I was expecting something a lot worse than what I got. Not to say that this film was that good, but I expected something a little cheesier. First off, it looks like Hammer wanted to capitalize on the growing popularity of martial arts films but keep to their monster movie roots. This is acceptable because I know that Hammer was starting to suffer because their previous formula of making Gothic horror films was not as lucrative as it had been in the 1950s.
Professor Van Helsing travels to China to teach about vampires at a university. He gets roundly rejected by the faculty, but a young student tells him that one of the legends that Van Helsing referred to did occur. The student enlists Van Helsing to help him and his seven brothers and sister defeat the vampires. Oh, and earlier a Chinese priest who worshiped the vampires went to Transylvania and was taken over by Count Dracula. He went back to China to make the vampire group strong again.
The plot obviously suffers because they're combining two kinds of films that don't always match up. There was some decent production value and the actors and actresses were all very professional. However, the film suffered because of the way that these two types of film were mixed. It tries to be serious and deliver on the martial arts action, but at the same time it gets campy in places and seems to almost parody itself. The problem is that it seems like they were trying too hard to make a hit.
Professor Van Helsing travels to China to teach about vampires at a university. He gets roundly rejected by the faculty, but a young student tells him that one of the legends that Van Helsing referred to did occur. The student enlists Van Helsing to help him and his seven brothers and sister defeat the vampires. Oh, and earlier a Chinese priest who worshiped the vampires went to Transylvania and was taken over by Count Dracula. He went back to China to make the vampire group strong again.
The plot obviously suffers because they're combining two kinds of films that don't always match up. There was some decent production value and the actors and actresses were all very professional. However, the film suffered because of the way that these two types of film were mixed. It tries to be serious and deliver on the martial arts action, but at the same time it gets campy in places and seems to almost parody itself. The problem is that it seems like they were trying too hard to make a hit.