Night Hunter

NIGHT HUNTER is a godawful foray into the action horror genre from martial arts specialist Don "The Dragon" Wilson. To say that it's a dud is an understatement; this is a film with absolutely terrible action choreography and direction, the nadir of which is the decision to shoot the fight scenes with what can only be described as an "earthquake cam", constantly trembling which makes the scenes unwatchable. Thankfully director Rick Jacobson has improved in recent years with his work on various episodes of the SPARTACUS TV series.

The plot is very light and features Wilson (who's made up as a goth, much like THE CROW) going after a vampire gang who were responsible for the death of his family. A seemingly innocent woman gets involved in the mess, and there's a lot of killing, although few special effects. However, this truly is one of the poorest-directed of all the B-movies I've sat through, and anybody who claims to enjoy this stuff must be a real glutton for punishment.

....and by different, I mean that he plays what you could call an older male Buffy in this one! (Or maybe you could say a white Blade, but he came later). "Night Hunter" scores novelty points for combining vampires with martial arts: of course traditional vampire elimination methods simply won't do, according to this mythology the only way to conclusively kill one of them is to break his (or her) neck! There are two main problems with this film: a) it is quite slow-moving, b) the camera-work employs what could be described as an "earthquake effect" during some of the fight scenes - the restaurant one in particular almost made me nauseous! But the fights themselves are tightly choreographed in a mostly grounded style by the experienced Art Kamacho, and Wilson's fight with Ron Yuan is good by any standards. Glad to see Maria Ford and Sophia Crawford as sexy, high-kicking bisexual vampires, but they are both underused - they never even share the screen together. **1/2 out of 4.

Every single fight scene (and there was a ton of them - this is a Don Wilson film) was ruined by shaking the camera. What's the point? Not only that, but most fight scenes included flickering the light intensity. And to insure complete dizziness a few scenes put the camera on a carousel to spin the action in a circle. It's crude, unpleasant and kills the film.

Otherwise this would have been a decent non traditional, vampire, time wasting film for people who may like hand to hand combat.

This is one of those films which (like most straight to video/DVD fodder!) sadly, unfortunately DOES NOT live up to its poster! I remember years ago in the late 1990s, seeing a VHS (yes that long ago!) copy of it in my local video rental store, picking it up, reading the cover and thinking (as other reviewers have already mentioned) that in this film Don Wilson had a similar look to that of Brandon Lee in The Crow. And that it sounded like quite a fun film and also a bit of a change for Don Wilson, I believe it's the only slightly Horror themed film he has appeared in. However I didn't bother renting it at the time (1998/99) and it wasn't until many years later (2013) that I actually saw the film when someone kindly uploaded it for free on Youtube (In fact most crappy straight to DVD/video films should be uploaded on Youtube, because they certainly aren't worth paying to see!). And when I eventually did see it I thought to myself "That was crap and it didn't live up to its poster" and furthermore "I'm glad I didn't pay to see that all those years ago in the video rental shop". Like most low budget, straight to DVD films, the film is hampered by budget limitations, poor acting and a lame script. And as everyone else has mentioned, I really do not understand that earthquake camera effect?! William C Martell, the man responsible for the poor script usually blames the failure of films he wrote on the cast and crew involved and never seems to take his fair share of the blame! He often claim that the cast and crew changed almost every word he wrote! Martell said that Don Wilson did not actually want to do a horror/vampire themed film and when he eventually agreed to it, he wanted to control every damn part of the film? Well that may be true but from the looks of things Martell probably wrote the script in a couple of weeks, if that? He really needed to spend more time on it and made sure he sold it to a better production company as well! Don Wilson claims that ALL of the films that he "starred" in "made money" by that I assume he means that they broke even? But I find that hard to believe, because more expensive Wilson films such as the Cybertracker films had a few million spent on them (from the look of them) and how does a film that did not get a cinema release make a few million to break even? They couldn't have made that much on video, because it's the films that were previously at the cinema that make the most on video, not a film that's been released straight to DVD/video and "stars" a cast of nobodies.

Right, well I have to admit that when I stumbled upon this 1996 horror action movie titled "Night Hunter" here in 2023, and seeing that the movie had both Don Wilson and Maria Ford on the cast list, of course I was immediately interested in watching the movie. I had never actually heard about this, but I figured that a vampire-themed movie with Wilson and Ford had to be interesting.

Boy was I wrong. The storyline in "Night Hunter" was bland and boring. Writer William C. Martell put together a script and storyline that failed to entertain me. And the movie felt incredibly amateurish and sluggish in the hands of director Rick Jacobson. It most definitely wasn't the usual hard-hitting action that one would assume from Don 'The Dragon' Wilson.

The acting performances in "Night Hunter" were adequate enough for what they turned out to be. But you're not in for anything grand or memorable here.

I have to say that "Night Hunter" will just as quickly fade into oblivion as it snuck in under the radar.

My rating of "Night Hunter" lands on a very generous three out of ten stars.