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.

Version: 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

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.