One of the unique creations of Hong Kong action cinema is the Chinese vampire flick. Beginning in 1985 with the wonderful Mr. Vampire, Hong Kong cinema enjoyed several years of cranking out genre horror-comedies featuring those dreaded manifestations of restless spirits, hopping corpses and walking vampires (with maybe the seductive female ghost thrown in for good measure).

Although this trend petered out some years ago under the burden of countless identical copycats – not to mention the death of stalwart actor Lam Ching Ying, who so often embodied the role of the One-Eyebrow Sifu – noted director/producer Tsui Hark (Zu Warriors, Once Upon a Time in China) returned to the well one more time with 2002’s The Era of Vampires, released on DVD in the United States as Tsui Hark’s Vampire Hunters. Although Tsui Hark wrote the screenplay and produced, director Wellson Chin (The Inspector Wears Skirts I-IV, Ghostly Vixen) helmed the picture. And just as the film’s title is a bit misleading, so is its billing: Though slated as a horror / comedy, it isn’t very funny, though it satisfies on the action front.

The plot concerns master vampire hunter Mao Shan (Chun Hua Ji) and his four disciples, Wind (Ken Chang), Rain (Suet Lam), Thunder (Michael Chow Man-Kin) and Lightning (Kwok-Kwan Chan), who at the film’s opening are hot on the trail of the dreaded Vampire King. They trace the undead scourge to a general’s tomb and manage to bind it with chains. Unfortunately, an errant spark sets off a methane gas explosion, and not only does the Vampire King escape in the confusion, but Master Mao Shan also turns up missing, presumably blown to bits.

Demoralized but undeterred, the master’s disciples continue the search, tracking down rumors that the palatial home of rich merchant Master Jiang (the Iron Monkey himself, Yu Rong Guang, nearly unrecognizable behind a heavy scholar’s beard) is haunted. Arriving at the eve of Jiang’s son to the lovely Sasa (Anya Wu), the four monks enter the compound disguised as servants. But the wedding, which takes place at night, is curious – the groom’s mother doesn’t speak, but drips oozing goo from her sleeves.

The four discover no vampires, but the empty house still holds a morbid secret: Jiang is a kind of taxidermist who preserves corpses in lifelike poses using wax. Thus Mrs. Jiang attended her son’s wedding despite her deceased condition. Unfortunately, the younger Jiang is soon deceased himself, the victim of snakebite on the eve of consummating the wedding. The four suspect vampire activity, but Jiang reveals, in a variation of the standard Scooby-Doo plot, that he started the vampire rumor himself to scare away potential robbers.

And there’s more shenanigans afoot: Sasa’s brother, local bandit Dragon Tang (Horace Lee Wai Shing), aided by a turncoat butler, hopes to use his sister’s place in the household to find Jiang’s hidden gold. Dragon also enlists a renegade Taoist priest (Chan Koon Tai) to animate Jiang’s wax-covered bodies, turning them into monstrous Jiang Shi, or hopping corpses. Complicating matters, one of the monks falls in love with the widowed Sasa, and vows to protect her from whatever sinister force lurks in the House of Jiang.

All these elements, plus the reappearance of the Vampire King, result in an action-packed and creepy film. The flick is chock full of decent action sequences as the various characters battle the undead and each other. The four monks each wield a signature weapon, and Dragon and Jiang prove to be kung fu masters who seem to enjoy the competition of their skills over the struggle for Jiang’s gold.

Still, there’s so much going on that the film seems to lose track. For example, in the opening sequence Master Mao Shan is specific that the Vampire King’s victims inevitably rise as vampires. Yet moments later the king causes havoc among the master’s footsoldiers (in a neat effect, the vampire drinks the blood of his victims by inhaling so strongly that it flies from their eyes and mouth), none of whom cause trouble after their death. Then, when one of the film’s main characters is injured by the Vampire King, the master suddenly remembers a cure that might work – yet once it’s administered, it’s forgotten, with no payoff to this dramatic setup.

Veteran genre director Wellson Chin deploys standard Hong Kong horror elements like fog and weird lighting, plus some nicely creepy makeup effects for the wax-covered corpses. There’s also a close-up of the Vampire King’s maggot-covered face that’s reminiscent of the iconic image from Lucio Fulci’s Zombie. Unfortunately, some obviously computer-generated special effects bring down suspension of disbelief a bit (what, they couldn’t use a real snake?).

The cast delivers pleasing performances in the action and dramatic departments. A mark of the genre professionalism that characterizes this film is that the actors wisely play the material seriously, even if it is silly.

Tsui Hark’s Vampire Hunters is available on DVD from Sony Pictures International. It offers a nicely mastered widescreen presentation with Cantonese, English and French language tracks and optional English and French subtitles. Special features are a bit thin, consisting only of trailers, including the Tsui Hark-directed Time and Tide and the Cowboy Bebop movie.

While not a terrific film, Tsui Hark’s Vampire Hunters is a decent example of Hong Kong genre filmmaking that offers capable action at a fast pace. It falls short as a comedy, but the action and horror elements that overshadow the humor compensate by their strength. Newcomers to the Chinese vampire genre should still start with the classic Mr. Vampire, but fans of the style are likely to enjoy this flick.

Tsui Hark’s Vampire Hunters
Directed by: Wellson Chin
Starring: Ken Chang, Michael Chow Man-Kin, Suet Lam, Kwok-Kwan Chan, Yu Rong Guang
Released by: Sony Pictures International

Related Links:
Tsui Hark’s Vampire Hunters IMDb entry
Tsui Hark’s Vampire Hunters DVD at Amazon.com
Second opinion at Kung Fu Cinema
Second opinion at LoveHKFilm