It's "Black Belt versus Black Magic" in the last of the Hammer Draculas THE LEGEND OF THE 7 GOLDEN VAMPIRES, on Blu-ray from Scream Factory.

In 1804, monk Kah (Chan Shen, FIVE FINGERS OF DEATH) travels on foot to the Transylvanian mountains to the castle of Count Dracula (James Forbes-Robertson, THE VAMPIRE LOVERS) to request that he use his power to resurrect the Seven Golden Vampires and restore his rule of fear over the area surrounding his temple. Weary of ruling over his own miserable castle, Dracula decides instead to possess Kah's body and return to China and new hunting grounds. One hundred years later, Professor Van Helsing (Peter Cushing, THE CREEPING FLESH) is in Chung King province lecturing on vampirism at the local university. Although he believes that may of their area legends have a basis in fact, the local academic community prefers to look forward and his claims that vampires are real and still active in China fall upon deaf ears; that is, with the exception of villager Hsi Ching (David Chiang, FIVE MASTERS OF DEATH) whose great grandfather succeeded in destroying one of the Seven Golden Vampires and making away with the medallion required for his resurrection. Ching appeals to Van Helsing to come with him and his six brothers – archer Kwei (Liu Chia Yung, DRAGONS FOREVER), axe-man Ta (James Ma, SHATTER), swordsmen San (Chen Tien Loong, THE BUTTERFLY MURDERS) and Sung (Fong Kah Ann, DRAGON LORD), spearman Po-Kwei, and mace-wielder Chi-Tao – and one sister Mei Kwei (Shih Szu, JADE TIGER) to the village of Ping Kwei where the remainder of the Golden Vampires still sacrifice young women. Van Helsing initially turns him down out of skepticism and lack of funding for such an expedition until his son Leyland (Robin Stewart, PACIFIC BANANA) turns up with wealthy young Scandinavian widow Vanessa Buren (Julie Ege, CRAZE) who must get out of Chung King after crossing a Tong leader (Wong Han Chan, DRUNKEN MASTER) whose henchmen have subsequently been decimated by the Hsi siblings. Their trek to the village and the temple of the Seven Golden Vampires is fraught with danger as the stolen medallion alerts the remaining Golden Vampires and their undead slaves to its proximity.

A last gasp from the waning days of Hammer – more so than their actual last theatrical horror feature TO THE DEVIL A DAUGHTER – THE LEGEND OF THE 7 GOLDEN VAMPIRES as an attempt to wed Hammer horror with the martial arts craze smacks of desperation but it is actually one of the company's more entertaining latter day films. Shot in Hong Kong as a co-production with Shaw Brothers and showcasing new leads Chiang and Shih, the film does achieve a balance between kung fu action and gothic horror. The temple of the Seven Golden Vampires is a forbidding location lit with Bavian gel lighting while the desiccated vampires and their undead slaves bring to mind the Blind Dead (particularly with the use of slow motion and the recycling of footage of them emerging from their tombs and graves) while the fight scenes – which utilize some charming in-camera effects – are more exciting and gratifyingly gory in the tradition of both Hammer and Shaw. Cushing anchors the film with both Kah and Dracula relegated to the periphery for much of the proceedings while the middle focuses on two interracial relationships, one of which is destined for tragedy (as if a white man and an Asian woman was thought to be more palatable to western audiences than vice versa). While the locations are novel, the Panavision photography of John Wilcox (THE SKULL) and Roy Ford (FLASH GORDON) and the effects of Les Bowie (DRACULA, PRINCE OF DARKNESS) are as dependable Hammer elements as the booming score of James Bernard (HORROR OF DRACULA). Forbes-Robertson's Dracula is a bit of a let-down in his bookending appearances which also call attention to a gaping plot hole as this is a universe in which Van Helsing has previously faced off against the vampire even though he is supposed to have spent the last century in China.

