As a horror fan myself I came rather late to the awesomeness of Hammer films, the British film studio famed for it's Dracula and Frankenstein movies that gave us the wonderful pairing of Sir Christopher Lee and Peter Cushing. Shawn Francis brings us his look at Millennium's U.S release of Hammer Triple feature. Check out Shawn's words after the jump...
Written By Shawn Francis
For the past year
Hammer has been re-releasing select titles from their library on
remastered DVDs and blu-rays, with no plans for any of them to hit our US shores—until now! On March 4th a press
release was issued over here that a company called, Millennium
Entertainment, was now working with Hammer to bring those remastered
movies to America.
While we wait for
those blu-rays, they decided to kick things off with a dirt-cheap
bargain collection—only $8.00 on Amazon (US)—that contains
Dracula, Prince Of Darkness (1966), Legend Of The 7 Golden
Vampires (1974) and Frankenstein Created Woman (1967).
Initially the
impetus for wanting this collection was so I could finally see Legend
Of The 7 Golden Vampires, but after having recently seen and
reviewed the UK restored version of Dracula (1958), I am now
keen on seeing all those other Dracula movies Hammer made that never
piqued my interest growing up.
Technically,
Dracula, Prince Of Darkness is Hammer Films’ third entry in
that franchise but the second that directly connects to their version
of Dracula (1958), which is recapped in the beginning,
flashing back to when Van Helsing (Peter Cushing) finally put an end
to Dracula’s (Christopher Lee) reign of terror upon the
countryside.
In Prince Of
Darkness, it’s been ten years since that fateful moment, and
what we learn is his “incorporeal essence” still has strength
enough to influence the material plane. The locals still fear
vampirism, so much so that the “normal” death of a girl can bring
about unfounded fears. Enter Father Sandor (Andrew Keir), who’s a
monk with a rifle and the desire to not see these crazy
peasants desecrate this girl’s corpse.
Later on, at the
same local pub Cushing first walked into in the first film looking
for his friend Harker, two brothers, Charles (Francis Mathews) and
Alan Kent (Charles Tingwell) and their wives, Helen (Barbara Shelly)
and Diana (Suzan Farmer), who are on vacation, bump into Father
Sandor. He warns them to stay away from Dracula’s castle, but as
usual, in these movies, warnings like these fall on deaf ears.
During their coach
ride, their coachman balks at the setting sun and decides to evict
them right there in the woods and return home, promising to take them
all the way tomorrow if they are still here when he comes back.
Decision time, do
the Kents stay the night in the nearby dilapidated shack or proceed
on to the castle they can see in the distance and sleep in better
accommodations? If they chose the shack we wouldn’t have a movie
and everyone would still be alive in the end, but where’s the fun
in that?
Just as their coach
disappears out of sight another, driverless, coach appears. Perfect,
now they don’t have to stay anywhere and can proceed on to the next
town as planned. Throwing caution to the wind, and not looking a gift
horse in the mouth, the Kents toss their luggage onto the back and
try to steer it in the direction they want to go, but Dracula’s
influence takes the horses straight to the castle.
You see this is what
he’s been waiting for, an opportunity to get his body back, and all
he needs to make that happen is a lot of blood. It’s not clear
whether the servant they meet, Klove (Philip Lathem), was an
emergency measure put into place prior by Dracula in case he ever met
an untimely end, or whether he reached out from beyond the grave and
influenced this man to set up shop and always keep it ready to accept
visitors in case any were to appear (a.k.a. flies caught in a web).
Regardless of how he came to be in the Prince Of Darkness’ employ
he does as he is commanded, feeding the travelers, setting them and
their belongings up in respective rooms for the night and waiting for
just the right time to strike.
Klove eventually
ends up ambushing Alan and killing him. He then takes the body down
to the basement, hangs it over this carved out slab that holds
Dracula’s clothing and ashen remains and resurrects the count by
slitting open the throat and letting the blood pour onto the remains.
This sequel finally
introduces Stoker’s Renfield character into the mix. Here he’s a
captive, of sorts, of the monks and is named, Ludig. As Sandor
explains they found him twelve years ago roaming near the castle,
clearly out of his mind from something Sandor says he witnessed. This
time frame would put him in the vicinity two years before
Dracula’s demise, and is entirely feasible that he did
witness some kind of atrocious site connected to the Count.
Dracula reaches out
to him and forces his aid in attacking the monks as he tries to
reclaim his “property,” that being Diana Kent. Most of this movie
appears to take place during summer, but I didn’t know what to make
of the frozen moat water on which Charles Kent and Dracula have their
final confrontation.
I was under the
impression, though, Peter Cushing had returned for this follow-up,
but learned he was only billed in the opening credits for the
flashbacks in the beginning. Father Sandor is the Van Helsing of this
movie. In the end, I was cool with that, and enjoyed the movie very
much. I dug the “haunted castle vibe” before the Count shows,
too.
Now we come to the
sole reason I wanted this collection in the first place—The
Legend Of The 7 Golden Vampires (1974). This movie has been
intriguing me since grade school, when I checked out of the library a
book on either movie monsters, or vampires. Can’t remember which it
was, but there was a black and white photo of that scene where all
those women are strapped to those slabs surrounding this vat, and
some of the them were naked from the waist up. It was the nudity, the
scene in general and the strange movie title that kept me remembering
it. This was also at a time when I used to want to watch movies
simply based on their titles. Present flick notwithstanding there was
The Crawling Eye (1958), Horror Express (1972), Creature From
Black Lake (1976) and Island Of The Burning Doomed (1967)
that all had titles that made my imagination wonder does this movie
really have an eye that crawls, or people who spontaneously burst
into flames wandering an island, or a lake of blackness where
monsters reside?
