Reviewed by: Arshadnm6 Date: 04/10/2005 Summary: Short horror flick with lots of lost potential.... A good entertaining movie with plenty of special affects and enough horror / suspense to keep the viewer engaged for long enough. ‘Ji Chun-Hua’ (whom you might recognize from other bad guy roles in ‘Fong Sai Suk 2’ and ‘New Legend of Shaolin’, very early in his career) stars in this horror comedy as ‘Master Mao Shan’, a skilled martial artist and Taoist exorcist. Under him are a bunch of four ragtag inexperienced vampire hunters, namely Wind (Ken Chang), Rain (Lam Suet), Thunder (Michael Chow) and Lightning (Chan Kwok-Kwan). The team of vampire hunter’s main objective is to seek and destroy the Legendary Vampire King, a very unfriendly and powerful monster hell-bent on sucking the life out of all living things and creating more of his kind. Unfortunately the team underestimated his abilities and somehow the master and his apprentices lose contact with each other. The four apprentices, assuming that their master has fallen in battle against the Vampire King, seek revenge and travel around hopelessly, until about three months later after the unfortunate incident, they arrive at the House of Jiang, a haunted mansion run by Master Jiang (played by the great Yu Rong-Guang, whom you would recognize stared in several previous movies like ‘My Father is a Hero’ or ‘Iron Monkey’). Jiang is a skilled wax artisan and his family’s legacy is an entire house full of ancestors preserved in wax for decades. Jiang’s son is soon to wed the beautiful ‘Sasa’ (played by ‘Anya’) and the four hunters pretend to be hired servants in the household, hoping to apprehend the vampire king. Sasa’s Husband soon after dies mysteriously and Wind falls for her. Meanwhile Sasa’s older greedy brother Dragon (Lee Wai-Shing) seeks Jiang’s Gold and is willing to sacrifice even his sister to get his hands on the Gold (Jiang’s Family Heritage). Unfortunately soon after, the Vampire King decides to make an unwelcome appearance, causing problems for everyone. This is a very well developed film in the footsteps of earlier Mr. Vampire movies and the action choreography is done in the exact ‘Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon’ format without the presence of ‘Yuen Woo-Ping’. Vampire Hunters is more of a Manga-Style movie where the background emphasis on character development is unnecessary and more emphasis is given on current situation in hand. We also see some very exciting fight scenes with Master Jiang and Wind and also Master Jiang and the notorious Dragon, although they only clock in at about 90 seconds at best of screen time. Simply said the fight scenes, although plenty are not long enough and this is definitely something Tsui Hark should have worked on. Also the movie itself only clocks in at just under 90 minutes, which is regretful, since the movie had much potential to exceed most other vampire movies and character development, if any, has not been achieved successfully. Overall this a good entertaining movie with horror / martial arts / comedy all wrapped up in one big sandwich and with very simple plot: catch the Vampire King before all hell breaks lose. Overall Rating: 7.9/10 Reviewer Score: 8

Reviewed by: j.crawford Date: 05/11/2004 Summary: 89 minutes wasted...... [This is a review of the 89 minute US version.] This should be a standard Hong Kong vampire movie we've all come to love so much. This is what happens when a giant Hollywood production company throws a couple of million bucks at a brilliant artist to acquire "product". Hark took the standard genre formulas and produced a film with less than usual humour and dull action scenes. Lam Suet, always a brilliant performer, struggles in an awful role while Yu Rong Guang turns the best performance as the top Taoist. Awful. En français: Ceci devrait être un film standard de vampire de Hong Kong que nous faisons venir à tous pour aimer tellement. C'est ce qui se produit quand une compagnie géante de production de Hollywood jette un couple de million de dollars à un artiste brillant pour acquérir le « produit ». Le réalisateur de film a pris les formules standard de genre et a produit un film à l'humeur d'habituelle et les scènes mates d'action. L'acteur Lam Suet, toujours un interprète brillant, lutte dans un rôle terrible tandis que Yu Rong Guang tourne la meilleure exécution comme Taoist supérieur. Terrible. En español: Esto debe ser una película estándar del vampiro de Hong Kong que hacemos que todos vengan para amar tanto. Esto es qué sucede cuando una compañía gigante de la producción de Hollywood lanza un par de millón de dólares en un artista brillante para adquirir el “producto”. El cineasta tomó los fórmulas estándares del género y produjo una película con menos del humor generalmente y escenas embotadas de la acción. El agente Lam Suet, siempre ejecutante brillante, lucha en un papel tremendo mientras que Yu Rong Guang da vuelta al mejor funcionamiento como el Taoist superior. Tremendo. more at happyfortune.org Reviewer Score: 2

