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Released by: New Concorde
Released on: 6/25/2002
Director: Rick Jacobson
Cast: Don Wilson, Melanie Smith, Nicholas Guest, Sid Sham
Year: 1995
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The Movie:
Don 'The Dragon' Wilson is Jack Cutter, the last of a line of vampire hunters that has been around for hundreds of years. At the beginning of the film, Cutter mixes it up with a couple of vampires in a hip Los Angeles restaurant. When he kills them off, he ends up chased by both the local police and by the other vampires from the same clan as those who he recently disposed of.
While on the run from the law and the vampires, Cutter he meets a foxy female reporter who falls for him (as I'm sure you know by now, all the ladies love Don) and aids him on his quest. Lots of poorly done shootouts swiped from John Woo movies occur and everything ends all very predictably.
Now don't get me wrong - my inexplicable obsession with The Dragon is the stuff of legend, but even I have my limits. In an odd twist of circumstance, I watched this movie with more than a few pints settling in and kept thinking out loud 'Hey wow, I can't believe what a rip off of Blade this movie is. What a scam. It's even ripping off The Matrix, and man, could the steal from Hardboiled any more blatantly?' Well, apologies are due, I suppose. Night Hunter was actually made before Snipe's took up his sword against Steven Dorff and before Keanu Reeves put on black sunglass and made black fake leather trench coats hip for a few months. I was pretty much dead on when I noticed the Woo swipes though. The big difference is that while John Woo's action scenes are poetic and ironically very beautiful, the gun play scenes in Night Hunter basically consist of Wilson running around with twin .45's making a poopy face at the camera while everything shakes in what I can only assume is an attempt at some form of unique cinematography. It ends up being rather dizzying, but when you've got a few beers in you, seeing Wilson make poopy faces can be kind of fun so in that respect, Night Hunter works.
If you're a fan of really horrible action movies and like awkward looking, former kickboxing champions running around with greasy mullets shooting poorly made up and cliché ridden vampires, then Night Hunter is the film you've been waiting for.
Video/Audio/Extras:
Presented in fullframe, which is may or may not be how it was shot, the transfer is a little soft with a hint of compression artifacts but quite satisfactory for the most part. Colors are ok and flesh tones are reproduced quite faithfully. Black levels could be a little bit deeper, but they're not too bad. Oddly enough, there is a German release of this film that is supposed to be 2.35.1, but the fullframe transfer doesn't really seem to have too much information missing from it.
The bass is pretty flat but other than that, the audio track sounds as good as the movie really needs it to. Dialogue is easy to understand, sound effects come through with surprising clarity, and there is very little in the way of hiss or other audio defects. A surround track might have really helped the film, especially during the shootouts, but the track as it stands is decent.
Included on the disc are a trailer and some biographies on the key cast and crewmembers.
The Final Word:
Night Hunter is bad even by Don 'The Dragon' Wilson movie standards, but it looks and sounds ok.