether is the perfect drug for Las Vegas.
recently deceased in the graveyard under the full moon. When they open the casket they discover that the body is gone. Soon after, Dr Thompson's wife turns up dead at an abandoned tin mine.
Dr. Forbes begins to suspect Voodoo is behind all of this. All the evidence points to the suave but sinister Squire as the cause of this plague and the fact that he spent a significant amount of time in Haiti does nothing to help his case. It's up to the two doctors to take on the Squire and his undead henchmen and stop him before he turns Sylvia into one of his monsters.
The Plague of the Zombies is Hammer B-movie gold. If you watch it as a low budget and quickly shot B-movie punctuated with comical acting and effects, I think you will be pleasantly surprised. Remember, it's a mystery movie as much as it is a horror so don't expect it to be like a modern zombie film. These old Hammer films were created to be spooky more than outright scary and I think this movie succeeds in that. Watching it with a pint or two of Guinness couldn't hurt either.
I will trade blows with any man who tells me that Bela Lugosi was a better Dracula than Christopher Lee. Ok, maybe not. But I will argue vehemently and shake my fist. This is not Lee's best Dracula film, not by a very, very long shot but the campiness of Dracula A.D. 1972 makes it a fun ride.
The strangest element of these later Hammer films is the acting. Christopher Lee and Peter Cushing are simply too damn good for these films. I'm used to ludicrous story lines and cheesy special effects but usually a similar level of acting prowess accompanies these elements - but not so with these Hammer films. Lee and Cushing are great once again in Dracula A.D. 1972.
The film begins in 1872 with a frantic fight scene on a speeding coach between Count Dracula and Dr. Van Helsing. The coach crashes, Dracula is impaled on a wooden spoke and both he and Van Helsing die as result of the crash. A follower of The Count arrives at the scene, collects his ashy remains and buries them at a church near Van Helsing's grave. One hundred years later a bored group of counterculture youths - led by guy who looks strikingly like Dracula's disciple from one hundred years before - decide to practice some good ole fashioned black magic to entertain themselves at the church where Dracula was buried. But their leader has more sinister motives than just shits 'n giggles. He performs a blood ritual and calls forth Dracula from the grave which was totally not groovy with the others.
"Get a haircut, hippie."
It just so happens that the buxom blonde in this black magic party is a descendant of Dr. Van Helsing and has a grandfather who is an expert in the occult and looks exactly like the Van Helsing who died one hundred years before. He figures everything out and goes hunting for the resurrected Dracula and his minions.
If you're looking for the best of the Hammer Dracula films, this isn't it. I'd recommend something like Horror of Dracula from 1958 as the best of the bunch. However, if you're looking for a slightly campy and dated vampire tale with beautiful sets and solid acting, check out Dracula A.D. 1972. It's worth watching.
