Customer Reviews

Dragon Against Vampire

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I saw this a long time ago and finally found it at Amazon. I swore I remembered the title was 'Dragon vs Vampire' when I saw it back home in Trinidad, but I guess I was wrong. Its a weird tale of what seems to be a Vampire prowling a village preying on young virgin girls seeking some magical flute for total power or something like that.
Well anyways 3 buffoons who seem to be on the run, a fat guy, a skinny guy and a guy that doesn't last too long or have a significant presence in the film.
They do whatever to survive, robbing graves, eating dog- yup you heard me they cooked and enjoyed a dog- not a real dog but all the same and stumble across the vampire's lair. One by one they get killed off till one survives. Sorry to see the fat guy got killed off he provided some decent humor. I thought it had some elements of kung-fu but I am still waiting to see it.
The surviving member and his girlfriend manages to rescue some trapped master of "Shaolin Sorcery" from an underground prison of sorts and he begins to teach him the 'Shaolin Sorcery'.
Plenty horror themes abound found mostly as dreams or hallucinations, one scene where the girl chops off the neck of a chicken and begins to drink it's blood is pretty realistic /gory. The bad guy manages to kill off even the master and gets the secret to the magic flute of power, the surviving 3 stooges member and the girl struggle to kill the vampire and with a stroke of luck he gets impaled thru the head with a pitch fork. Hmmmmmm so much for plot and storyline.
It's really thin plot wise and the whole film is visibly low budget, some humor sprinkled with what I can best tell is Chinese themed horror. No special features here or decent video/audio quality, seems that the studio houses just do a slap/chop job of putting the DVD together. I just bought the DVD for the nostalgia as it was a pretty unknown flick from a time long passed.

Greetings;

Well, I didn't figure that there would be anything all that special about this movie, I mean, I had my doubts when I saw that there are actually used copies of this going for .25 cents, but hey, it isn't the first either. There is another review for the movie that also peppered my conception going in, but as I just happen to have a thing for the whole 'Mr. Vampire' style of movie-hopping vampires, Taoist Priests, mild to fairly decent kung-fu and usually anywhere between half to a quarter assed levels of special effects that were actually in retrospect, pretty good for the day and age.

This was a low budget film, a very low budget film. The DVD quality isn't all that great, I mean, it is clear enough to see what is going on most of the time, I kept tweaking my screen during periods in which the scene was in some thicker darkness, but overall, few complaints there. What I didn't however care about was the fact that when you got to see various key things in...Chinese, it movie doesn't actually give any real clear idea as to what is being said. For example, in the beginning, the three men are running from well, Johnny Law, I guess. A shot is shown of their faces on some board and it doesn't say what it is all about, but I guess that you are to inferr that it is a wanted poster, but again, it doesn't bother to say what they had done and I find that to be annoying.

The film is Dubbed in English, there is no audio selections, no subtitles, no special features. In the spirit of most dollar store editions of such movies, you have the option of either playing the movie itself or selecting a scene, nothing else. I kept fiddling too and from what I have seen, there are no hidden easter eggs either.

Based on the other review given, I had assumed that indeed, the concept of Dragon and vampire was supposed to be some manner of kung-fu styles, but no, not at all. As mentioned, there is a little bit of kung-fu done here and there, all of very poor quality. Granting, I doubt that I could do a whole lot better myself without the aid of some crew or, you know, actual training, so I should probably just shut my trap. But still, don't buy this expecting actual kung-fu fighting. Actually, crap-wrestling is more the theme here for the most part, people rolling around over each other trying to strangle one-another.

To help clarify a bit though, the vampire element in the film seems to be about the evil magic user...Bit of a spoiler, long ago, there was this master who had a prickish student who apparently was willing to do bad things with the great powers he was being taught. The master was really beginning to realize just how prickish his student was and was probably contemplating casting the student away when one day the student feeds the master a tonic/potion that contained something to knock him out. The student took the master off to a cave and tied him down/chained him to a rock to wait until he was finally willing to teach him his secrets again. Anyway, the student is dying of some disease it would seem and that is part of the reason he is in such a hurry to master Shaolin sorcery. The magic techniques he has learned he used in some ways to help prolong his life and from my understanding, one of the great secrets the master holds would quite possibly cure him of his illness. Feeding on blood and forcing others to do so under his 'possession' or rather mind control in some cases, he feeds, creating elixars that help him to live on a bit longer.

The prickish afore-mentioned student is known as black dragon, so what on earth the title 'dragon against vampire' has to do with much of anything is beyond me. I think maybe it is just a poor translation, but I can't seem to find what the original title was to try to translate it myself to compare. I think in some way, it is more realistic to say perhaps that it is dragon that is losing himself to his darker, vampiric self, if that helps. That is to say that Black Dragon was always bad enough, but now that he is getting closer to his own death, he is pushing himself harder and harder, taking larger risks to finally master the arts of Shaolin Sorcery, killing many in the process. Desperation is driving him so, but he is just getting worse and worse for it. On the other hand though, he, as I understand it, was supposed to have been fighting and had his fingers hacked off, towards the end and yet, there they are, still attached as he attacks.

So really, no, there was no Vampire randomly hopping around the country-side as the other review said, I may be giving away too much, but I just want people to better understand the film, such as it is. Low budget, mild quality. But that doesn't entirely mean utter crap. Just mostly. Special effects are mostly just implied. One weak example, as I don't wish to give too much away, is that when the Grave-Robber(one of the three criminals I mentioned earlier, who's crimes arn't spelled out on that wanted poster) is supposed to have saved the afore-mentioned Master from his cave, having spent so many years sitting and therefore unable to walk, is being carried on the back of the grave-robber. The Master is sitting facing the opposite direction of the thief, who is facing the camera along with a woman, who I will not talk about to give more away than necessary. This is done so, the Master sitting facing away from the Camera, so that the Grave-Robber can actually walk stooped over with a puppet on his back, only doing close-ups of the master as he talks. The puppet itself though looked pretty crappy too, but as I have said before, could I have done better? Which is something you have to ask yourself when questioning a low-budget film.

One odd things I noticed though was that I actually recognized a lot of the dubbed voices from other films I have bought, mostly from the Mr vampire line-up and such. I couldn't actually name names at this point, but it is still interesting that so many people work for so many different dubbing companies.

So then was the movie worth it? Well, there is a rather large, sweaty fat man who spends most of his scenes running around with his gut and man-boobs exposed, often talking about how they in some way make him as strong as an ox or something. Considering how little I paid for the movie, that alone nearly makes it not worth it, but still, the movie is just decent enough that if you can get it for less than the price of shipping, I would say give it a shot. Just really, don't expect a whole lot. One of the highlights of the whole movie in my opinion is when Black Dragon takes possession of the afore-mentioned though unnamed(by me) woman, forcing her to cut the head off a chicken, drink its blood and focuses on some dolls back at his home to control her. His control broken, the doll ends up smoking as though the energy he had put into it fizzled out, a trick not unlike you would see in some of my more preferred films.

Thank you...

the title of this film really caught my eye. i was thinking of two styles of kung-fu (dragon vs vampire) going head to head in a mythic battle. i was instead treated to NO kung-fu.....did i say NO kung-fu. the fighting that was there was weak and under-choreographed and the acting and plot were horrible(which is usually ok if the fighting is good).
the film is really about one bad guy who wants this guys Shaolin secret magic, so the magic-guy promises to teach a theif (the main character) his secret. but this ends up being a dead-end beacause the bad guy kills the magic master....oh and there is a vampire lurking around for no reason as well....i dont want to give it all away so go ahead and buy it and see this disappointing film for yourself.