Once upon a time I used to listen to this pair of records quite a lot.

The Dracula album has one side with an original vampire story narrated by Christopher Lee, whilst the other has ominous theme music from various Hammer films. The story had an intro that began with something like “you think you are safe in your own home – you’re not”. It was actually quite creepy for an impressionable teen listening to it alone at night in the house. Or at least it was up until the point that a friend came to visit one sunny afternoon and we cooked up a batch of magic mushrooms, laid on the lawn and listened to it at full volume – at which point it became the funniest thing I had ever heard! (The neighbours I suspect disagreed with that assessment.) I don’t think I have listened to it again since; that one experience trying hallucinogens was enough too….

The Legend of the 7 Golden Vampires has quite a catchy oriental-inspired theme to kick things off with, then the rest of the album is basically the film story narrated by Peter Cushing. I listened to this a lot as a teen and was keen to see the film, only it never came around to our local cinema or on TV. I finally tried watching it years later on YouTube and, well, frankly its crap. It’s a lame attempt at a horror-martial arts crossover (to cash in on the kung-fu boom at the time), only it is very cheaply made, poorly directed and (Cushing aside) terribly acted. This is actually one instance where the experience of listening to the album is way better than watching the film.

It did, though, make for a good comic strip in the House of Hammer magazine in the 80s. As with the record, the format managed to transcend the lousy production values of the film itself – sometimes things are better left to the imagination!