Although pre-sold to Warner Bros. and distributed by them in most territories, THE LEGEND OF THE 7 GOLDEN VAMPIRES was one of three British horror titles that Warner dumped onto smaller distributors. While Amicus' FROM BEYOND THE GRAVE went to Howard Maher Films under the title CREATURES, THE LEGEND OF THE 7 GOLDEN VAMPIRES went to Dynamite Entertainment with THE SATANIC RITES OF DRACULA. The Dynamite version was trimmed by more than fifteen minutes with scenes shifted around and some footage recycled under the title THE 7 BROTHERS MEET DRACULA. Although the longer British version was screened on cable television in the 1990s stateside, only the American version was released to videotape in a center-cropped transfer first from Electric Video in the early 1980s and then PD label Viking Video in the mid-1980s (followed by an LP-mode sell-through edition from Star Classics). The film was finally restored to its full length and compositional width in 1998 when The Roan Group released it on laserdisc as part of their Hammer line in a two-disc set that also presented a scope transfer of the American version. The same non-anamorphic masters were ported over to Anchor Bay's 1999 double-sided DVD while a 2004 British DVD from Warner featured an anamorphic transfer that managed to look softer than the non-anamorphic one (the European transfer also featured subtitles in a different font for the prologue's Chinese dialogue than the ones featured on the Anchor Bay transfer).

Sourced from a 2K scan of "original film elements" Scream Factory's 1080p24 MPEG-4 AVC 2.35:1 widescreen transfer is imperfect while improving on the older transfers in just about every way. The image is overall sharper, the colors are more stable, and the vivid gel lighting is free of noise and reveals nuances not apparent in the older transfers (after the final golden vampire is killed during the climax the unnatural green gels that even colored the features of the human actors subtly recede being still apparent throughout the shot while the skintones of the actors become more neutral). On the other hand, there are a handful of shots where the contrast seems higher than it should be like the opening tracking shot along the audience of Van Helsing's lecture where highlights on skin seem to bloom. Some of the shots of the village raid also seem as if they came from an element a couple generations removed from the rest (while these scenes were shot by the Hong Kong crew, presumably the British crew lit them). Although the prologue features the subtitles in the font from the European transfer, the opening credits include the MPAA logo. The DTS-HD Master Audio 2.0 mono track is excellent with clear dialogue, battle cries, and the usual canned sound effects of clashing weaponry while Bernard's score sound particularly vivid. Optional English SDH subtitles are included.

Extras start off with a new audio commentary by author/film historian Bruce G. Hallenbeck, author of the book THE HAMMER VAMPIRE, who provides the context in which the film was produced what with Michael Carreras quickly acquiring Hammer upon hearing that his father planned to sell it off to Tigon behind his back. With the bottom dropping out of British film production in the early 1970s and American studios pulling out of funding, Carreras self-financed a handful of unsuccessful productions – among them the final Frankenstein film FRANKENSTEIN AND THE MONSTER FROM HELL and a string of feature film spin-offs of British sitcoms like MAN ABOUT THE HOUSE derived from the same show that would be remade in the U.S. as THREE'S COMPANY – and not a single deal from his visit to Cannes. It was Warner that suggested a project with Shaw Brothers, and their insistence that Dracula be added to the resulting script (necessitating the shooting of the prologue). Hallenbeck provides plenty of information about the production but is understandably better versed in the British horror aspect – providing some anecdotes from an interview with Forbes-Robertson – while praising the different look of the film as "Asian gothic." The interview with Hong Kong film expert Rick Baker "Kung Fear" (19:39), on the other hand, has Baker gushing information and admiration for the Shaw contingent of the production, noting that Chiang was put forward as the new face of the company after Wang Yu (THE ONE-ARMED SWORDSMAN) left Shaw for Golden Harvest, as well as noting that the film's direction is credited to Roy Ward Baker (AND NOW THE SCREAMING STARTS) but the action scenes were actually directed by uncredited Chang Cheh (INVINCIBLE SHAOLIN). "When Hammer Met Shaw" (6:38) is an extract from a longer interview with actor Chiang who does not exactly praise the film but recalls it as a learning experience in which he got to see how Western productions worked with the use of master shot takes and then close-ups rather than working shot-by-shot, and recalling that Cushing spent four hours with him one day working on the delivery of the dialogue.