Tag: kung fu movies

The Friday Night Horror Movie: The Legend of the 7 Golden Vampires (1974)

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In 1974 Shaw Brothers Studio teamed up with Hammer Films to produce The Legend of the 7 Golden Vampires. On paper that sounds like a dream come true. Both studios are known for making terrific genre films with high production values on low budgets. Hammer was the king of remaking classic monster movies with gothic style and extra violence and sex appeal. Shaw Brothers mastered the art of kung fu style. Mixing them should have created an incredible film full of beautifully drawn castles whereupon kung fu masters battled vampires, werewolves, and other assorted demons.

Sadly, the actual film is rather dull and poorly produced.

The plot is a simple thing. Kah (Chan Shen), a Daoist monk, travels to Dracula’s castle in hopes that he can restore the glory of the 7 Golden Vampires who have ruled a small Chinese village for centuries, but when a poor villager killed one of them, their power was drained.

At first Dracula (sadly not Christopher Lee, but here played by John Forbes-Robertson) is like, “Nah, I’m good,” and “I don’t take orders from people like you; I make them my slaves.” But then he realizes he’s been stuck inside his castle for some reason, and the only way to get out is to take control of Kah’s body. Once that happens, he figures he might as well see what the whole Golden Vampire thing is about. Then he disappears for almost the entire film, only showing back up at the very end.

Professor Van Helsing (Peter Cushing, yea!) is lecturing at a Chinese university about vampires but gets the shrug-off by most of the intellectual community there. Only one kid believes him. Hsi Ching (David Chiang) is from the village of the Golden Vampires, and it was his grandfather that killed one of them.

He convinces Van Helsing, along with his son Leyland (Robin Stewart) and a rich blonde woman, Vanessa Buren (Julie Ege), who is financing the entire thing, to follow him and his martial expert six siblings to travel to the village and kill the Golden Vampires.

The journey is long and difficult and filled with many battles. Eventually they get to the village, fight the Golden Vampire, and then Dracula comes out to fight Van Helsing one on one.

So what went wrong? It was a troubled shoot from the beginning. They shot at Shaw Studios in Hong Kong with a British director (Roy Ward Baker), a mostly English cast (at least for the speaking roles), and a Chinese crew. Communication was difficult as most of the Chinese didn’t speak English and vice versa.

Baker had made some decent films for Hammer, but he doesn’t seem to know what to do with the kung fu aspects of the film. Eventually the Shaw Brothers people hired Chang Cheh to handle the action sequences because Baker was out of his depth with them.

Trouble is they shot most of the film outdoors on the rather barren, scrabble mountains near Hong Kong. Hammer Films is known for its great use of gothic castles, intricate sets, and bold color designs. You get very little of that by shooting outdoors in the sunshine. There are a few scenes indoors, and Baker really shines there, but there are far too few of them to make things interesting.

The kung fu scenes are mostly unremarkable as well. There is none of that jaw-dropping stunt work that made the Shaw Brothers famous. The story is mostly dull. Even Peter Cushing seems to be phoning it in.

Truth is Hammer Studios was running out of steam. Their glory days were behind them. Shaw Brothers would keep making numerous films well into the 1980s, but even though this was shot on their home turf, they seem to have been relegated to the second string.

In the end, this is a curiosity piece. If you are a fan of both studios, it is worth watching, but you’ll probably end up much like I did, wondering what could have been.

The Friday Night Horror Movie: Mr. Vampire (1985)

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My pneumonia is subsiding, but definitely not fully gone. I’d say I’m up about 80 percent on that front. But you may recall when I first started getting sick I complained about having done something to my hip. Well, that is back with a vengeance. I don’t know what I’ve done to it, but it hurt like crazy anytime I stand up and try to walk.

Getting is old is not fun, my friends.

I’m in no shape to write a long review tonight, but since I missed last week’s Friday Night Horror and haven’t written much since then I wanted to talk a little bit about this movie.

I actually started Smile 2 this evening. Got about halfway through then got hungry. When I had finished my meal, my daughter had snuck into my room to watch something of her own. My wife was downstairs and she doesn’t like horror movies so after a bit we landed on this, a rather silly and not very scary horror movie.

Mr. Vampire is the first in what you might call the Hopping Vampire genre of Hong Kong cinema (I previously reviewed a later film in the genre, Encouter of the Spooky Kind (1980). The hopping vampires are actually Jiangshi, which come from traditional Chinese folklore and are something like a mix between vampires and zombies. Or so says Wikipedia anyway.

This film follows a Taoist priest and his two inept assistants who battle a super strong vampire, a couple of other vampires that he’s recently turned and eventually a succubus type ghost.

