Vampires (11 page)

Review
Hardly a great film by technical standards it betrays the hardships that were tantamount while filming
The Legend of the Seven Golden Vampires.
Hammer had partnered with
Hong Kong’s Run Run Shaw productions in a last bid to keep their Dracula franchise alive. The very first scene defies cinematic logistics as a weary and demented shaman travels to Castle Dracula to ask for his help in resurrecting the titular fiends.

Two very delirious things take place here that we overlook or just blatantly ignore because the film and concept is so outlandishly foolish already: The fact that;

1; Dracula’s castle and the surrounding countryside bear no similarities to the previous movies and are clearly not European in design. And

2; Dracula and the shaman understand each other perfectly even though the Holy man speaks in subtitles and Dracula speaks perfect English
Every checklist I covered for this film never mentions these two obvious gaffes.

On with the action.

Dracula performs an incredible feat by possessing the body of the servant so that he can continue his evil and emerge beyond the confines of his crypt;

“This miserable place, this mausoleum!”

As the disguised Count ventures into the wild, we are whisked to 1904 and a Chungking University lecture given by Professor Lawrence Van Helsing Like Hammer themselves, he is trying to spread the word of Dracula abroad and recounts a tale of a farmer who ventured to Ping Kwei to rescue his daughter and free his people from the rule of the vampires. The girl is stabbed with a sword and the farmer bolts but not before tearing a golden bat from the throat of one of the vampires as Dracula/Kah looks on. The Count summons apocalyptic skeletons on horseback to pursue the old man who leaves the amulet on a Holy shrine. As the vampire tries to retrieve it, he is destroyed when his hand touches the Holy statue. The farmer is killed by the zombies who look like extras from a Lucio Fulci canteen that didn’t get their screen time and Van Helsing’s story fails to hit home to the students the horror that is in their midst. But his story has hit a nerve with Hsi Ching (David Chiang) as he follows the professor home and confesses that the old farmer is his own grandfather. To prove this claim, he has the golden bat that was torn from the body of the vampire. Van Helsing wastes no time in telling Ching of his plans to venture to Ping Kwei to destroy the vampires and restore peace to the province, but it will be a long and arduous journey that requires a great deal of money. Coincidence abounds in the movie as Van Helsing’s son, Leyland (Robin Stewart) has made the acquaintance of wealthy, widowed European socialite Vanessa Buren – Julie Ege looking fabulous - who is looking for thrills and adventure in the Far East. When the two are attacked by members of the Tong and saved by the flying fists of the seven brothers of the alternate film title, Ms Buren decides to put up the cash for the expedition. She is fascinated by the work of Leyland’s father and bores the pants off the son all the way home by reminding him of this fact. In no time at all the heroes are on their way to the land of robbers and brigands. The sibling supermen and one woman, the petite but deadly Mai Kwei (Shih Szu), protect their European charges against bandits in the daytime and vampires at night. The battle is not without its losses and Ching is forced to destroy himself and Vanessa when the latter is turned – very quickly – into one of the undead. This ritualistic suicide is one of the few striking moments of the film that consists of pretty mediocre choreography and blatant overacting by the many exuberant extras that China breeds by the bucketful. Finally, it is down to Professor Van Helsing to put paid to the real villain of the piece, Count Dracula. Dracula has survived in the body of Kah for over a hundred years, but his clumsy approach on the field of battle has him impaled in under thirty seconds and he shrivels down to nothing. However, despite this exuberant display, I have to confess that I love the movie. The term,
so bad, it’s great
, comes to mind. And the running time is satisfactorily filled out.

