THE LEGEND OF THE 7 GOLDEN VAMPIRES

Sometimes you need to clear the cobwebs and just talk about a movie you enjoy. And some movies just roll over your critical faculties until all you can do is enumerate the ways in which the movie is awesome. THE LEGEND OF THE 7 GOLDEN VAMPIRES is such a movie. And it is awesome for so, so many reasons.



A co-production of Hammer Films and the Shaw Brothers, LEGEND is every bit as delightful as you'd hope from that promising combo. Professor Van Helsing (Peter Cushing), on a lecture tour of China, finds his words and warnings falling on deaf ears. But the student Hsi Ching (David Chiang) is all ears, and enlists the good doctor on a mission to liberate his village from the death grip of a cult of insidious vampires. And we just kick back and watch the two halves on this co-production find some awesome common ground, as Hammer atmospherics and earthiness serve as a springboard for honorable kung fu warriors taking on a slew of HK-style hopping vampires and the hideously-made-up vampire disciples that control them.

The American edit, THE SEVEN BROTHERS MEET DRACULA, feels more like the desperate cash-in on the kung fu craze that the movie fundamentally was (and I suspect it was cut to fit on the bottoms of double bills). What's charming about LEGEND is that it feels less like a cash-in and more like a conversation, with two directors well versed in their respective traditions (Roy Ward Baker and a shamefully uncredited Chang Cheh) giving and taking, with a script that puts these traditions on equal, mutually respectful footing.

And holy crap, look at Cushing.



Cushing must have been about 60 when the cameras started rolling on this, and one can only speculate on what he thought of the insane movie he'd been drop-kicked into. But damned if he doesn't give it his all. You get your usual authoritarian and involving delivery of vampire history, and his dialogue with Chiang is absolutely winning, elevating the thing into a charming, East/West buddy movie. And though Cushing doesn't fly on any wires or execute any flying kicks, he's not too old to get his hands a little dirty in the fight sequences (see above). A look into the archives (including Cushing's costume sketches for the film) suggests that he was no less engaged in working on this film than any of his others. And it's easy to imagine him looking around the set, watching these fighters executing their choreography, shrugging and saying "I'll do what I can." And then going to work.



And that's as fine an image to hold of the man on this, the week of his centenary. Wishing the late Peter Cushing a very happy 100th birthday, and submitting this piece in honor of the Peter Cushing Centennial Blogathon happening all week.

THE WOMAN IN BLACK

Solicitor, widower, and single father Arthur Kipps (Daniel Radcliffe) is perpetually in mourning. His distraction has been noticed by his supervisors, who give him one last assignment to prove his worth. He sets out to a remote northern town to straighten the legal affairs of Alice Drablow, the owner of the foreboding Eel Marsh Manor. Amid the gloomy environs of the house (and beset by local residents who want him gone), Kipps encounters a ghostly figure responsible for the deaths of the town's children, and a mystery that threatens to shatter his already fragile psyche.


I quite wanted to like this, a Hammer horror film playing by old school rules, emphasizing atmosphere over gore. But as gorgeous as it often is, it kept disengaging me at every turn.

Daniel Radcliffe makes a valiant go of it, but he was ultimately too young to fully convince - I could somewhat buy the harried solicitor/investigator, but Radcliffe didn't project the grief that would have fully engaged me with his story. (I use a personal pronoun here, because at least one commentator of my acquaintance had no trouble accepting Radcliffe in the role.) The supporting cast do a great deal of heavy lifting here, and Ciarán Hinds & Janet McTeer are very solid indeed as a married couple whose lives have been touched by the title character.

Much has been made of the film's atmospherics, but as if as a sop to modern viewers, the film is loaded with unnecessary shocks that dispel the atmosphere. I'm not sure the modern viewer really needs such rollercoaster effects to hold their interest; indeed, the group I saw it with became unusually quiet as the movie progressed, and none of us needed the steady shocks to hold our interest. Indeed, such scare tactics only undermine the narrative - if the Woman in Black is a lurking presence that rarely makes herself known, why does she insist on saying boo every so often to Arthur (and, by extension, us)?

But that's not the most frustrating thing about the film. (heh. film.)

The most frustrating thing about watching THE WOMAN IN BLACK was seeing it, as I suspect many saw it, in digital projection. A quick look at its technical background shows that it was shot on 35mm film, but how many people will see it in that format? And yes, the death knell of 35mm film has been sounded, but the real test of digital projection is precisely films like this, that call back deliberately to an earlier era in film history. The film's gorgeous settings are rendered beautifully malignant by ever-encroaching fog, water, and darkness, but the effect is lost thru the deadening effect of the digital transfer. It is certainly possible to make effective period pieces with digital cinema technology, but the mandated transfer to digital undermines films like this, that would be more effectively served by the warmer, more haunted images that film provide.