Night Hunter

In a change of pace, Roger Corman just distributed "Night Hunter", and didn't have anything to do with its making. That may explain why the production values of this Don Wilson movie a little better than usual, with some well-chosen locations that don't make this effort look as cheap as usual. Despite this, I knew I would still be in for a rough time, since the movie was made by schlock producer Ashok Amritraj. The script is pretty bad, with plot points that are never explained (like the healing elixir) or don't make up their mind (the movie at one point says vampires can be killed by breaking their necks... then later says they can be killed by breaking their backs!) Most people who watch this movie won't care about the script, and will just be interested in seeing the action. But be warned, the action isn't very good. The action is extremely tightly filmed, with rapid editing and unspectacular choreography. With most of his movies being as badly made as this, I think I know why Wilson retired from making movies several years ago.

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.

As far as video fodder goes, this movie is okay, with its mix of modern-days-vampires action and fights ; in a way, it can be viewed as a forerunner to Wesley Snipes' "Blade". In fact, with his long hair, black clothes and somber look (well, as far as a non-actor can convey), Don Wilson, looks very much loke Brandon Lee in "The Crow" ! From Crow to Dragon, there's only one

I usually enjoy a good "Slay the vampire" movie, but this was not one of them. Don the "Dragon" Wilson brings his dark brooding image to the sceen, but the writers forgot to bring an original idea to the script. Also someone had the idea to shake the camera during each fight to give the scene a earthquake effect. I fell asleep three times during the first half hour of the film. It would have been better if I had just kept on sleeping.

Pun intended. This low budget action/horror vehicle for Don Wilson's ability to kick things is the stuff direct-to-video fare is made of.

The plot: Wilson is a humorless vampire hunter who comes under fire from local law enforcement after he is forced to slaughter creatures of the night in view of the public. Police chase him, vampires chase him, he responds by kicking...a lot.

There is a little more to the story, but it is so inconsequential that I honestly can't remember it; I think people actually spoke in the movie, but that's up to debate. The plot is nothing more than a set-up for Wilson to kill as many vampires as possible in the running time, usually by kicking them.

The technical specs are, in a word, anemic. Little color treating, amateurish use of lighting, simplistic use of camera and angle. Blood and gore is noticeably limited, odd for this type of film. The most hurtful of the filming foul-ups is the jarring shift to super-shaky cam during each and every fight scene. If the camera begins to bounce around like a reese monkey on speed, then you know Don is about to start kicking everything in sight.

All in all, this is the kind of bad movie that can be made good with a few friends and a lot of cynical humor. Otherwise, do not watch, unless you really like to watch things get kicked.

3/10