New Age Vampire Warriors (2010) - Dennis Law Mixes Kung Fu with Horror

[AlbertV]

Wu-Jing.org said this new film began production last Friday:

Director Dennis Law's supernatural action comedy, New Age Vampire Warriors, starring Jiang Lu Xia, Yuen Wah, Chrissie Chau, Chin Siu Ho, Pinky Cheung, Xiong Xin Xin, Dada, A. Lin, has just begun production on June 11, 2010.

As the Vampire Lord, Yuen Wah will be fighting almost everyone throughout the film, in particular, Jiang Lu Xia. To avenge her sister's death, Jiang Lu Xia has been trying to take Yuen Wah's life from the outset. As a veteran martial arts star, Yuen Wah heaps praises on Jiang Lu Xia, as it's rare to see an actress capable of fighting, and Jiang Lu Xia's moves are especially lethal and outstanding. Their exchange ended in both having bruises.

Apart from action, Jiang Lu Xia will have many dramatic and emotional scenes. She'll also be sporting long tresses for the first time, "This image is very feminine, allowing me to exhibit my kungfu as well as a tender side, I like this role very much, and hope to give everyone a brand new feel."

New Age Vampire Warriors is wrapping up at end of July. Dennis Law intends to make sequels if the reception is good.

Jiang Lu-Xia

Yuen Wah and Chin Siu-Ho

[kngfu]

Looks cool, I love to see new blood in the martial arts movie realm. Pun intended.

[Guest ekisha]

Chin Siu Ho reminds me Edward Scissorhands:bigsmile:

I think this will be another Fatal Move in new form.

[blue_skies]

if they can minimise the wirework this could be a very good film

[Asmo]

Glad to see Yuen Wah in a fighting role again. I hope there's minimal wirework.

[Yakuza954]

I have mixed feelings about Dennis Law. On one hand, I like the guy because he's clearly a fan of classic HK action movies, constantly delving into once-great genres like martial arts and hopping vampires, and casting a lot of old-school actors in his movies.. On the other hand, he can't direct. He seems to be regressing instead of improving as a director, and he has a fondness for cheap CGI and camera tricks that is at odds with the traditional HK film making he admires. With all of its faults, Fatal Contact is still his best movie, because it follows a simple template, and just allows a guy like Wu Jing to do his thing. Continuing to make action movies with bigger budgets and casting real men like Chan Wei Man, Ken Lo, and Hung Yan Yan is cool and all, but it doesn't mean much when there's fake CGI blood flying everywhere, more plot twists than a Sherlock Holmes novel, and increasingly shorter action scenes.

Since he's one of the few guys in HK who is still able to get his action movies funded (probably due to connections from when he was a producer), and because I will watch practically anything from Asia with martial arts in it, I will continue to watch his movies, but I hope he looks to the success of "The Gallants" for guidance. By all accounts, that's the blueprint for how to make a low-budget homage to classic HK cinema. New Vampire Warriors may actually have some potential, simply because this isn't the kind of genre where anyone expects big box office success (the martial arts is near-dead, the hopping vampire genre IS dead), and Yuen Wah seems to be the Chinese version of Steven Seagal when it comes to most cheap direct-to-dvd movies at the $5 dollar bargain bin.

So maybe Dennis Law can chill out, not have to worry about putting on a M Night Shyamalan twist on us all the time, and make some kind of new-wave hybrid of Versus and Spooky Encounters. Or maybe I'm just dreaming.

[rdenn]

not a big fan of the vampire genre but at least dennis law has good action in his movies, and good to see chin siu ho is back on screen hope he delivers in the fight department, not to bothered about yuen wah he hasnt done nothing good fightingwise in a long time.

[gorhama]

This has potential!!

Yuen Wah in a fighting role again...I'm sold. He's still got the goods!!

I hope it's played straight and not for campy laughs.

[gfanikf]

More Dennis Law is always good news!

I still need to see Womb Ghost. God, I just love that in Hong Kong in 2010 someone made a movie with that title.

