In the 17th century China, a group of warriors attempting to find the vampire that abducted their master find themselves caught in a feud with their new hosts whose enemy raised an army of vampires to destroy them and must fight them together in order to save themselves.
This here was quite the fun if slightly flawed effort. Like the vast majority of Hong Kong vampire efforts, the fact that there's such an endless array of high-quality martial arts scenes in here is the biggest attribute to this one, keeping the film charging along at a frantic pace for the majority of the film. The opening assault on the main vampires' grave, which includes plenty of the usual aerial martial arts-based acrobatics as they lure the creature out of the tomb and combat it while it drains their life-force and brings about the explosive final part of the confrontation where they steal away the body into the forest gives this a fantastic opening, a later encounter where the looters find the creatures out in the woods and get torn to pieces is another gruesome highlight and the hand-to- hand fighting in the dojo where he finds that his opponents are the reanimated creatures is a lot of fun and gives this a great deal of action to run throughout here. Other great battles come from the resurrected vampires' attack on the small village as their hopping through the streets causes a great deal of destruction, and the fine follow-up confrontation in the woods is a lot of fun with the atmospheric location and raging thunderstorm providing plenty of set-up for the masterful hand-to-hand combat within and giving this all a great deal to like about it and sets up the ending confrontation with the master controller at his temple which is a wholly spectacular fight generating plenty of stand-out wire-fu tactics to bring about a fantastic and engaging sense of energy within the scene while utilizing plenty of inventive and unique tactics to combat the creature. Alongside this great set of action- packed horror set-pieces, there's other great traditional hand-to- hand and sword-fighting tactics throughout here which results in plenty of fantastic action in the set-pieces for a thoroughly frenetic and high-energy effort. Still, there's more than enough straightforward horror elements to work here, mainly centering around the rotting zombie-like look of the vampires filled with demonic visages and even maggots falling off their faces which makes for a rather fun and chilling-looking villain that really makes this appropriate which lets the scenes of them hopping around the villages casting plenty of shadows makes for some really suspenseful moments. Coupled with the nice gore in the bloody kills, these here give this one plenty to really enjoy and is enough to overcome the flaw here. The only real thing that holds this back is the fact that there's just not a whole lot of coherence in the story about what's going on, as there's just not a great deal of logic in why they're coming out or why they're targeting the family and as a result it makes the first half seem somewhat slow and uncoordinated. Otherwise there's quite a lot to like here.
Rated Unrated/R: Graphic Violence, Language and Brief Nudity.
This here was quite the fun if slightly flawed effort. Like the vast majority of Hong Kong vampire efforts, the fact that there's such an endless array of high-quality martial arts scenes in here is the biggest attribute to this one, keeping the film charging along at a frantic pace for the majority of the film. The opening assault on the main vampires' grave, which includes plenty of the usual aerial martial arts-based acrobatics as they lure the creature out of the tomb and combat it while it drains their life-force and brings about the explosive final part of the confrontation where they steal away the body into the forest gives this a fantastic opening, a later encounter where the looters find the creatures out in the woods and get torn to pieces is another gruesome highlight and the hand-to- hand fighting in the dojo where he finds that his opponents are the reanimated creatures is a lot of fun and gives this a great deal of action to run throughout here. Other great battles come from the resurrected vampires' attack on the small village as their hopping through the streets causes a great deal of destruction, and the fine follow-up confrontation in the woods is a lot of fun with the atmospheric location and raging thunderstorm providing plenty of set-up for the masterful hand-to-hand combat within and giving this all a great deal to like about it and sets up the ending confrontation with the master controller at his temple which is a wholly spectacular fight generating plenty of stand-out wire-fu tactics to bring about a fantastic and engaging sense of energy within the scene while utilizing plenty of inventive and unique tactics to combat the creature. Alongside this great set of action- packed horror set-pieces, there's other great traditional hand-to- hand and sword-fighting tactics throughout here which results in plenty of fantastic action in the set-pieces for a thoroughly frenetic and high-energy effort. Still, there's more than enough straightforward horror elements to work here, mainly centering around the rotting zombie-like look of the vampires filled with demonic visages and even maggots falling off their faces which makes for a rather fun and chilling-looking villain that really makes this appropriate which lets the scenes of them hopping around the villages casting plenty of shadows makes for some really suspenseful moments. Coupled with the nice gore in the bloody kills, these here give this one plenty to really enjoy and is enough to overcome the flaw here. The only real thing that holds this back is the fact that there's just not a whole lot of coherence in the story about what's going on, as there's just not a great deal of logic in why they're coming out or why they're targeting the family and as a result it makes the first half seem somewhat slow and uncoordinated. Otherwise there's quite a lot to like here.
Rated Unrated/R: Graphic Violence, Language and Brief Nudity.