In the 17th century China, a group of warriors attempting to find the vampire that abducted their master find themselves caught in a feud with their new hosts whose enemy raised an army of vampires to destroy them and must fight them together in order to save themselves.This here was quite the fun if slightly flawed effort. Like the vast majority of Hong Kong vampire efforts, the fact that there's such an endless array of high-quality martial arts scenes in here is the biggest attribute to this one, keeping the film charging along at a frantic pace for the majority of the film. The opening assault on the main vampires' grave, which includes plenty of the usual aerial martial arts-based acrobatics as they lure the creature out of the tomb and combat it while it drains their life-force and brings about the explosive final part of the confrontation where they steal away the body into the forest gives this a fantastic opening, a later encounter where the looters find the creatures out in the woods and get torn to pieces is another gruesome highlight and the hand-to- hand fighting in the dojo where he finds that his opponents are the reanimated creatures is a lot of fun and gives this a great deal of action to run throughout here. Other great battles come from the resurrected vampires' attack on the small village as their hopping through the streets causes a great deal of destruction, and the fine follow-up confrontation in the woods is a lot of fun with the atmospheric location and raging thunderstorm providing plenty of set-up for the masterful hand-to-hand combat within and giving this all a great deal to like about it and sets up the ending confrontation with the master controller at his temple which is a wholly spectacular fight generating plenty of stand-out wire-fu tactics to bring about a fantastic and engaging sense of energy within the scene while utilizing plenty of inventive and unique tactics to combat the creature. Alongside this great set of action- packed horror set-pieces, there's other great traditional hand-to- hand and sword-fighting tactics throughout here which results in plenty of fantastic action in the set-pieces for a thoroughly frenetic and high-energy effort. Still, there's more than enough straightforward horror elements to work here, mainly centering around the rotting zombie-like look of the vampires filled with demonic visages and even maggots falling off their faces which makes for a rather fun and chilling-looking villain that really makes this appropriate which lets the scenes of them hopping around the villages casting plenty of shadows makes for some really suspenseful moments. Coupled with the nice gore in the bloody kills, these here give this one plenty to really enjoy and is enough to overcome the flaw here. The only real thing that holds this back is the fact that there's just not a whole lot of coherence in the story about what's going on, as there's just not a great deal of logic in why they're coming out or why they're targeting the family and as a result it makes the first half seem somewhat slow and uncoordinated. Otherwise there's quite a lot to like here.Rated Unrated/R: Graphic Violence, Language and Brief Nudity.
... View MoreVersion: 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
... View MoreWhen I first saw this movie at the video store, I thought, wow cool bunch of monks kill vampires. But this was just plain awful. Bad directing, bad effects and the worst script in the world. You would think that the fighting scenes would be good but... no. I must say if your even thinking about watching this movie, your already doing the bad thing. Trust me, this isn't worth paying for, and even if they paid you to watch it please don't, you'll thank me later.
... View MoreIn a word? BAD. This has all the elements of a badly done "B" movie; ie: poorly developed characters, horrific cinematography, deplorable cacophonic soundtrack, and terrible over-dramatized acting. The CGI used does not even begin to redeem this detestable smack-fest of sugar-coated zombies/vampires/whatevers, the main monster looks like something an 8 year old put together for the front porch on Halloween, and the four main characters are totally indistinguishable from one another. The American version of this movie was cut, so it's possible we lost the character development on the cutting room floor, but honestly, even if we hadn't, I seriously doubt this movie would be worth watching. There is only ONE good element. The sets. The sets are nicely done, and that is literally the single enjoyable aspect of this entire production.Do yourself a favor and do something...no...do ANYthing else.It rates a 0.0/10 from...the Fiend :.
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