Forget everything you know about vampires!

Did you think that vampires could only go out at night?  Wrong.  They can run around in broad daylight.

Did you think that you needed a cross or a stake to kill a vampire?  Wrong.  You can break their necks or use a shotgun.

Did you think that we get new vampires by vampires biting their victims late at night?  Wrong.  Vampires can only breed during a solar eclipse.

Did you think that there’s thousands of vampires hiding out across the world?  Wrong.  There’s only seven left.

That’s the idea behind Night Hunter, which stars Don “The Dragon” Wilson as Jack Cutter.  Cutter’s grandparents were vampire hunters.  His parents were vampire hunters.  Cutter was destined to be a vampire hunter.  And now that he’s the only member of his family left alive, he is determined to wipe out the last few remaining vampires.  Jack has two problems.  The first is that the police don’t believe in vampires so they just think that Jack is going around Los Angeles and killing random people.  The second is that a solar eclipse is rapidly approaching and, if the vampires breed, all of Jack’s work will be for nothing.  Accompanied by a plucky tabloid reporter named Raimy (Melanie Smith), Jack searches for the king of the vampires.  Not coincidentally, Raimy looks just like the woman that the king once loved over a hundred years ago.

For a direct-to-video vampire film, Night Hunter’s not bad.  Wilson may not have been a great actor but he was one of the best kick boxers in the world and this brings a verisimilitude to Night Hunter‘s action scenes that most direct-to-video action films couldn’t hope to duplicate.  Rick Jacobson directed the majority of Wilson’s films and, in Night Hunter, he keeps things moving along at a steady pace.  Night Hunter doesn’t waste any time getting to the vampire action and it never pretends to be anything more than what it is.  Best of all, the film’s got Maria Ford as a French vampire named Tourneur who says things like, “I will not await vengeance, the hunter will die!”

When I first watched Night Hunter, I thought that it was a rip-off of Blade but Blade actually came out two years after Night Hunter.  Unless Don “The Dragon” Wilson (who co-produced) was a fan of Tomb of Dracula, the similarities between the two films are probably coincidental.  While Night Hunter may not be Blade, it’s still pretty damn cool.