Bad Blood was awesome and I think a big step up from Fatal Contact (which I still liked a lot), so I have confidence that Law is just going to get better from earlier.

[AlbertV]

The official trailer is up and the title is now simply Vampire Warriors

Starring Luxia Jiang, Yuen Wah, Chrissie Chau, Chin Siu-Ho, Pinky Cheung, and Xiong Xin-Xin. Nicky Li serves as the film's fight choreographer.

Check the trailer out at Twitch

[BLfan]

Looks good, shame the poster art is poor.

[blue_skies]

I'm not big on this HK genre but I do appreciate the director's attempts at bringing back the glory days of Hong Kong action cinema.

I'm looking forward to this.

[daisho2004]

Looks entertaining, if not anything else.

[ShaOW!linDude]

The clip had its moments. I guess I'd pick up the DVD at some point once it comes out. I'm like blue_skies. I like the supernatural and I like kung fu but for me 9x's out of 10 a mixture of the 2 breeds an utter failure. So I'm kind of wary. I may let some of you guys view this first and see what you think.

[Drunken Monk]

I can't help but think the trailer makes the film look distinctly sub par. The fights didn't wow me, the wire work was blatant and hardly inspiring and the plot and characters look like a huge mess.

Will I watch it? Sadly, yes.

[kingofkungfu2002]

The HK dvd/bluray is out now

http://www.yesasia.com/global/vampire-warriors-dvd-hong-kong-version/1023978833-0-0-0-en/info.html

[blue_skies]

I can't help but think the trailer makes the film look distinctly sub par. The fights didn't wow me, the wire work was blatant and hardly inspiring and the plot and characters look like a huge mess.

Will I watch it? Sadly, yes.

I'm not big on this HK genre but I do appreciate the director's attempts at bringing back the glory days of Hong Kong action cinema.

I'm looking forward to this.

Boy was I wrong about this film and drunken monk was absolutely spot on. I watched this on you tube and all I can say is it was a terrible movie. Plagued with wire -assisted fight sequences, floating/Flying vampires and most of those vampires are dull and depressing characters that spend most of the time saying how crappy it is being a vampire. Vampire Warriors is mind-numbingly dull and is probably better watched on fast forward getting to the completely uninspired fight sequences on the first watch. You won't want to watch this again. If there were any moments (and they would have been very quick moments ) of quality fight sequences it was lost due to how bloody boring this film actually is.

There's way too much wirework that really takes away from the fight sequences. Which in turn doesn't even liven up an already tedious film. After about 45 minutes I was none the wiser what the plot was and the characters bored the pants off me. I was only interested in Jiang Lu Xia and after this film I fear for her future as a martial-arts star. She was absolutely wasted although she was kicking Vampire ass in most of the scenesI really lost interest very quickly. Don't get me wrong I'm still looking forward to watching her in many more films but hopefully in something good and entertaining, minimising the use of wirework .

Maybe if you're a fan of these types of Hong Kong films you might get something out of it. But I'm betting you wish you had watched something else, anything else.the only real positive by can think about this movie was there were lots of eye candy but that really doesn't make up for such a terrible film.

[ShaOW!linDude]

After about 45 minutes I was none the wiser what the plot was and the characters bored the pants off me.

I hate whenever I'm watching an awful movie and suddenly discover that I'm losing clothes. If that's going to happen, I much prefer to watch something good that will, like, knock me out of my socks.

Suffice it to say......I think I'm going to pass on this one.

[blue_skies]

I hate whenever I'm watching an awful movie and suddenly discover that I'm losing clothes. If that's going to happen, I much prefer to watch something good that will, like, knock me out of my socks.

Suffice it to say......I think I'm going to pass on this one.

That's a good plan! It's 1 hour 40 minutes or so of my life I'm never getting back.

[MLee]

I liked the fight scenes with Jiang Lu Xia but hated the use of wires. There would be some nice exchanges during the fight and then out of nowhere a wire assisted kick or flip would appear that ruins it!

Acting wise it was pretty bad but it was good to see Chin Siu Ho on screen again.

It's only worth seeing for the fight scenes.