Years later, when I
was in high school we had a local channel on the USA network where
this guy dubbed, ‘Commander USA,’ used to run all these B-movies.
He was a middle-aged guy dressed up like a super hero, with a cape,
munched on a cigar and wandered into frame, all jaded, and introduced
the movie for the day. I have a memory of seeing the 7 Golden
Vampires on it, but I think it was the shorter re-cut American
version, The Seven Brothers Meet Dracula.
I recall not being
too taken with the flick, because I couldn’t make heads or tails of
the plot, and I was also distracted as I wondered if my best friend
from high school, Gerry Lee, was going to come up for the day.
Legend Of The 7
Golden Vampires is the eighth film in Hammer’s Dracula series
and the last one ever made. By this time in the franchise, Van
Helsing (Peter Cushing) has racked up quite a history battling the
Count and his minions in Europe, even managed to find the time to
sire a son, and this son is with him when goes to China to give a
lecture on vampires, and to research their Eastern counterparts. He
tells to the class an ancient account of a local farmer who
encountered vampires in a nearby temple after his wife was taken
their to have her blood ritualistically drained. This is the tale of
the 7 Golden Vampires, well, actually, now six, since that farmer
managed to kill one off before the flashback ends.
A man by the name of
Hsi Ching (Peter Chiang) visits Helsing that night looking to enlist
his aid, for he wants to take him to that village where that farmer
confronted the vampires and wipe them off the face of the map once
and for all. That village was his home at one time and that farmer
was a descendant.
Funding the voyage
is rich heiress, Vanessa Buren (Julie Ege), who as I expected
demanded to be taken along. So, with son, Leyland Van Helsing,
Vanessa and Hsi’s seven martial arts trained brothers (he also has
a sister) they head off to do some vampire killing.
This was a cool
blend of British horror and those kung fu movies I used to come
across on TV back in high school every Sunday; coincidentally, on the
same network, under the guise of Kung Fu Theater, if I’m
remembering that correctly.
We now go from
vampires to experimentation on the dead with Frankenstein Created
Woman (1967), the final film added to this collection. This movie
unexpectedly reminded me of Beyond Re-animator (2003). In that
film Herbert West becomes more interested in the “soul” and how
it relates to his experiments of resurrecting dead bodies, the same
can be said with Baron Frankenstein (Peter Cushing) in this fourth
Frankenstein film. His experimentation on the dead has turned to
trying to preserve the soul and thus the corpses personality.
Separating one from the other, doing “work” on the corpse and
then “re-installing” the soul back into the body is definitely an
evolution of sorts from the tried and not-so-perfect resurrection of
mindless, stitched together collections of body parts.
There’s a subplot
that revolves around Hans Werner (Robert Morris), who along with
Dr.Hertz (Thorley Walters), works for the Baron and who’s in love
with the daughter of a local pub owner. Christina is routinely
taunted because she was born deformed (the side of her face and the
left side of her body) and that taunting continues into adulthood.
Three rich young men wander into the bar one night while Hans and
Christina are there and to make them pay for their malicious teasing
of her, Hans fights them, but it only makes matters worse later on in
the movie.
Later that night,
these three, Johan (Derek Fowlds), Karl (Barry Warren) and Anton
(Peter Blythe) break into the bar after it closes, bumps into
Christina’s father, and in their drunken states beat him to death.
Hans is framed and put to death by the guillotine. Christina
witnesses his death and commits suicide by jumping off a bridge.
Opportunity arises
when her corpse is brought to the Baron. After already preserving
Hans’ soul in this makeshift “force field” he has created, he
decides to resurrect and fix Christina’s broken body, and then put
Hans’ soul into her. A problem arises; Hans is not at rest, he
wants revenge for being framed and he uses Christina’s body to help
him does just that.
Dracula, Prince
Of Darkness and Legend Of The 7 Golden Vampires are both
in anamorphic 2.35:1 aspect ratios, while Frankenstein Created
Woman is in a 1.77:1 and anamorphic. The transfers are good on
the first and last movies, though, the 7 Golden Vampires is a
disappointment. I’ll admit I’m woefully ignorant about the
technical side of DVDs (authoring, bitrates, etc), which is why my
reviews don’t center on that, only in the most general sense, if I
do, so I can’t say exactly how the transfer of this
particular movie went wrong, just that it did and it suffers from PAL
speed-up, which looks like a very subtle speed up of movement when
characters move and the camera pans; voices tend to be a little
higher pitched as well.
Upon initial viewing
of a random scene, when I first heard of this transfer problem, I
deemed it unwatchable, but after looking at it again and letting
another random scene play out longer this time, it’s not entirely
unwatchable, but still a disappointment nonetheless. I never did buy
the old Anchor Bay DVD of 7 Golden Vampires back in the late
90s, but I have been told the correct color scheme as been restored
for our American viewing on this new version (colors did look very
good).
If your buying this
for Dracula, Prince Of Darkness and Frankenstein Created
Woman, do so, but if you’ve come to see The Legend of The 7
Golden Vampires, be warned, the flawed transfer might turn you
off. There are no extras whosoever, not even trailers. At least,
Millennium saw fit to grace each movie with a main menu. Prince
has it’s own disc, the other two share one that needs to be flipped
over depending on which movie you want to watch.
I enjoyed this
collection’s vampire romps, but didn’t care much for Baron
Frankenstein’s latest adventure. Thanks to Boulevard Movies in
Canada, who specialize in Horror, Exploitation, Cult Classics, Sci-Fi
and Art House movies, for the review copy, and if you want to
purchase it from them, you can do so by going here:
http://www.boulevardmovies.com/3-Hammer-Horror-Classics-DVD-p-22574.html
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