I thought that I’d been led astray in my research of hopping vampire movies when I began Era of Vampires aka Vampire Hunters. The first creature of the night was a super powered blood sucking vampire that did not so much as hop, jump, or skip. Later on, my patience was rewarded when a whole herd of hoppers appeared. This was a low budget Hark Tsui produced film of which I expected more yet still found enough to keep my attention.

Be very, very quiet for Wind, Rain, Lightning, Thunder and their sifu Mao Shan are hunting a vampire. This mostly dead ex-general was juiced up and took exception to the vampire hunters. Many of the red shirt hunters were killed and Mao Shan was feared dead as well. Three months later the weather crew followed their vampire compass to the Jiang residence on the day of a wedding. The Jiangs were experts in making and using wax which led to some uber creepy goings on in a house where things didn’t just go bump in the night but also hopped and slithered. A secret stache of gold, a greedy brother-in-law, the Vampire King, the hunters, and the macabre household would all eventually collide in one gory mess.

This film had a very low budget look to it. The sets were simple but made to appear frightening with blue lighting and copious amounts of smoke masquerading as fog. The Vampire King was gruesome and buggy, no sexy fang banger here. Two of the humans did have time for some romance while running away from and fighting vampires. Even though there was some gore, the special effects were extremely low tech which took away much of the fear factor.

I didn’t recognize the Phoenix from Eternal Love TMOP at first. A young Ken Chang played Thunder and had the most screen time. Old martial arts movie star Chen Kuan Tai showed up as a Taoist corpse wrangler and set the hoppers loose at one point to distract the hunters while thieves sought out the golden treasure. He was even able to show his kung fu stuff in a short fight with one of the baddies. There were several wire-fu fights in dim lighting that weren’t as creative as I would have liked but were okay for this film.

Era of Vampires was more reminiscent of early kung fu films than films from the same timeframe. It had some intriguing moments and for this bargain basement niche mixed genre of martial arts and vampires it held its own.

30 September 2024