Directed by: Dante Lam
Starring: Ekin Chang, Charlene Choi, Gillian Chung
I remember renting this one the same time as Endangered Species, expecting them to be about the same quality. I was pleasantly surprised by this supernatural Hong Kong martial arts flick, and that almost NEVER happens. I’m pretty hard to please, I guess.
Vampire Effect is a modern-day vampire story, and one of the very few I’ve seen that manages to do it without being totally obnoxious or all Anne Rice-ey. Our heroes are a vampire hunter, his assistant, and his sister, all of whom are top notch fighters. They’re on the trail of the last of the vampire princes, who’s hiding out in their neck of the woods from a European vampire duke or something who’s been going around killing all the vampire princes so he can open a book that’ll allow any vampire who uses it to stay out during the day. The complication to our story is that the hunter’s sister starts dating the vampire prince, and they spend a lot of time just going around dating, including a part where they crash Jackie Chan’s wedding.
This movie is very tongue-in-cheek for the most part, with one of the better fight scenes being between the sister and the assistant over a teddy bear, and Jackie Chan’s guest fight scene where he defeats two bad vampires by stuffing their mouths with antidepressants and making them dance as they drove away. It gets serious at the end during the climactic fight scene with the metal-handed head European vampire duke guy, which is kinda too bad, but I guess they had to have a really big fight scene to end with.
This was a cute movie, for being about the undead and murdering royalty and all. And, of course, there’s Jackie Chan in a bit part, so that’s fun. I’d recommend picking it up, if for no reason other than it’s a modern vampire movie where the vampires have actually modernized and AREN’T just a bunch of ravers with prosthetic teeth.
Films in Boxes 
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