Reviewed by: MrBooth Date: 03/15/2004 Summary: Get the Singaporean version finally got round to watching the Singaporean DVD of ERA OF VAMPIRES, which besides restoring the original title also restores the 15+ minutes that were chopped out of the Columbia Tristar version of the film. The total running time is now 107 minutes instead of... 89? It's been a long time since I saw the Columbia cut of the film so I'm kind of vague about what was added back in, but there was a whole prologue and epilogue that I'm pretty sure weren't present, and the final fight seemed to run longer than I remembered. The whole plot seemed better developed than I remembered, though there were still some moments and scenes which required some filling in of blanks, and some subplots that didn't really go anywhere - typical Tsui Hark storytelling in other words For some reason the main vampire seemed far less cheap and more menacing in the Singaporean version than I remembered him being in the US cut. I don't remember the film being quite as gory, but scanning some reviews online they all seem to mention the word "gory", so it probably was. Don't you wish I'd watched the DVD when I bought it last September so I could make some more meaningful comparisons? Regarding the DVD: it's anamorphic but the transfer probably isn't up to the standard of the Columbia disc - however, it's seemingly quite a bit brighter, as many reviews mention not being able to see what's happening in dark scenes on the R1, and that's never a problem here. It's not grade A picture quality but it's more than good enough. Unfortunately the sound does not fare so well - there's only a Mandarin dialogue track, but that works fine for the film. In fact, it probably gives the film a greater "gravitas" than Cantonese, which suits it better - in fact the comedy seems very downplayed in the Mandarin dub, to the point of non-existence. That's not the real problem with the sound - it's just otherwise a completely amateurish 5.1 sound mix, with horribly balanced levels that are most noticable in the action scenes, really hurting the feel of them. There just seems to be no logic applied to when a sound will be loud and when it will be quiet, and position in the surround field is sloppy at best. Some sound effects are really out of synch too - a very poor effort Still, with the longer running time and seemingly more coherent and serious storyline, I think that ERA OF VAMPIRES is definitely preferable to VAMPIRE HUNTERS - I certainly found the film very enjoyable this time, and only mildly enjoyable when I watched the R1 cut. It's still not a completely coherent or wonderfully told story, but there was enough there to get me some emotional investment, and the action scenes are of a pretty high calibre. A good 7/10 film at least Reviewer Score: 7

Reviewed by: mrblue Date: 09/18/2003 Era of Vampire is a decent action/horror movie that centers around a group of vampire hunters (led by Yu Rong Guang) who track a particularly deadly one to a mysterious estate. The lord of the manor keeps his dead relatives encased in wax in order to protect his family's treasure. This strategy backfires once the vampire shows up and turns the deceased kin into zombies, so it's up to the hunters to eliminate the threat and protect a beautiful young bride (Anya). This movie has flashes of brilliance (some of the ways the vampire gets blood from humans are very cool) but ultimately feels a bit flat. There's nothing particularly wrong with Era of Vampire, but it lacks almost any of Tsui Hark's trademark crazy imagination, or even any really good action -- there are quite a few fights, but they're all too short to be really savored at all. The film just kind of feels like it's just there and not really doing anything. All of the elements are in place, but they never come together in a way satisfying enough to elicit true excitement from the viewer.

Reviewed by: Sydneyguy Date: 08/16/2003 Summary: Takes it time for the action to start!! Well ambitious is one word for this movie. I guess watching any hk vampire movie you can't help but compare it to the Mr Vampire series. This movie unfortunately can't compare to MR Vampire. The movie takes until half way to start some momentum for the movie. From their is where all the fun begins. There is no particular stand out from this movie apart from Yu Rong Guang. It's hard to share time to four main characters and you don't feel connected with them. The action is fast and furious but i hate it when their is one match up you want to see and doesn't happen, oh well!! There is nothing new here, action is good but the story itself is very formula and boring. The ending i did not like and the vampire itself, well i thought it could of looked a little better. But it does make good use of CGI and does not OVER use it!! Worth a viewing 6/10

Reviewed by: danton Date: 07/03/2003 I suppose after the rather spectacular box office failures of his last few big budget movies, Tsui Hark might have increasing trouble getting his company's projects financed. All the more surprising then that this low-key B-movie (still unreleased in HK, AFAIK) actually got bought and distributed by Columbia. In any case, scaling back his ambitions and writing/producing a more modest genre flick that doesn't add anything new and distinct to a tried and tested genre may not be a bad thing for Tsui's creative juices, judging by the results. The Era of Vampires (or rather, "Vampire Hunters", to use the English title used by Columbia) is your typical HK gyonsi film, i.e. all the familiar genre conventions are present: there's an ultra-bad hopping corpse, some bumbling yet lovable heroes, cheesy FX involving dry ice and a gruesome looking vampire puppet, corpses dressed in Ching garb, Taoist rituals, and most importantly a wise albeit cranky sifu who ultimately triumphs over the undead evil. The latter role used to be played with grace and humour by Lam Ching Ying, and his absence is notable. However, Chi Chuen-hua (better known for his villain roles in films like OUATIC II and White Lotus Cult) fills his shoes reasonably well, supported by 4 disciples portrayed by the likes of Lam Suet, Ken Chang and Michael Chow. Also gracing the cast are Wu Anya as the damsel in distress and Yu Rong Guang as her semi-villainous father in law. Where the old Mr Vampire films used to excel in graceful, acrobatic action scenes driven by giddy exuberance and by sheer kinetic energy, this latest addition to the genre foregoes some of the campier, low-brow humour that characterized the old Lam Ching Ying films for the sake of more intense atmospheric moods and greater stylistic cohesiveness. On that front, the film does quite well, and the movie manages to create and sustain impressive visuals despite what seems to have been a very low budget. It also helps, of course, to have the advantage of modern technologies like full surround sound. As for the action scenes, they are perhaps slightly inferior to Lam Ching Ying at his prime but nevertheless miles above what passes for martial arts action in HK these days. The wirework is efficient, and the fights are mostly well staged, even if they do lack some of the excitement and sheer inventiveness that made the old films such fun. The editing is at times a bit tight, suggesting that this release is an edited version, with more character-driven scenes missing and only the action pieces left intact (which would explain why the main characters remain rather poorly drawn, and why some of the side characters have almost no introductions). In summary, Vampire Hunters doesn't add anything new to the genre, but that's not necessarily a bad thing. If you enjoy the old Sammo Hung or Lam Ching Ying vampire films, you will have a good time watching this enjoyable, well-made and ultimately quite entertaining offering from Tsui Hark's Film Workshop. Recommended.