Four vampire hunters hunt down a leaving dead being... With this simple plot, Tsui Hark proposes his own version of the Chinese vampire film genre. This genre was abandoned a few years ago in Hong Kong. Would Tsui Hark manage to pay once more a tribute to the popular Chinese culture by exploring another local film genre?

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In the eighties, Tsui Hark originally created the Film Workshop Production Company to let new talents the opportunity to express themselves within the HK film industry. Soon, productions changed their status. Tsui Hark produced films to serve his own vision of the local Cantonese cinema. These productions were less expensive and less ambitious, artistically wise. Their aim was mainly to make money in order to finance Tsui Hark's personal projects. The Film Workshop boss has established, indeed, a real commercial and artistic strategy to produce this type of movies.

But Tsui Hark got himself really involved in the pre-production and post-production processes of the various projects he was producing. He then limited much the room for manoeuvre of the directors he hired. They became more like his arms than filmmakers. Era Of Vampires is a perfect and current example of this peculiar conception of film production. It's indeed very hard to distinguish director Welson Chin's personality in this movie. He has only directed second rated movies so far. The movie is above all the result of a work team at the producer vision's service.

The nature of the project is actually typical for a Tsui Hark's production. He revives an old-fashioned genre, the Chinese vampire movie (Gyonshi), a sub genre of the Kung Fu comedy, which is a genre mixing martial arts with goofy comedy. In the eighties, Sammo Hung launched the vampire film genre with the very famous Mr Vampire (1985). This type of films dealt with "jumping" vampires. The horror content of the movie was soon subverted with much humour and the vampire (who was actually a leaving dead) was a pretext for comedy and groundbreaking Kung Fu fights.

Here, it's out of order to copy and paste what has been done before. The Film Workshop strategy is to find a new standpoint in order to revive a genre worn by extensive exploitation. In general, Tsui Hark likes to go over traditions. Although Chinese vampires have become comedy characters, Tsui Hark tends to develop their horrific dimension. Moreover, the HK cinema is fundamentally a cinema of crossbreeding, of hybridisation. Tsui Hark doesn't hesitate to mix Chinese traditions with Japanese and occidental horror traditions to create a new atmosphere. These elements are in Era Of Vampires the HK 80's vampire make-up, worrying sound effects close to Japanese cinema effects and outrageous gory effects inspired from the 60's and 70's English and Italian films. This hybridisation strategy allows to create something new, compared to the traditional vampire films, in order to reactivate the local audience interest for such films.

Technically wise, the film respects the tradition of the home-made HK films. It's one of the most fundamental characteristics of the former British colony cinema. This is a home-made cinema where filmmakers use DIY, inventiveness and all the technician skills to make up for very low budgets. As a matter of fact, the Era of Vampires's budget was no more than one million dollars! It's not much to produce a period movie with special effects. Tsui Hark's talent is to have hired the best of the best technicians. Herman Yau is hired as the director of photography, Marco Mak is in charge of the editing and Koan Hui works in the special effects and sound effects departments. Recycling some of the elements used in previous Film Workshop productions (e.g. Legend Of Zu's green gel filters and light tones or Time and Tide's sound effects), the crew manages to make the audience forget the low budget. The aesthetic of the movie is very neat and confers the film a high-production value look.

Colour filters, the overall dark tone of the photography and tight framing allowed to create a twilight atmosphere, and to skilfully hide the poverty of the location. Many sound effects are used to develop an ambience in a cheaply built set. But it's probably the sophistication of the framing and the editing processes that make Era Of Vampires a high standard production in comparison to much higher budgeted movies. The Film Workshop people are without a doubt crafty, and deliver numerous and clever effects that give the project an original personality. There is for instance the four lead-fighter presentation in the sequence before the start credit. The camera movements based on a frame/ out-of-frame pattern show the face of the four heroes in a unique shot.

There are some ideas a la Time and Tide as well. An explosion is reflected in the eye of a horse. The subjective camera angle expresses a snake point of view! Fights sequences are very dynamically edited like in the Swordsman. However, one may regret the lack of inventiveness for the fight choreography. It's certainly due as well to a low budget preventing the director and the producer to developing expensive ideas.

Era of Vampires is a stylish effort. This is its force and its weakness as well. The plot, the characters and the drama are once more of second importance in this Tsui Hark's production. Tsui Hark tends to develop too many characters like in The Raid. There are four heroes, a master, a vampire, two young women, a young villain and the haunted-house master. That is to say ten leads and second roles haven't been taken into account yet… In this conditions, the characters psychology are very slightly explored and it's very difficult to care for what happens to whom. As for the film overall pace, it suffers from the same problems encountered in many Film Workshop productions. Sequences and situations are thrown one after another, a sequence pushing another. Feelings have no time to bloom. Fight sequences are very short and only work as visual climax. There is no sign of a dramatic tension. It's then very hard to feel concerned by this speedy scrolling of pictures. The end result lacks of emotion, poetry and of this tenderness that made the force of the Film Workshop movies.

Tsui Hark has become a director/ producer only interested by the visual dimension of the cinema. Although he managed to avoid the cynicism and the irony that sapped Black Mask 2's strengths, he didn't manage to recreate the magic from the Film Workshop productions. Compared to the mediocrity of the current HK movies, Era Of Vampires is however a very decent film to watch.

We were expecting more than that from the Film Workshop, a film production company that was once used to make us dream.

Written by Laurent Henry, Feb 2003.
Freely translated by Thomas Podvin, Mar 2003.

 

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CREDITS
Hong Kong 2002, 107 minutes
Crew
Director: Wellson Chin. Producer: Tsui Hark. Executive Producer: Satoru Iseki, Nansun Shi, Wouter Barendrecht, Michael J. Werner. Production Company: Film Workshop Co. Ltd., Hark & Company, Fortissimo Film Sales. Screenplay: Tsui Hark. Cinematography: Joe Chan, Sunny Tsang, Herman Yau. Production Designer: Chow Vincent. Music: J.M. Logan. Editor: Marco Mak. Costumes: Choi King Ping. Action Choreographer: Tam Chun To.
Cast
Anya (Sasa), Chan Koon Tai (Zombie Wrangler), Chan Kwok Kwan (Choi), Horace Lee (Dragon Tang), Ji Chun Hua (Master Mao Shan), Ken Chang (Hei), Lam Suet (Kung), Lee Kin Yan (Geomancer), Lee Lik Chee (Butler), Michael Chow (Fat), Sze Mei Yee (Clothing Salesman), Wang Zhen Lin (Young Master Jiang), Wong Yat Fei (Undertaker), Yu Rong Guang (Master Jiang), Zou Na (Ling)

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