Vampires: The Turning

"Vampires: The Turning" is a fun, well-filmed martial arts thriller with a horror pedigree. It's a sequel to the John Carpenter film series in name only, and carries forward the Slayer concept from the first two. But the main story is a pretty cool bit of Eastern mysticism with a Thai backdrop, involving two warring sects of vampires that were both spawned in the wake of a solar eclipse. The female leader of one sect wants to wipe her kind out, as she unwittingly loosed all sorts of mayhem. The upcoming solar eclipse is her only chance of doing so, and she enlists an American kickboxer to help her. The movie looks great, moves swiftly and sports some solid martial arts (muay thai) action, as well as some effectively creepy moments. Doesn't hurt that the female vampire is quite the hottie. A solid, fun entry into the genre. Definitely check it out!

I first saw bits n pieces of this movie in the mid 2k on Sony Pix channel.

Revisited it recently.

This is the third installment of the Vampires film series although John Carpenter who directed the first film and produced the second film had no involvement with this film.

So now viewers can do their math.

There is one single decapitation scene, an unnecessary bike chase sequence n few unnecessary kung fu or for that matter wi fu scenes.

It has a hot babe, Stephanie Chao but her sex n nudity scene is one of the worst shot ever.

This movie has lots of vampires but no good action or gory stuff.

This is an entertaining combination of Kung Fu and horror. The performances are decent and the action/fight scenes are well choreographed.

The film moves along at a brisk pace. You won't be bored.

There's very little sex or T&A, unfortunately, but I won't hold that against it.

While no "Citizen Kane", This flick is way better than I initially thought it would be. It's a worthy diversion for an afternoon.

With all the absolutely worthless crap that Hollywood releases nowadays, it's a shame this never got a wide (or any) theatrical release.

It seems as if this was intended to be the first of a series. If that's the case, I'd definitely check out any sequels.

This was a movie with a soul. It does not rely only on gore and shock. It had an interesting love triangle, a strong point of view, a stylized look from an exotic city in Thailand, and amazing action. It took the vampire lore and molded it into far Eastern mythology -- An American couple's troubled relationship tied into the vampire mythology as a metaphor was really interesting. The actors were really great. There was really good chemistry between the actors who played Connor and Sang and I love how the ending played out. Fantastic visuals for a lower budget film. Overall, a very fun film that elevated the genre. There hasn't been an interesting vampire film like this since "The Hunger." Give it a 9.

While I have indeed watched the 2004 movie "Vampires: The Turning" once before, I have to admit that I have entirely forgotten about the story in the movie. The only thing I do remember about it is the title. And since I have just watched "Vampires: Los Muertos", I opted to carry on with this third movie in the franchise.

But honestly, I wasn't harboring much of any grand expectations, as I have forgotten about the movie entirely, even after having watched it once before. And with a staggering 3.6 rating on IMDb, in this very moment of me reviewing it, I can't claim that my expectations were yanked up.

Writers D. B. Farmer and Andy Hurst put together a fair enough script and storyline, though it somewhat paled up against the 1998 original "Vampires" movie.

The only actor I was familiar with in the movie was Roger Yuan. Luckily, I do enjoy watching movies with a fully and wholly unfamiliar cast ensemble, so that at least counted for something here. The acting performances in the movie were fair.

Whereas the previous two movies in the franchise were set in USA, this third movie took place in Thailand. Personally, I found that a nice change of pace, as I enjoy Asian cinema in general.

Visually, then the movie was adequate. It wasn't the most impressive of special effects, for sure, but I will say that the special effects in the movie served their purpose well enough.

My rating of "Vampires: The Turning" lands on an four out of ten stars.