Caçadores de Vampiros de Tsui Hark

The Era of Vampires is an interesting idea. Take the typical wuxia martial arts film and add a horror element in the form of vampires. On the surface this sounds great. Extraordinary fighting visuals with dark and supernatural tone. The inborn grace and elegance of vampires seems like an excellent fit for wuxia.

Unfortunately we end up getting very little of that. Partly because the vampire they end up going with is radically different from a typical Western vampire. It's more of a force of nature, an unstoppable monster that rips into pieces everything standing in its way, visually more of a zombie lord than an aristocratic vampire. And it is utterly terrifying. I actually really like this take on one of the oldest monsters in our collective mythic lore. Fantastic horror villain, even if it means that the fights are not as grandeur as they would have otherwise been.

What really fails this movie is the lackadaisical nature of the script. You don't really identify with any of the characters, the side plots are either clichéd or have nothing to do with the other plots, the backstory is convoluted and the world building doesn't really work. Plus the whole film is shot way too dark. Oftentimes you have problems making out what's happening, making the fight scenes even less stellar.

That being said, there are some good fights and as stated, the vampire is very impressive. Making this a film that's fine to check out if you're really into wuxia or you want to see a radically different take on vampires. It's not really a good film, but it has its upsides.

Good heavens. Why must every Hong Kong film since CROUCHING TIGER, HIDDEN DRAGON be compared to it? That's like comparing Tim Burton's ED WOOD to Orson Welles' CITIZEN KANE because they're both in black-and-white! They're both great movies, but it's ridiculous to stand them next to each other because they're so vastly different. To me, Tsui Hark constructed a BRILLIANT homage to the "hopping corpse," and "demon" movies of the 1980's and early 1990's while adding some great kung-fu sequences. I see hints of SWORDSMAN, I feel bits of MR. VAMPIRE, I hear parts of IRON MONKEY, I smell A CHINESE GHOST STORY, and it's all done quite well. Wu-shu, taoist warriors, hopping corpses, a creepy nod to HOUSE OF WAX, and silly jokes? Great fun to me! Art-house, said one reviewer? Don't know what art films YOU'VE been watching lately. This movie didn't try anything tremendously fancy or new, it took a lot of things we've seen before and turned out a movie that was more than the sum of its parts. Bad humor? Different humor. Hong Kong humor is usually quite different than American humor...I'm sure a lot of people missed when RAIN, CLOUD, THUNDER, and LIGHTNING (ridiculously stereotypical "hero" names) were renamed "Kung," "Hei," "Fat," and "Choi." Put those four words together and it says "Happy New Year" in Cantonese. Amazingly funny to us? Probably not. Good for a lengthy chuckle for chinese native? Definitely. Low-budget? Again, have we been so spoiled by movie producers throwing vast wads of cash at American films -- often to cover the fact that a movie is BAD -- that we can't appreciate a film that doesn't try to overachieve, but does what it can with what it has? How quickly people forget CLERKS, EL MARIACHI, etc. But then again, DESPERADO was so much better than EL MARIACHI, yes? Because it had BIG EXPLOSIONS and SEX! It's time people set CROUCHING TIGER up on its own shelf and stop comparing it to movies it bears no similarities to. Wanna say that Zhang Yimou's HERO was an overblown attempt to recreate CT,HD? Go for it, you'll be right. Wanna miss the fun of VAMPIRE HUNTERS entirely by refusing to watch it as its own film? Your choice, and ultimately, your loss.

Version: English dub

If like me, you possess an awesome-sense (like Spider-Man's Spider-sense, only it detects awesomeness instead of danger), you should ignore all the negative for 'Vampire Hunters' and listen to me instead. It isn't an awesome movie, but how can a movie with zombies, vampires, and kung-fu not be somewhat entertaining?

In 17th century China, zombies and vampires roamed the lands, feeding on the unsuspecting. A group of martial artists / vampire hunters find themselves employed by a very rich - and very insane - old man who has kept everyone of his relatives preserved in wax and not buried. Apparently it is his family's tradition. So, having generations of potential zombies in your cellar may not be the smartest idea ever, but it takes two to tango. In this case, a thief wants the old-man's treasure and hires a zombie-wrangler to re-animate the waxed up relatives in order to sneak into the mansion and steal the treasure. It's up to the kung-fu fighting vampire hunters to save the day (or night).

'Vampire Hunters' ends up being a more serious version of 'Mr. Vampire'. I don't think I've seen any other HK vampire movie that actually tried to be serious instead of an action / comedy. Unfortunately, the concept of 'serious' is my arch-nemesis.

I'd forgive the seriousness if the action was good. I would have expected a better action movie from Tsui Hark, but what am I gonna do? Complain some more? Sure! The action is okay, but poorly edited. Thankfully there is enough to keep someone like me entertained. The special effects aren't all that good, but I've never been one to care about bad special effects.

'Vampire Hunters' is a decent action movie, but really only for anyone interesting in Hong Kong vampire / action movies - 5/10

In a number of forums I've seen this film mercilessly trashed, and I'm not quite sure why. Perhaps it's having Tsui Hark's name attached to it, thus giving people the wrong idea about the film as they go into it. While I don't think it's the best film ever made by any stretch of the imagination, Vampire Hunters does serve it's purpose. I was entertained thoroughly, startled a few times, laughed a few times, and spent a great deal of my viewing time in suspense. The one thing you can say about this film is that it's definitely not slow moving!

While it does suffer from the lack of in depth characterization that seems to be the downfall of many martial arts films, in general I found the acting to be up to par -provided you watch the film subtitled as opposed to dubbed. The wooden voice acting of the English translators is highly reminiscent of the hilarious goofy bad dubbing of 70s martial arts flicks, and really detracts from the genuine scariness of the vampire scenes.

And those vampires! Yikes! Spitting acidic gas, sucking your blood through the air, covered in maggots.... Truly makes ol' Bela seem like a puddytat! It's interesting to see the differences between Eastern and Western vampire mythos.

The movie itself is beautifully and imaginatively lensed, the director of photography should be proud. The camera-work zooms and jumps during the right moments and steps back and slows down to take in grandeur. The fight scenes are excitingly filmed, and the effects are no worse than any other film I've seen lately. Not the best, but everything moves quickly enough that you don't really notice.

All in all, I got what I wanted; escapist, exciting, engaging fun that made me forget about the rest of the world for an hour and a half. And after all, isn't that what a movie is supposed to be? They can't all be caviar, sometimes I really just want popcorn.

I think Vampire Hunters is a pretty good movie. Although it isn't breaking new ground, for most american viewers it will seem a little odd that the vampires in the movie are more corpse like than you expect to see, but in most if not all accounts of vampirism in the middle ages and earlier periods vampires were refered to as animated corpses, not strikingly beautiful creatures with tragic stories. So if you're looking to see a decent horror movie will "realistic" vampires, this would be worth seeing. Two top notch performances in the film are those of Anya, who plays a young widow, and Zou Na, who plays a servant.