Obviously another approach by Hammer to reinvigorate their dying Dracula franchise as the previous misunderstood reworking by Alan Gibson were booed off the screen on their release. The Count is portrayed by John Forbes Robertson and he is voiced by David de Keyser. The story suggests that Dracula has been active in Ping Kwei since 1804, ninety three years before the publication of Bram Stoker’s novel and eighty one years before the setting for Hammer’s original
Dracula (1958).
Don Houghton’s screenplay wipes out the references of the previous eight movies in one very involving pre-credit sequence as the Count uses yet another power of possession as he inhabits the body of a determined slave. Made up to resemble Christopher Lee as much as possible, Forbes Robertson has also studied the Master himself and dies in a very similar manner to Sir Chris when staked by Van Helsing. He even seems to have more fun as he doesn’t allow himself to be held back by the authentications of Stoker that Lee constantly moaned were missing in Hammer’s approach while making his films. The castle sequence put me in mind of a well-drawn graphic novel with its heavy lighting and pantomime atmosphere and it had already been embellished in
The House of Hammer
magazine. Like
The Satanic Rites of Dracula
, the whole movie had a strong air of TV surrounding it and with the addition of the mythical seven brothers; I was reminded of that great Chinese series,
The Water Margin
, in the mid nineteen eighties. The mythical number seven resounds throughout as there are seven half-naked oriental girls chained around a boiling cauldron for when the vampires become peckish. These peasants are dragged screaming from their homes in regular midnight attacks on the village by the vampires who cut down their father’s and brothers with swords and fangs before setting fire to their humble retreats.

Peter Cushing plays yet another strand of the Van Helsing family. Lawrence was also the first name of the vampire slayer in
Dracula AD1972
, but he was killed in London in 1872. The adventurer here claims to have been in constant battle with Dracula and vampires all his life and has one son, Leyland Van Helsing, who looks on his father as an anthropologist and finds love with Mai Kwei after a clumsy approach to courtship with Vanessa Buren. The professor, dressed this time in a blinding white solar topi, explains that on top of the crucifix and garlic a silver shaft and the statue of Buddha are useful in destroying the night creatures. Still firm and authoritative, one can see the strain on Cushing’s face in many of the sequences. This was his last Dracula film for Hammer, but he did go on to star in one or two episodes of
The Hammer House of Horror
.

Billed on the posters as
The first Kung Fu Horror Spectacular!
this turns out to be a gross misnomer. The fights are pedestrian; there are no real horrors and it falls short of being spectacular in almost every respect. Conversely, there are extensive battles, vampires that change into bats attacking on horseback every ten minutes and a great air of fun is had by entertainers and audience alike. I think that
The Legend of the Seven Golden Vampires
should be put under the microscope by the ‘new’ Hammer studios and refashioned as an all-action television series for the 21
st
century.

The Karnstein Trilogy

”She looked beautiful in the moonlight.”

- Joseph Sheridan LeFanu,
Carmilla (1872)

As the Dracula franchise showed signs of severe lack of imagination, Hammer constructed a series of films based on the story
Carmilla (1872)
by Irish author Joseph Sheridan LeFanu. The novella was first published in the magazine,
The Dark Blue
in late 1871 and early 1872 then again in the author’s own
In A Glass Darkly
. The story contains the first known doctor of the occult in literature Dr Hesselius, and the narrative is presented as one of his casebook files.

The protagonist is a young girl named Laura and it is her voice that carries us through the strange events. Laura lives with her widowed father in a solitary castle located on the outskirts of the forests of Styria. At the age of six, she recounts a vision in her bedroom of a strange and beautiful visitor. She also claims that she was bitten on the chest, but has no apparent wounds. The action moves on twelve years and Laura’s father
informs her that his friend, General Spielsdorf, has sent a letter stating that his niece,
Bertha Rheinholdt has died suddenly in mysterious circumstances and he cannot make his proposed visit. He promises to reveal more later.

A carriage accident outside Laura’s home acquaints her with the young girl, Carmilla. The girls share the bond of the ‘dream’ that they both had years earlier. Carmilla appears injured after the accident and her mother arranges that she stay with Laura and her father for three months as her own business is very urgent. She informs that the girl is of sound mind and will not discuss her family or her past. With these provisions in place, the mother leaves. True to the mother’s statement and despite intense questioning by Laura, Carmilla doesn’t disclose any information about herself, but she and Laura strike up a friendship. Events take strange turns as Carmilla seems to hold more than an interest in her new friend and she also displays swift changes of mood. Laura is scolded for singing Christian hymns when a funeral procession passes by and a portrait – dated 1698 - found in a newly-arrived shipment shows that Laura’s ancestor, Mircalla Countess Kar
nstein uncannily resembles her new friend. Both of them even have the same mole on their necks.