[TheGrimReaper]

It was a bad omen to watch two bad movies one after another - I was just getting myself coming out of the shock from the abomination named "Choy lee Fut" and yet another example of the same lineage came on screen.

But before diving in my own pool of hatred, I would like to have a little chat about a particular sub-genre in martial arts world. Geung si (or Jiang shi in Mandarin) is indeed a popular article between all other different sections of the martial arts movies, and one of the most recognised artist impersonatin a Taoist priest is without doubt the late Lam Ching Ying - star of such classics as "Mr. Vampire", "The Prodigal son", "Magic Cop" and many more.

His career has been put to a stop by liver cance, however he is one of the most distinguished actors in martial arts department.

This movie, which I'm about to disect is probably something completely different in scales and in quality - apparently after the world wide success of Twilight franchise, many other people (or companies) thought that it would be cool to follow their steps and creating something watchable for the audience. Well, mixing martial arts (or more precisely wire-fu) with such dramatical relationships as described in Bella Swan & Edward-Ambilight-Cullen is a hybrid strictly avoidable from any Asian filmmakers for years to come. In my cinematic experience the last decent "vampire" picture was Twins Effect, where the carefully incorporated action choreography by Donnie Yen and watchable directing, not to mention the extended cameo by Jackie Chan himself, were put pretty good together.

The last bad example of this sub-genre was Tsui Hark's Vampire Hunters and as I thought I couldn't possibly see any worse a new challenger appeared in the face of "Vampire Warriors" a tale of swords and soul eternally be told (oops that was form another game), actually a tale of teeth and ugly faces, put together by some sloppy camera work, pretty visible wires and dialoges which can mentally disable your brain receptors for a certain period of time (for a quick erase of this malware, drink plenty of alcohol). As I no longer drink you can imagine the scale of damage done to my alpha and beta brain waves... However in life you have to sacrifice something for the sake of others and this is what carried me on towards protecting any potential readers to stay away form this vampire fest without the festivities.

Let me start with the story first - it begins with a few couples trying to make out after scandal involving flying dishes and sauce pans - apparently it turns out that the female company is actually a vampires, which sole purpose in life is to suck dry any male object - talking about feminism and emancipation here... Very wrong indeed - as the sharp teeth are about to turn the skin into air conditioning our main hero Ar (played by Jiang Lu Xia - starred in Coweb, Bad blood and True Legend), a vampire hunter having a strange realtionship with a vampire. Anyone seen the glimpse of originality here - no, well let's get on with it then. As you can guess Ar gets rid of the bad (vibrations) people from a dark world, she then returns to her vegetarian vampire friend (Twilight nod much?) to retell the battle in full details. Then we meet our main protagonist - played by the old and odd looking Yuen Wah (who seemed to have subscribtion to every bad movie made in HK recently) as the Big Bad Vampire who kills each and everyone in his way, thus gaining enough energy to become The One or something like it - absorbtion skills were taken from The Matrix I'd guess.

Nothing interesting so far - and the story continue to be more dull and embarassing - the vegetarians were trying to kill themsleves drinking water (WTF???) and jumping from high places, the vampire hunter throws ocassional kicks and punches with no effect on my martial arts spirit, and the Vampire keeps killing people standing in his way with such ease as they were some kind of amateur football team from fourth league. Lame and quite laughable, except that I wasn't amused at all - I was gathering anger and hatred towards all the people involved into this movie, which evolved into a hideous hybrid having all the chracteristics of bad movie - stupid plot, non-distinguished characters, plenty of bad wire-fu, dialog with one liners and flat words, nothing really to care about in it.

I was again bittered by inappropriate casting and wasted talent - in this case both Chin Siu Ho (The Tai-chi Master, Fist of Legend) & Yuen Wah are misused (or abused) by the film makers - I do not know what is going on with martial arts movies recently despite some of the bright names on the poster. Even Donnie Yen's "Legend of Chen Zhen" was mediocre (in my eyes) and totally boring, about Choy Lee Fut I do not have anything more to add, The Lost bladesman was somehow not very well structured and a bit chaotic, and all the actors involved there were either misplaced or ruined from a movie perspective. Anyway I shouldn't distract myself from the current article, which is about love between vampires and is it a good foundation for a strong family relationship. As the movie progressed we get to meet the new Adams family - all the relatives of the vampire girl, including an anabolic brother with emo issues, another sister (I think) with high self esteem and father who can't really keep the little guy (S.S. Johnson) into his pants within 10 seconds time period.

