Vampire Hunters
(Aka; Tsui Hark's Vampire Hunters/The Era of 
the Vampire)
(2002)
review by Thera Belle

Buffy would get her ass kicked by the Vampire King! A whole coterie of vampire hunters go after it and everyone is wiped out except four guys named Rain, Lightning, Thunder, and Wind. And this battle is no ordinary battle. It takes an army just to get the Vampire King’s attention but once he knows you’re there you are doomed.

I really don’t know much about Asian demon stories. I doubt they’ve
romanticized vampires, though. Given the way this thing looks he’d never get a date for the prom unless it was Hell High. Gruesome is his own personal style and those guys on cable who take on the task of making over hapless straight men would just all fall over in a hissy fit. There’s no helping this maggoty sack of puss and no moisturizer in the world will ever fix that skin condition. Maybe that’s why he goes around vacuuming the blood out of people and pulverizing them until they’re just lumps of pulpy flesh. He’s pissed off cause the plastic surgeons messed up really badly.

All joking aside, this is a fun movie to watch. You’ve got you’re usual
fighting and a bit of romance and then you’ve got bouncing zombies because when zombies turn into zombies their mobility is impaired. I don’t know if they regain it but they must because how else would they run down their victims? You can’t bounce after somebody until you catch them, unless they get the giggles watching the zombie bounce after them and can’t run for lack of oxygen. But eventually these zombies are either destroyed or they turn into vampires and then you’ve got a real problem. An army of rotting flesh that can fly and fight and has lethal breath and the only way to destroy them is to blow them up because cutting their heads off just makes them mad is hard to fight.

This movie is likened to Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon but it differs in one important aspect. That movie had a script. This one doesn’t but the actors do get words to say, only they don’t propel the story along very much. It’s mostly things like “What?” “You stay here.” “Will you marry me?” “Huh?” “Okay.” But eventually it all must end but don’t expect a lot of exposition about the origins of zombies and vampires. The movie doesn’t care. The fighting and atmosphere is the thing.

Some of the CGI is rather obvious and the wire flying makes you dizzy but the fighting is good and the visuals can be impressive. Like when the bride arrives in her red wedding clothes and kneels down to wait for her husband. Now that’s quality, in my opinion.

One of the nice things about movies from Asia is there are still places that look like the 19th century just living under the sun. I’m sure a lot of sets were built to represent that time but I would wager you a lot of it was actual locations. The house the bride marries into is like the House of Usher, in that it is decaying before her eyes and there is nothing she can do to save it. It cannot be saved.

You can complain that the Vampire King himself looks a little wooden and hasn’t much mobility and it does fly around rather a lot but this movie introduces elements of vampire lore I’ve never seen before and I appreciate that. I mean, they can’t all be a preening Lestat and an impotent Louis, beautiful but empty. Some of them have got to be rotting away, waiting for the next group of travelers to come through the woods at night just so he can vacuum the blood from their bodies three feet out.

All I know is what this movies says. All I know is that a zombie bite can be cured but it could go either way with a vampire bite, even if you do have coffin dust. So be careful next time you’re riding your horse though the woods in China at night. If the needle of your compass goes haywire just start running cause there’s a vampire on your trail and they’re damned hard to deal with when they get hungry. And they’re always hungry.

There are few extras, just some trailers, and if it’s dubbed I didn’t
bother because I prefer to read subtitles. So rent it, buy it, pick it up
after it’s fallen off the back of a truck and enjoy