A doctor is called when Laura begins to have nightmares about a giant cat monster that changes into an ethereal girl and disappears through doors without opening them. The cat bites Laura on the chest. The doctor privately warns her father that his daughter should not be left unattended. Laura and her father then set off for the remote Karnstein village that lies in ruins. He informs the housekeeper to follow once Carmilla – a late sleeper – has awakened. On the way, they meet General Spielsdorf who tells them his own monstrous tale.

It appears that the General met a strange woman and her daughter, Millarca, at a costumed ball and, convincing him that they were old friends, she asked that her daughter stay with him for three weeks while she attended to urgent business. When his niece fell ill with similar symptoms to Laura, the General surmised that she was being visited by a vampire. Hiding himself in the closet, he discovered that a gigantic cat was visiting his niece Bertha, as she lay in her bed. Sword in hand, he sprang out of the closet and witnessed the cat change into Millarca before fleeing through the door without opening it. Shortly afterwards his niece, Bertha Rheinholdt died.

Arriving at Karnstein, The General asks a Woodman for the location of Mircalla’s tomb. The man replies that it has been relocated long ago by the man who vanquished the vampires in the region.

Carmilla appears and the general takes an axe to her. She flees and the general explains to Laura that Countess Mircalla Karnstein is Carmilla, the vampire who murdered his niece. They are then joined by the Baron Vordenburg who has discovered that it was his own ancestor who destroyed the vampires years earlier, but fell in love with Mircalla and was turned into one of the undead. Vordenburg is an authority on vampires. Using notes left by his forefathers, he locates Mircalla’s tomb and receives an exhumation order. They see the vampire laid in a sea of blood in the coffin. Still young and supple as the day she died. She is destroyed with a stake through the heart and Laura is taken on holiday by her father to recover from her ordeal.

If
Dracula
is the literary father of vampires, there is no room for doubt that the
Countess Mircalla Karnstein
is the mother. The story is told in a very frank manner by LeFanu and is obviously researched more thoroughly than Dracula as one can feel the authenticity in many of its passages. Carmilla is not hampered by the sunlight and can change her form, most memorably into a large gray cat. She sleeps in a coffin and only becomes intimate with a few of her victims.

“ “With gloating eyes she drew me to her, and her hot lips travelled along my cheek in kisses; and she would whisper, almost in sobs, "You are mine, you
shall be mine, and you and I are one forever".”

Carmilla
had already been filmed twice and in both cases, the results were pretty unmemorable.
Blood and Roses (1960)
and
Terror in the Crypt (1963),
the second version filmed in Italy with a guest appearance by Christopher Lee. I have seen neither of these adaptations, but various stills and reviews describe both efforts as pretty much middle-of-the-road.
Blood and Roses
was directed and co-written by Roger Vadim and starred second wife Annette as Carmilla. The story was moved from 19
th
Century Styria to 20
th
Century Italy and had the young lead being possessed by the spirit of her ancestor after a tomb is disturbed during a fireworks display. A series of vampire attacks holds the town in a grip of fear soon afterwards with the lesbian overtones very apparent. The film’s original title:
Et mourir de Plaisir
actually translates as
And to die of pleasure
.
Terror in the Crypt/La Crypta e l’incubo
was a more straightforward adaptation of LeFanu’s short story, and the Carl Dreyer classic
Vampyr (1932)
borrows very loosely from the tale. Further inclusions are the 1972 cult film,
The Blood Spattered Bride/La Novia Ensengretada,
in which Alexander Bastedo creates a mind-numbing image in her opening shot; buried in the ground with her bare breasts resting on the soil. Later in the film she literally has her heart ripped out by a victim’s husband. A cult item that gained notoriety amongst the young men in my school playground during the birth of video in the early eighties. Other Carmilla’s include Izarina Trejanowska in a black and white Polish version,
Carmilla (1980)
and cat-eyed Meg Tilly in an adaptation by Gabrielle Beaumont in 1989. As with many creatures of the night, Carmilla has ventured into parody in such crassly dire British comedies like the execrable
Lesbian Vampire Killers (2009)
and the gore-filled mash up of
Vampires Vs Zombies.
There have been numerous films that give nods to the story and some even fuse Carmilla with that other blood nymph The Countess Bathory.