The father is played by Chin Siu Ho - talented person, but here he is like taken out of some mental institution (not to mention the weird outfit) and put on some strong drugs (or sedatives) to play such one side, flat nosed character, who is not amusing even. At least they could throw some comedy in it, not trying to make it quite serious as a soup drama, made to entertain the housewives between noon and 4 o'clock in the afternoon. The sets are so limited and confined as the money were really short of budget and all we get is some urban ladscapes, plus a final battle in a warehouse (or docks) at night. All the dialog scenes are put into rooms and corridors and you don't get any chance to see any daylight (with a few exceptions) and it seemed to me like a cheap version of "Blade" with some crappy martial arts sequences.

Yuen Wah was doing nothing different than killing other vampires without any facial expression, however this doesn't made his character more cool, just more dumb and empty. In comparison with Twins Effect - at least there we had a bit more money put into it, had some very funny cameos and scenes, nicely crafted martial arts sequences (by Donnie Yen) and overall the production was more detailed and crisp, having characters which I found interesting, not too cartoonish and not too standard. Here with Vampire Warriors we have quite the opposite - I won't repeat myself over and over again - you could spot the differences right away.

About Jiang Lu Xia - in Coweb she was a bit static, but then she showed here skills in Bad Moon (although she played a numb girl with no lines, and it was made by the same director), and the cameo in True Legend was a plus. Here she just kicks and hits - no acting abilities, no emotions, no little feminine touch - she kinda look to me as more appropriate for girl-on-girl action in the late night programs, and that's it. Maybe she had instructions from the director to act cold as ice, but it was just too pathetic to watch. I didin't really cared much about any of the characters and the plot, or the martial arts scenes (they are simply awful), so the whole movie was in the list of "pointless" titles.

As I try and search for something positive - well at least after seeing Choy Lee Fut before this one, I just watch it with a vacant expression and that's it - although I was a bit angry it wasn't on the same levels as before. I guess I'm just getting older.

A final judgement - as I saw some nice moves from JIang Lu Xia, I'll add a half point to the rating (am I not a good guy):

1/10 (close to total disaster) - but still stay away from this movie

Sincerely Yours: The Grim Reaper

P.S. The full review can be found here: http://martialartsmoviesstation.blogspot.com/2011/09/vampires-are-back-on-stage-twilight.html#more

Thank you in anticipation.

[jmungus]

ohhh, thats the kind of "movie u shall not speak of".

its better off buried and never to be dug up ever again. i agree its probably a well deserved 1/10 movie since it truly sucks badly.

wait a minute- buried.... sucks..... a genuine vampire movie after all

vampire HUNTERS btw, imho, wasnt so shitty. i recall some serious shortcomings/inconsistencies in the screenplay and some lackluster and/or trite execution in some parts, other than that, its what could be expected from wellson chin and the crew involved.

to me it was irritating, that (my hero) tsui hark was attached to the project (writer; plus theres definitely a number of tsui hark trademark shots to be found in the picture), particularly since his name was used extensively to promote the hell out of this release.

provides some new-wave ghost movie nostalgia, features a bunch of fun, noisy, eerie sequences, manages to recreate the classic chinese vampire movie atmosphere, falls flat in most other areas. all in all, mediocre movie..... as opposed to the very abysmal "vampire warriors".

ps: love your review on the vampire warriors. gets the beating it deserves and then some.

"(am I not a good guy)" - i guess u are, he he.

[blue_skies]

I have to agree I saw this movie a while back now and it really did suck, no pun intended.

[DiP]

Directed by Dennis Law... The suckage of his films is not surprising.

[Dravenbran]

OMG!!! What a crap is this?!