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Vampire Effect

Rating: 2 out of 5 stars - Chop silly.
Vampire Effect (Dante Lam and Donnie Yen, 2003)

Vampire Effect is known in its native country as The Twins Effect because it stars both singers from mediocre pop group The Twins. In fact, the entire cast (or most of it anyway) is made up of Asian pop singers. Even those who are actors. (The always-wonderful Anthony Wong, star of such over-the-top Asian classics as Ebola Syndrome and The Untold Story, even fronted an indie rock band for a while in the nineties.) The acting is about as one would expect; imagine a big Hollywood production starring Hilary Duff, Toby Keith, the Spice Girls, Vanilla Ice, Ricky Martin, Britney Spears, and Mariah Carey. (Oh, wait...)

The plot (which borrows heavily from Blade) involves a group of European vampires who are trying to off the five princes of the vampire royal family. They take out the fourth as we enter the picture. Immediately after, vampire hunter Reeve (pop singer Ekin Cheng, probably best known on this side of the pond for his appearances in a couple of Pang Brothers films) and his partner show up on the scene and take out a few of the Europeans, but Reeve's partner dies in the process. The coalition of vampire hunters (yeah, really) sends him a new partner, Gypsy (Gillian Chung, one half of the aforementioned Twins). Gypsy and Reeve hit it off nicely. Not so Gypsy and Reeve's sister Helen (Charlene Choi, the other Twin), who, upon first meeting, get into an elaborate fight over a stuffed bear. But that's beside the point. In any case, Helen dumped her boyfriend after catching him cheating on her, but while still at the restaurant, she meets Prince Kazaf (pop singer Edison Cheng, whom you saw briefly in The Dark Knight) and his bodyguard Prada (Wong). There's an instant attraction between the two, and Kazaf hesitantly begins courting Helen. Of course, he doesn't realize that Helen is the sister of one of the world's top vampire hunters--and Helen doesn't realize Kazaf is the last remaining prince...

Standard, if amusing, chop-socky horror comedy, with lots of fighting and romantic subplots as predictable as they come. Still, Wong is always a treat, and you don't actually have to hear he Twins do any singing, so it's not a complete waste of time. If you like your horror movies with a lot of action, or your action movies with a supernatural bent, there are at least two dozen action-horror flicks from Hollywood that would be worse choices than this. **

Rating:

- Superb popcorn flick.
This is a fantastic slice of non-stop, high octane, martial-arts, comedy horror thriller in the vein of Van Helsing and Underworld and even the Blade movies. It's a film that entertains and doesn't take itself too seriously. And if, like me, you thought Underworld and Van Helsing were great concepts ruined by poor execution then look no further for how this kind of film should be done.

Of course the plot doesn't bear scrutiny; something about a European vampire killing off vampire royalty to collect their blood in order to open an ancient and sacred book that grants a vampire daylight immortality (!) Nice. And continuity's dubious; at the start of the film our hero and his sidekick have trouble fighting off 10 vampires by the end vamps are being despatched in the dozens and our two heroines (KPop stars and both excellent to boot (Imagine Atomic Kitten doing Ultraviolet. It just wouldn't work!)) have strength and endurance beyond their perfectly formed but still small and dainty frames.

But none of this detracts from the overall experience. The fight scenes are fast and furious and, yes, over-the-top, with some superb CGI/wire work interplay. The comedy includes direct parodies of more famous films along with plenty of inter-character rivalries. The first meeting and subsequent fight between the two female leads is hilarious. The actors themselves also appear to be having a ball and their enthusiasm's infectious. So long as you've checked your brain out at the start you'll be hollering along in joy. The vampires are also wonderfully characterised. The Royal Prince living in his hi-tech coffin refusing to lower himself to actually sucking blood: He'll have his decanted by a servant, thank-you-very-much! And the way they move is captured perfectly; exactly how I envisioned Count Dracula in Stoker's novel: like a malevolent Spiderman!

It's also worth noting that Charlene Choi is some of the prettiest Asian eye candy around :o)

And it's got Jackie Chan in it.

So in conclusion, it's a must. I can't think of a better way to waste an hour and a half and I'm pretty sure this film will be taking several more hours off my life. Not that I mind in the slightest. It's so enjoyable I've even ordered its two sequels, sight unseen!

Rating:

- Pretty entertaining
This movie is pretty entertaining. Although Jackie Chan is on the cover, his appearance in the movie is minimal. I got a good laugh from the goofieness of it all. I would recommend this movie if you like goofy movies.

Rating:

- comical action film.
this move was so nice, a comedy and action film. jacky (kong sang) chan has a small part, put that does not really matter.

Rating:

- Vampire grappling
The Twins and Ekin Cheng team up to take on vampires. Now first of all the story is the only thing I had a problem with in this movie. They don't explain a whole lot but they really don't need to. It is not a long movie and they mainly just focus on one plot point and the rest of the movie is fighting vampires. Ekin Cheng is a vampire hunter and when his partner dies he gets a new one. She is a little wild and does not like Ekin's sister. They have a fight on the rooftop with poles and while you can tell they don't know martial arts, this scene is a lot better than it should be with Donnie Yen's choreography. Ekin Chen though just surprises me more and more everytime I see him. He has a great one on one grappling type of fight and just looks outstanding in the opening scene. His acting is of course excellent as well. So Ekin's sister actually falls in love with a vamire who is being hunted by the like super vampire. I don't know what video game they took the story from but it makes for a great final fight. And I mean AWESOME!!!! The vampire grappling was great. NONE of the fights are going to blow your mind but there is just something about those twins getting down and dirty. Also look out for a great cameo from Jackie Chan and Karen Mok.

Vampire Effect

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Vampire Effect	Product Guide