Vampires: The Turning

I first saw bits n pieces of this movie in the mid 2k on Sony Pix channel.

Revisited it recently.

This is the third installment of the Vampires film series although John Carpenter who directed the first film and produced the second film had no involvement with this film.

So now viewers can do their math.

There is one single decapitation scene, an unnecessary bike chase sequence n few unnecessary kung fu or for that matter wi fu scenes.

It has a hot babe, Stephanie Chao but her sex n nudity scene is one of the worst shot ever.

This movie has lots of vampires but no good action or gory stuff.

In Thailand, the Americans Connor (Colin Egglesfield) and his girlfriend Amanda (Meredith Monroe) quarrel in a Muay-Thai fight, and Amanda leaves Connor alone. She asks the direction of the hotel to a stranger, indeed the mean vampire Niran (Don Hetrakul), and she is bitten and kidnapped by his gang of evil vampires in motorcycles. Connor joins to a clan of "good" vampires leaded by Sang (Stephanie Chao), trying to save Amanda from the claws of Niran.

I expected that "Vampires: The Turning" were a good movie. The locations and the cinematography are beautiful; the very heavy music score is excellent; Stephanie Chao is gorgeous and attractive; but unfortunately, the screenplay and the director are terrible and the very loose costume of Meredith Monroe does not help her fallen breasts. The story is very short, and the unknown Marty Weiss uses long scenes with motorcycle race, fights and boring flashbacks to complete a minimum running time for film. My vote is four.

Title (Brazil): "Vampiros: A Conversão" ("Vampires: The Conversion")

My husband and I enjoyed this movie. We had watched a lousy rental the previous evening and were afraid this would be bad also. However, we were pleasantly surprised. The main characters were believable and quite sexy and romantic in their trip to Thailand. We always enjoy a vampire movie with a different "twist" on things and this surprised us. There was Ong-Bak (Muay Thai) type of fighting, beautiful costumes (both men and women), original female Thai vampires and the cinematography was top rate! The beautiful and exotic surroundings added to the mystery of the movie. I would tell others who enjoy a variation on the vampire theme to watch this one.

This is an entertaining combination of Kung Fu and horror. The performances are decent and the action/fight scenes are well choreographed.

The film moves along at a brisk pace. You won't be bored.

There's very little sex or T&A, unfortunately, but I won't hold that against it.

While no "Citizen Kane", This flick is way better than I initially thought it would be. It's a worthy diversion for an afternoon.

With all the absolutely worthless crap that Hollywood releases nowadays, it's a shame this never got a wide (or any) theatrical release.

It seems as if this was intended to be the first of a series. If that's the case, I'd definitely check out any sequels.

...and you kill an hour and a half. Despite the low score on IMDb, this movie is not a 4-out-of-10 vampire movie. Anyone who thinks it is does not know the depths to which vampire flicks can sink. This was a (mostly) competently acted movie with good production value and fun martial arts. Rather than lots of bad SFX, we get a few okay SFX (mostly freaky contacts, fangs and dead-vampire-melting) a net gain in my book. It's predictable, but most vampire movies are, and there are no gaping plot holes, or at least not larger than in most movies.

That said, it's not Hamlet, at least not well-acted Hamlet. The main actor isn't particularly charismatic, and seems to have one basic expression throughout the movie, which I read as "fierce determination," but at least he *has* a facial expression (try van Helsing in "Way of the Vampire" for the alternative), and it fits with his mental state for most of the stuff. Stephanie Chao is no great shakes either, but she's pretty, and has a natural sincerity to her voice that makes up for some of her lack of emotion. They should have given Meredith Monroe more to do.

This is, too, only a bastard step-child (yes, that's what I meant) of John Carpenter's Vampires. It has a new origin of vampires that is not really compatible at all with the original. It does keep the winch, but it looks like they put it in just to prove some kind of family resemblance. If the producers actually paid anything to get in on this franchise, it was a waste of money, since they didn't bother to put in any element (other than the winch) from the original.

Overall, It's far from the worst such movie, but not nearly among the best. If you like vampires and kung fu, and movies with a photogenic cast, this is a good way to waste 84 minutes, especially if you've got some kind of unlimited rentals. Just don't go out of your way unless you're a genre fan.