Geung see dai si doi

When four hunters of the undead -- -Thunder, Wind, Rain and Lightning- -- are separated from their master during a battle with a King Vampire, they continue their hunt for the bloodsucker, using a magical Taoist compass to lead the way. Eventually they arrive at the home of Master Jiang, who is celebrating the marriage of his son to the beautiful Sasa.

When the groom turns up dead the next day, having been bitten by a snake, the foursome are employed to find the reptile. Master Jiang informs Sasa that she need never be parted from her husband, because the family tradition is to preserve dead relatives with wax and store them in vaults below the house; she can visit him anytime she likes!! Meanwhile, it transpires that Sasa had been married off by her brother just so that she might be able to find the whereabouts of a hoard of gold hidden somewhere in the house and pass the information on to him.

With that plan scuppered, Sasa's brother employs a 'zombie wrangler' to reanimate the waxy corpses under the house. With Master Jiang busy rounding up the zombies, he hopes to search the place for the hidden loot.

Unfortunately, for everyone involved, the King Vampire shows up at the end to cause additional mayhem and chaos and it is up to the four heroes to save the day.

Whilst this is no classic of the genre -- the plot is far too messy -- it does contain many elements which will prove to be of fun to fans of 80s Hong Kong vampire movies: the martial arts are of a reasonable standard, with some impressive swordplay and a bit of nifty wire-work, there is some fairly cheesy gore, and the reanimated bodies do the old hopping routine we all know and love. Best of all is the King Vampire, who has supernatural powers that enable him to suck blood at a distance and fire flames from his mouth.

My main gripe with this film is that everything is just too dark. I found myself straining to see what was going on for most of the running time. I can ignore some dodgy CGI and iffy make-up effects, but I'd like to be able to see what the hell is going on.

Despite the advances in film technology, Tsui Hark's Vampire Hunters remains an average production that does nothing to improve on the films that it emulates. Don't watch this with expectations too high, and you might find yourself enjoying it.

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.

OK, let me start off by saying that if I hadn't read the other user comments for this film, I wouldn't have taken the time to write this, as I'm busy and if I commented on every film I liked, I'd never get any work done. I read the comments here, in The LA Weekly and on other internet sites- and they were, to sum up, some of the stupidest, snobbiest HK film reviews I've EVER read. Do not, repeat: DO NOT believe the hype.

Now, unlike alot of other Hong Kong film fans, I don't care for contemporary action films with cops, drug busts, car chases, etc. I DO like old school 70's Kung Fu; ala Chang Cheh and Liu Chia Liang. I also really like the Hopping zombie/ghost/vampire sub-genre of HK 'horror'. Now, in case you aren't familiar with these- they feature 'vampires' and 'zombies' that return from the grave (Usually due to some sort of improper burial) and hop about (Or in the case in Vampire Hunters- fly about). They are usually opposed by priests- Taoist priests- who use Taoist magic to defeat them. The seminal film in this genre is the mid-eighties comedy/horror masterpiece 'Mr. Vampire'.

Now, Tsui Hark's 'Vampire Hunters' plays alot like a much more serious version of Mr. Vampire- basically, the comedic elements usually found in these films are almost non existant in 'Vampire Hunters'. This alone makes it one of the only HK vampire films to play like 'action horror' instead of 'horror comedy'.

Now, this distinction alone makes Vampire Hunters worth a look.

So ask yourself: Do you want just a good, action packed film? The kind of film you're going to want to hold up to The best 1980s and 90s John Wu stuff? Maybe Ang Lee's 'Crouching Tiger'? Or even non-HK action like James Cameron's Terminator 2? Well if you just want great action, there's like, A THOUSAND good action films out there, ok? If you want something more, something you just DON'T SEE anywhere else- something like, Oh, I dunno... maybe... CHINESE VAMPIRES versus TAOIST WARRIOR PRIESTS???

Well, check out Tsui Hark's 'Vampire Hunters'. It's merely a decent 'action' film and not the best edited, paced, well written or anything else kind of film out there.

But, the sum of it's parts simply does not equate the fun action/horror fantasy of the whole. So- if you're a 'norm' who thought Erin Brokavich or maybe the Ocean's 11 remake was good, well stay FAR AWAY from Tsui Hark's Vampire Hunters, it's not for you, you won't get it, understand it's appeal or be able to appreciate it.

If you're the kind of person who likes the idea of a Mr. Vampire/Chinese Ghost Story double bill, well, strap yourself in- cause Tsui Hark's Vampire Hunters will satisfy your desire to escape from reality for an hour and a half or so.

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.

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.