Borserie it is finally so absorbing because it plays like a lyrical road odyssey that’s also a detective story.
Zlatica One of the worst ways to make a cult movie is to set out to make a cult movie.
Marva It is an exhilarating, distressing, funny and profound film, with one of the more memorable film scores in years,
Woodyanders 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.
GL84 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.
movieman_kev Master Mao Shan is separated from his four best warriors, Wid, Thunder, Rain, and Lightning, during the midst of a battle with the undead. So they decide to go undercover as servants in order to search for a vampire who they believe is nearby. That's the main plot, but there's many sub-plots and a tad too many characters. But the action scenes are pretty good. And while this is among my least favorite Tsui Hark films, that's more a statement of how much I enjoy his movies than an indictment of this one. Truth be told, I'm kinda hesitantly reviewing this title as the Tristar version is cut by numerous minutes, making the ending more optimistic, so if you ever pick up the un-edited version get in touch with me to tell me how different it is. And if I ever see the original version I,of course, will revise my review accordingly.My Grade: C- DVD Extras: Trailers for "Cowboy Bebop", "National Security", and "Time and Tide"
Grapple Man This is THE worst movie I have EVER seen! It is SOOOOO bad I felt compelled to write this message: DON'T EVER SEE THIS FILM! IT IS SO DREADFUL YOU FEEL STUPID FOR HAVING WATCHED IT! PLEASE DO NOT SEE THIS FILMSeriously, the most pointless piece of crap I have ever seen, the story didn't make much sense, the effects were D-grade, they were that bad and the fighting has nothing on a B-grade Hong Kong action flick. Absolutely terrible.