As you might suspect from that description it is a very silly movie. There are lots of broad jokes, goofy physical humor, and some pretty good kung fu action. It is, perhaps, a little too silly for my particular senses, but ultimately it won me over in its sheer entertainment value.

My wife seemed to enjoy it too. Definitely recommended when you are looking for something different.

Broken Oath (1977)

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We are neck deep into 31 Days of Horror. I love it. I love watching horror movies. I love writing about them. But I gotta admit, sometimes it is hard. Sometimes my “real” life wears me out, brings me down, freaking exhausts me.

This week has been a physically exhausting one for me at work. I come home and maybe watch a movie, but finding the energy to write about one has been difficult.

Luckily, I’ve written lots of other reviews for Cinema Sentries and now I get to share one with you.

Broken Oath is a Hong Kong, Kung Fu adaptation of the Lady Snowblood story. It isn’t as good as the original Japanese film, but it is still a lot of fun. You can read my review here.

Black Mask (1996)

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I’ve only seen a few Jet Li movies and I can’t say that I’m really a fan. Obviously, he’s got mad martial arts chops, but his movies (at least the few I’ve seen) don’t really do it for me.

Black Mask is an exception, sort-of. It is an utterly silly movie with a dumb plot and some terrible acting. But the action is so over-the-top and completely ridiculous that it won me over.

You can read my full review here.

A Man Called Tiger (1973)

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Bruce Lee was supposed to have starred in this film. But he and director Wei Lo had something of a falling out and so Jimmy Wang Yu got the lead role.

It is a crazy movie with a ridiculous (and somewhat incomprehensible) plot. This is made a bit more comprehensible in the newly restored Hong Kong edit (it was chopped to pieces in the Internation edit upon initial release). But it still doesn’t make much sense.

But it is worth watching because the action is a lot of fun. I’m a sucker for Hong Kong action flicks and this totally delivers. You can read my full review here.

Foreign Film February: Encounter of the Spooky Kind (1980)

encounter of the spooky kind

I recently resubscribed to The Criterion Channel. It is without a doubt my favorite streaming service, but I have a tendency to put it on hold for a month or two. There are just so many other services and various other ways in which to watch shows and movies that I just can’t afford to subscribe to everything all the time.

One of the many things I love about The Criterion Channel is that it not only has some of the world’s greatest cinema on there – from Kurosawa to Bergman, Fellini to Welles, but it also has tons of oddball, weirdo films as well. The people behind it are just as comfortable with the arthouse as with the grindhouse.

Case in point I watched this film this weekend on the channel. Encounter of the Spooky Kind is a silly martial arts movie that blends low-brow comedy with horror with lots of crazy kung fu thrown in for good measure.

It was co-written, directed by and stars Sammo Hung as Bold Cheung a rikshaw driver. One day while working he discovers two men looking through the peephole of his house, excited that a couple is making love inside. Bold Cheung barges in, narrowly missing the man with whom his wife is having an affair. 

That man is actually Master Tam (Huang Ha) Bold Cheung’s boss. Afraid that he will be found out and that Bold Cheung will have his revenge on him, Master Tam vows to murder Bold Cheung. But he cannot do it outright as he might get caught and be put in prison.

Luckily Master Tam knows a sorcerer. He tricks Bold Cheung into spending two nights inside a haunted house. There the sorcerer has control over a hopping vampire (seriously, apparently Chinese folklore involves living corpses that move around by hopping and sucking out your life force). 

Luckily for Bold Cheung the sorcerer’s apprentice doesn’t think they should use their powers for evil purposes and he sets out to help Bold Cheung to survive.

There’s a bit of voodoo, some more vampires, and even a magic undergarment thrown into the mix. It is all very silly (a little too silly for my tastes) and it runs a bit too long, but mostly it’s a lot of fun. The kung fu is excellent which more than makes it worthwhile to watch.

Shaw Brother’s Classics, Vol. 2

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Another great collection of martial arts movies from Shout! Factory. Admittedly these are much better if you watch them spread out over a longer period than the few days that I watched them in. I gotta admit I grew a little tired of these films after a while. But I still had a lot of fun watching them. You can read my review of this set over at Cinema Sentries.

Shaw Brothers Classics, Vol. 1

shaw brotehrs classics vol 1

I’ve reviewed several Shaw Brother’s films on Cinema Sentries and posted them here before. They made a slew of terrific kung fu flicks in the 1970s through the ’80s. This year Shout! Studio has released three (thus far) big boxed sets of their films. I have the first two and I just finished my review of the first one. You can read that here.

I gotta admit I’m getting a little tired of watching them. On an individual basis they are all mostly great, but after a while they all just feel the same. For the second set, I’m taking extensive notes just so I can remember which film is which.