Expected more

It is both painfully honest and laugh-out-loud funny at the same time.

Exactly the movie you think it is, but not the movie you want it to be.

This is a small, humorous movie in some ways, but it has a huge heart. What a nice experience.

17th century China. Four bumbling, but brave and highly proficient martial arts students must destroy a lethal vampire king who's been terrorizing the woodland area surrounding the Jiang estate.Director Wellson Chin keeps the eventful and enjoyable story whisking along at a snappy pace, offers a flavorsome period atmosphere, sprinkles in nice touches of loopy humor, delivers oodles of outrageous gore, and stages the assorted berserk karate fights, wild swordplay, and insane vampire attack set pieces with considerable go-for-broke aplomb. Tsui Hark's nutty script not only has a nifty nod to the 1930's horror classic "Mystery of the Wax Museum," but also presents a ferocious all-powerful head vampire who flies and belches fire. Moreover, the goofy protagonists are quite likable, Anya makes for an extremely fair damsel in distress, and Chun Hua Ji cuts a formidable figure as the tough and valiant Master Mao Shan. J.M. Logan's spirited score hits the stirring spot. The sharp cinematography by Herman Yau, Kwong-Hung Chan, and Sunny Tsang Tat Sze gives this picture a pleasing moody look. An infectiously off-the-wall blast.

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.

I've seen bad HK vampire movies before and I have to say this is probably one of the worst. The special effects were bad, the characters forgettable and the plot non-existent. There wasn't enough plot development to make the story plausible. The characters were transparent and had bland personalities. And sometimes new characters would just pop out and try unsuccessfully to integrate into the movie.The master vampire was not scary at all. Not enough was done to explain the origin of the beast or how it became what it was. There were too many holes in the plot. I don't know what this movie was brought over to the U.S. It should have stayed in Hong Kong.

In 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 :.