Would This Count As A Sucker Punch?
By Rich Bruso
October 2006
October is one of the happiest times of the year around here. Various allergy-inducing plants are turning brown, the cooler isn't turning on as often during the night, and we get to watch Horror movies. Okay, so we watch them all year, but at this time of year they're showing almost continuously at our house. And this year's theme is vampires. Yay!
Now, the question becomes which vampire movie to review. We watched Nosferatu and Shadow of the Vampire back to back, we've re-watched Buffy the Vampire Slayer, and we've even seen all three From Dusk Till Dawn movies. Amazingly, none of these movies really struck me as having the right qualities for this review.
In desperation, I turned to the ultra-secret stash: My dad's video library. Among the vast quantities of action/adventure movies lay the proverbial diamond in the rough: A martial arts vampire movie entitled Night Hunter. Now, some of you may remember the last time I strayed into this realm with Robo Vampire, a weird fusion of two totally different movies, but this movie has something Robo Vampire never had: Don "The Dragon" Wilson. Yes, that's right, the Joe Don Baker of martial arts. It also featured the acting talents of various people you've never heard of, as well as having a cop with acting skills that make the aforementioned Mr. Baker seem Oscar-worthy.
According to the DVD case, this movie was made in 1995, but everything about the movie screams mid-80's: The clothes, the music, the cars, absolutely every aspect of the movie. Maybe it was an early attempt at being retro, or perhaps the entire cast was frozen in 1986 in anticipation of needing their fashion skills in the future. In any case, this is the only movie I know of where you get to see a 41 year old man high kicking in a black mesh shirt, so if that's the kind of thing you're into, go for it.
This touching tale begins with Joe Don Wilson's parents, both vampire hunters, being slaughtered in a farmhouse, leaving our hero as an orphan. Fortunately, he has the mystic ability to detect nearby vampires, as well as a book listing all the vampire families in North America. Immediately, he begins reading the book, and according to the captions makes it to the end of the book in only thirty years with his lips moving most of the time.
The rest of the movie is pretty much forgettable, managing somehow to lull me to sleep. Amy actually made me rewind several times so I could be subjected to the parts I missed while snoozing. Let's see, after the initial slaughter in the upscale restaurant, Joe Don runs into a crazy reporter from a National Enquirer-style newspaper. Actually, she runs into him with a car, but his hair is poofy enough to take the brunt of the impact. As often happens in these situations, they immediately fall in love.
Fortunately for our hero, every single vampire he meets is a martial arts master, and for the most part they obey the "one at a time" style of fighting a solitary hero. In an interesting "twist" on the classic theme, the only way to kill a vampire is to sever their spinal cord. Sure, they're slowed down by all that gunfire (sometimes three or four shots from a double-barrel shotgun), but to finish them off you gotta snap their necks, which is always accompanied by the sound of several celery stalks breaking.
For reasons unbeknownst to the viewing audience, our hero's new girlfriend decides to ask the police for help, provided, in this case, by the least believable cop ever. He certainly can't banter like a movie cop, and I think he'd even have a hard time pulling off a donut eating scene. After listening to our hero's story, he immediately tries to arrest Mr. Wilson, on suspicion of wearing a mesh shirt. Just kidding, the charges aren't that serious, just murder. Of course, the cop can't even operate a pair of handcuffs, so Joe Don Wilson makes his escape, and then manages to finish off the last of the vampires in his book, thus ending the movie.
Of course, since you're still reading this, you know that he didn't really get all of the vampires. In the thirty years since the book was written, a few new vampires have appeared, and somehow they manage to trap our hero. In the meantime, Officer Doofie finds a few dozen homeless people with all their blood drained, thus forcing him to believe in vampires. Cut to the standard grand finale ending, as so often happens, with the hero and the girl as the only survivors.
So, what is the moral of this story? "Evil will always triumph, because good is dumb?" No, that was Spaceballs. Perhaps, "A high kick a day keeps the doctor away?" Or maybe the message is that, even in this day and age, if you wear a black mesh shirt you'll get the girl? The thought makes me shudder.
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