Popular reviews

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  Review by SubToretto ★★★★ 3

  A horror-kung-fu hybrid that manages to keep its creepy and gory gnarliness just as much as it thrills with its furiously-fluid swordplay, wild wirework and delightful devices of vampire-hunting weaponry.

  ☀️🚮Film 48/94 of Vinegar & Sauce - A Midsummer’s Uncontrollable Dumpster Fire: Seasonal Trash Year 2 - Watch a vampire movie.

  I think this is the first time a Jiangshi movie has actually unsettled me and felt like it can sit in the Horror genre without an addendum of “but its mostly about the fights and crazy Hong Kong black magic rituals”.

  I had always heard this wasn’t great, Tsui Hark wasn’t that involved and overall a bit of a dud. However, I found my self muttering every ten minutes or…

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  Review by Justin Decloux ★★★½ 3

  The desperate hunger for films like CROUCHING TIGER, HIDDEN DRAGON is the only reason a film like ERA OF VAMPIRES got a release from Columbia/Tri-Mark in North America - where it was met with bafflement by Blockbuster customers and tossed in the bargain bin.

  Watched today; it's kind of notable for being a Tsui Hark horror film (He wrote and produced) that features hopping vampires (a genre that had fallen out of favour at the time), that are presented as deadly threats. There's a lot of silliness between encounters with the bloodsuckers, but the head vamp is a near-unbeatable mega boss - which is something I can only say I've seen in Ronny Yu's THE TRAIL and Juno Mak RIGOR…

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  Review by Jayson Kennedy

  Jiangshi battlers during the Qing dynasty face waxy ancestral hoppers after their employer's son schemes for early inheritance. Resurrected to steal a fortune in gold, they're not so threatening compared to a vampire king also unleashed.
  
  Unfair to rate Tsui Hark's attempt at rekindling a Chinese horror niche when the version I checked out is missing nearly twenty minutes. Maybe due to that, the above comes off filler until the next scene of nicely choreographed swordplay. The levitating vamp big-bad looks deep fried and vacuums blood from those drawn by its breath. Dreary atmosphere makes a tough go if drowsy. Watched via Columbia Tristar's DVD.

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  Review by Krautsalat ★★★½

  Horror x52 2020: Film #20
  A horror film from the 2000s

  So you're the zombie wrangler? Let's see what you can do!

  Crazy wire-fu action with flying vampires and hopping zombies.

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  Review by Helen_S ★★ 4

  Wasn't all that great. Bit of a bore at times. For more fun martial arts vampire flicks see The Legend of the 7 Golden Vampires and Vampires III: The Turning.

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  Review by Heather Santrous ★★★

  I got caught up with my reviews so I'm hoping to get back to a movie a day since I missed a couple of days getting reviews done. This movie was next up on my pile of movies at home, so I decided to give it a watch. The DVD that I got from HorrorPack just calls this movie Vampire Hunters. I like the title it is listed here better, but they both work for the story. Taking place in 17th century China, a group of warriors goes out to fight zombies. If the zombies feed enough, they will turn into vampires. They run across a powerful vampire and one of them falls in love in the process.

  I thought…

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  Review by Mannu🩸 ★★★½

  I honestly enjoyed the hell out of this Tsui Hark vampire flick. The blue color palette, the foggish atmosphere, jiangshi who are actually menacing and scary, some decent practical effects. With a typically retro charm, The Era of Vampires manages to be endearing for both fans of Hong Kong cinema and old style western horrors: the vintage photography but most of all the creatures recall the undead of Fulci or De Ossorio films. These "zombie" vampires embrace both cultures, they look PUTRID (nice make-up job), they're agile, smart, capable of breathing death into their victims, suck their life out (in this the film is reminiscent of Lifeforce) or burning them by throwing FIRE from their mouths. The film might be a bit messy at times as often happens with Hark, but between fights, heroism, betrayals, love and death, it's definitely a bloody fun time.

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  Review by Wonggifs ★★½ 2

  Kind of baffled as to how I didn't enjoy this more. It looks great, channeling an early 90s Hong Kong horror vibe, has some great practical effects (and is reasonably restrained with the chintzy CGI) and a bunch of pretty decent fight scenes. However the story is a mess, its characters are all kind of boring, and it gives its most fun actors (Lam Suet, Michael Chow, Chen Kuan Tai) very little to do.

  It just about works as a throwback to the Hong Kong vampire movies of the 80s and 90s, but it's definitely more an Ultimate Vampire style knock off than a Mr. Vampire. Also, the sound mix on the new DVD, especially in the finale, was so bad that I had to check that my TV wasn't broken.

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  Review by Trent ★★★

  A favorite subgenre of mine are these horror/fantasy Kung-Fu/martial arts films and this one is no different in being an absolute joy for me to watch. We have some great wire work, some very well done sword fights and just an overall well choreographed movie with each flight being a blast to watch.

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  Review by Turdis ★★★½

  I'm just sad the job market for zombie wranglers is non-existent these days

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  Review by splatty ★★★

  Podcast Macabre Horror Challenge 2023: Movie #7 out of 52

  Task: From 2003

  Why choose between zombies and vampires when you can have both in one film? That's probably what the makers of this delightfully naive nonsense thought and integrated both zombies and vampires into the plot of their obscure martial arts horror film mix, with the former sooner or later turning into the latter and causing all sorts of headaches for the handful of martial arts fighters who oppose them in 17th century China. The whole thing is enriched with the typical silliness of Hong Kong cinema, a few nice martial arts fights, wonderfully trashy make-up effects and equipped with a completely uninteresting plot that only serves to somehow…

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  Review by billytime100 ★★ 1

  watched this with my good pals nolan brandon and special guest Tyler we felt just like the four guys on the screen and that made me feel really awesome if a zombie or vampire ever showed up we would be just like those guys