Night Hunter

I usually enjoy a good "Slay the vampire" movie, but this was not one of them. Don the "Dragon" Wilson brings his dark brooding image to the sceen, but the writers forgot to bring an original idea to the script. Also someone had the idea to shake the camera during each fight to give the scene a earthquake effect. I fell asleep three times during the first half hour of the film. It would have been better if I had just kept on sleeping.

....and by different, I mean that he plays what you could call an older male Buffy in this one! (Or maybe you could say a white Blade, but he came later). "Night Hunter" scores novelty points for combining vampires with martial arts: of course traditional vampire elimination methods simply won't do, according to this mythology the only way to conclusively kill one of them is to break his (or her) neck! There are two main problems with this film: a) it is quite slow-moving, b) the camera-work employs what could be described as an "earthquake effect" during some of the fight scenes - the restaurant one in particular almost made me nauseous! But the fights themselves are tightly choreographed in a mostly grounded style by the experienced Art Kamacho, and Wilson's fight with Ron Yuan is good by any standards. Glad to see Maria Ford and Sophia Crawford as sexy, high-kicking bisexual vampires, but they are both underused - they never even share the screen together. **1/2 out of 4.

Every single fight scene (and there was a ton of them - this is a Don Wilson film) was ruined by shaking the camera. What's the point? Not only that, but most fight scenes included flickering the light intensity. And to insure complete dizziness a few scenes put the camera on a carousel to spin the action in a circle. It's crude, unpleasant and kills the film.

Otherwise this would have been a decent non traditional, vampire, time wasting film for people who may like hand to hand combat.

As far as video fodder goes, this movie is okay, with its mix of modern-days-vampires action and fights ; in a way, it can be viewed as a forerunner to Wesley Snipes' "Blade". In fact, with his long hair, black clothes and somber look (well, as far as a non-actor can convey), Don Wilson, looks very much loke Brandon Lee in "The Crow" ! From Crow to Dragon, there's only one

Right, well I have to admit that when I stumbled upon this 1996 horror action movie titled "Night Hunter" here in 2023, and seeing that the movie had both Don Wilson and Maria Ford on the cast list, of course I was immediately interested in watching the movie. I had never actually heard about this, but I figured that a vampire-themed movie with Wilson and Ford had to be interesting.

Boy was I wrong. The storyline in "Night Hunter" was bland and boring. Writer William C. Martell put together a script and storyline that failed to entertain me. And the movie felt incredibly amateurish and sluggish in the hands of director Rick Jacobson. It most definitely wasn't the usual hard-hitting action that one would assume from Don 'The Dragon' Wilson.

The acting performances in "Night Hunter" were adequate enough for what they turned out to be. But you're not in for anything grand or memorable here.

I have to say that "Night Hunter" will just as quickly fade into oblivion as it snuck in under the radar.

My rating of "Night Hunter" lands on a very generous three out of ten stars.