God of Vampires

Conquest Pictures

God of Vampires is a Chinese vampire film with a twist. It combines a tale of the Asian mob, a contract killer and an ancient form of Chinese vampire into a single film with quite some punch. It is beautiful filmed, filled with dark hues and intense violence. The score is moody, forceful and evocative.

What I especially like is the unusual cross genre combination. It is an Asian crime film, a martial arts action film and a vampire film with a Chinese cultural focus all rolled into one ! These are not hammer-horror vampires but visceral and vicious creatures who are only stopped with Chinese death certificates and then by being dismembered. There is little of the romantic vampire mythology here.

The film opens as a fairly traditional Asian mob film. Professional killer, Frank Ng is good at his job, he works hard to complete his work “cleanly” and even be a role model for his younger brother. He is known to be the best assassin within the industry and is well paid for his quick and efficient style. We see him at work as he despatches a range of “victims” with style and some creativity, even taking mobile phone calls during his kill.

The “fix” tells him of a high value job on offer by an eccentric Chinese power broker. The power broker does have some very strange requirements - the body be burnt and the head must be returned to him as evidence of the kill. However the price of $1.2 million is too good to be refused.

Frank eliminates the target’s minions, slaughtering them without much forethought. We see him working his way through a wide variety of underworld figures with quite some pizzazz.

He confronts his target and shoots him repeatedly. For some reason he ignores his employers request to cut off the head and burn the body. He too late realizes the reason for the strange demands and comes to appreciate this was not his normal style hit; the creature rises from where he had laid supposedly dead and attacks.

Frank only just survives. But this is just the beginning – the hunter has become the hunted. It seems that this creature is a Kiang-Shi, a Chinese vampire and he makes a vow that he will inflict such pain on Frank he will wish for death.

Slowly all of Frank’s friends and acquaintances, as well as his brother, are brutally killed. Frank makes an unusual alliance with the owner of a local restaurant who among other talents works as an illegal surgeon for the mob. Together they piece together the legends of the Chinese vampire and try to defeat the Kiang-Shi but the battle is just beginning.

God of Vampires is a surprising low budget film; it combines as Asian mob crime tale with solid martial arts action and a vampire film. The acting is professional, the cinematography moody and suspenseful and the violence relentless mixing horror with Hong Kong cinema style action from the very first scene. There is even a good streak of black humour throughout the film.

When you read the back story of God of Vampires you realize how much sweat and tears went into this Indie production. Rob Fitz literally spent every cent he had (and more) on this film and used every moment of spare time to make it. It took six years of obsession to create God of Vampires and we are very lucky he made such an effort. This is a truly striking indie horror film.

This review will appear in Volume 2 No.3 (2009) of the digital and print edition of Synergy Magazine.

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