Martial Arts Vs. Vampires

 

 (themoviedatabase)

LEGEND OF THE SEVEN GOLDEN VAMPIRES-1974-Transylvania 1804. A guy named Kan (Shen Chan) who once presided over the 7 Golden Vampires visits Dracula's castle to ask the king of vampires to help him resurrect the group. Dracula (John Forbes-Robinson) has a better idea. He possesses Kan's “image” and decides to resurrect the 7 himself. After the credits, in Chung King 100 years later, Prof. Van Helsing (who else but Peter Cushing) lectures on the Seven Vampires and his encounters with Dracula. The “sophisticated” Chinese students ridicule him but one student Hsi Ching (David Chiang) visits the professor at night to apol-ogize. He definitely believes in the legend as his grandfather destroyed one of the vampires. He wants Van Helsing to accompany him and his 6 brothers to the village where the remaining 6 vampires rule. Meanwhile, Van Helsing's son Leland (Robin Stewart) gets into trouble with local gangster Leung Hon, when he agrees to escort widowed world traveler Vanessa Buren (Julie Ege) home. They are saved by 2 of Hsi's brothers. Vanessa agrees to finance their expedition provided she's allowed to go. Under the protests of the elder Van Helsing, she is allowed. 

Right off the bat, they are attacked by Hon's gang. The brothers (each has a specialty) plus their lone sister Mei Kwei (Szu Shih) defeat the gang and Hon gets an arrow through his neck. Later, in the village, the group battles the remaining 6 vampires and their undead army. They destroy 3 more then get ready for a final showdown. There's a big violent martial arts battle that ends tragically for some. After the final vampire is put down, Van Helsing meets his arch enemy. Dracula's disintegration scene seems longer than their actual battle. 

This has a little of everything: martial arts, weapons, vampires, walking dead, nudity, dismemberment. No classic but not the shit show it is sometimes described as. However, this was Hammer co-production with The Shaw Brothers studio and there were a lot of “communication prob-lems” between the two directors on the film, the English Roy Ward Baker and the Chinese Cheh Chang. A sequel was planned but poor box office performance shelved that idea.

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More Shaw

ONE ARMED SWORDSMAN-1967-After his father is killed, Kang (Yu Wang) is taken in by a master swordsman and trains at his school. Years pass and he becomes the master's best student much to the chagrin of the other students including the master's daughter Pei (Yin-Tze Pan). In a fit of rage she chops off Kang's arm. He wanders away and is found by Xiao Man (Lisa Chiao Chiao) who nurses him back to health.. At first he's bitter but later he trains with his father's broken sword and goes about his business. Rival master swordsmen Smiling Face (Tang Ti) and Old Long Arm (Yeung Chi-hing) want to wipe out the master swordsman's school using a new weapon called a sword lock. When Pei is kidnapped, Kang saves her. This unfortunately causes some problems for Xiao Man and Kang but then he professes his love for her. Long Arm's forces attack the school and kill many of his students (one guy commits suicide). Just when things look bad Kang shows up (after killing Smiling Face with the help this dad's short sword) and kills Long Arm.. He goes back to Xiao Man leaving Pei angry and broken hearted. 

Thanks to veteran director Chang Chen it has excellent sword fights and some gore. Star Yu Wang was known in the US as Jimmy Wang. ONE ARMED SWORDSMAN was a box office winner for The Shaw Brothers and the first Hong Kong film to gross 1 million dollars! Followed by a great sequel RETURN OF THE ONE ARMED SWORDSMAN and a third unrelated entry THE NEW ONE ARMED SWORDSMAN. All three are highly recommended!

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More Rambling....

JACK HUNTER AND THE LOST TREASURE OF UGARIT-2008-Ivan Sergei  portrays the title character a terrible Indiana Jones clone. It's full of bad acting and direction wrapped around an idiotic derivative plot. It was filmed in Turkey (I'll avoid the pun...). I've read it was actually some kind of mini-series (?). It was directed by Terry Cunningham (if he was related to Richie it might explain why he's allowed to direct movies but of course that can't be true...)....That leaves us with RED FACTION: ORIGINS-2011-more S.F. nonsense that takes place on the planet Mars in 2145. It's an un-fantastic allegory where the Martians have to fight to be free from the evil Earth force. Robert "I used to have a career" Patrick stars as a guy who led the revolution. Kate Vernon is "The Matriarch" (mostly appearing as a hologram) and there's a lot of black and white flashbacks. Hmmm..X-MEN: ORIGINS...RED FACTION: ORIGINS...I hope this isn't the start of something! The story is by Charles Band vet Danny Bilson. TV director Michael Nankin made it...
 

I watched a good film recently too! DUEL ON GANRYU ISLAND, the third part of Hiroshi Inagaki's excellent "Samurai Trilogy" (1954-56) starring the great Toshiro Mifune as Musashi Miyamoto, a wandering misfit who becomes Japan's greatest "fencer". At the time Kurosawa was making some of the greatest movies of all time with Mifune (they collaborated on "The Seven Samurai" the same year as Part 1) but as Kurosawa worked exclusively in black and white at the time, all three of Inagaki's films are in color which really adds to the beauty of the story...THE KID WITH THE GOLDEN ARM is a 1979 Shaw Bros. production directed by Cheh Chang. It's chock full of violence, great fights and characters named Iron Feet, Golden Arms and Short Axe. It features the usual "Venoms" cast....I also saw two other martial arts movies recently THE REVENGER-(aka SHAOLIN REVENGER)-1980 and  KUNG-FU OF THE EIGHT DRUNKARDS but I'm sure everyone's tired of me writing about such things!

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RIP Robert W. Kaelin-1918-2014

Your Kung-Fu's Good

THE SHAOLIN AVENGERS-1976-This Hong Kong produced martial arts period piece is based on the legend of Shaolin martial artists Fong Si Yu (Alexander Fu Sheng) and Hu Wei Chien (Kuan-Chung Chi). In flashbacks Fong is violently (and comically) trained by his mother (!) who beats him with a bamboo stick and dunks him in a vat of wine. Parts of it are very funny (a scene with a matchmaker is hysterical) and the Fong character does a lot of dumb things but basically the story is serious and violent. Director Cheh Chang made nearly 100 martial art movies including the classic FIVE DEADLY VENOMS.

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