James Bernard

great.

And James Bernard did the score, which, wow.

I think he did do a wonderful job.

I think it really enhanced the movie.

It's got some great suspense work, as you heard earlier, and also some beautiful, lush, romantic pieces inspired by the operatic composers of the period.

Now, when it comes to composers of horror films, James Bernard, or I should say James Bernard, he was English, that's the way we pronounce it over there, but his name looms incredibly large.

He was on the ground floor creating the musical language of Hammer Studios horror films in the mid-50s, and the studio was still churning out their brand of gothic Eastman color blood and cleavage epics well into the 70s and beyond, and at that period, Hammer joined forces with Hong Kong's Shaw Brothers Studios for The Legend of the Seven Golden Vampires.

This one has always struck me as kind of one for the kiddos.

The record that came out in 1974 features some narration.

It is really kind of a kid's movie, because the record is like a golden storybook record, except it's The Seven Golden Vampires.

Here's the prologue, which contains James Bernard's music, along with Peter Cushing's narration.

Lost deep within the soul of all mankind, there is a hidden cauldron of terror, fed by the flames of madness.

They're mainly doing like dramas and comedies or some film noir stuff.

And they're like, oh, Horror Cells? We're going to do horror? And James Bernard, the composer of this? Yeah, we want you to come on for all of our big horror flicks.

So he was definitely someone who had a big imprint on Hammer Horror in general and got his start with this film.

And yeah, I definitely like the score for this one as well.

So if you're good to go, we can jump into a little plot here.

Oh, I will say, The music is by James Bernard.

He's like the A guy for Hammer.

Don Banks was another good composer with the music and stuff like that.

Fine.

But all the big and really, to me, the best soundtracks for these movies, the best music accompaniment was by James Bernard, right?

Yeah.

Yeah, he's great.

Elsewhere, Hammer Regulars Patrick Troughton, Michael Ripper and Michael Gwynn were back, and Roy Ward Baker seemed like a safe pair of hands as director.

James Bernard supplied the score, and John Elder's script resets the continuity of the series, just as Horror of Frankenstein had done for the Baron.

The film begins with a

large bat vomiting blood over the Count's remains, which serves, via reversing the effect from the end of Taste the Blood of Dracula, to reanimate him.

Well done.

OK, let's go on to the technical aspects.

Now, for me, the score on this is possibly one of James Bernard's highest scores for me.

It's more lyrical than he's ever been.

Well, that's going to do it.

The one other thing to mention, the music in this movie is by James Bernard.

who did a big chunk of the Hammer movies.

He did the Dracula movies.