Everything You Know About Vampires Is Wrong: Night Hunter (1996, directed by Rick Jacobson)

Posted on October 3, 2019 by Jedadiah Leland

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.

A Movie A Day #321: The Baby Doll Murders (1993, directed by Paul Leder)

Posted on November 26, 2017 by Jedadiah Leland

Naked women are turning up murdered in Los Angeles. The only clue that the crimes are connected: the baby doll that is left beside each body. Can detectives Louis (Jeff Kober) and Larry (Bobby Di Cicco) solve the case while also dealing with issues in their own private life? Louis’s girlfriend (Melanie Smith) is worried that Louis is becoming obsessed with is work and that he is not willing to commit to their relationship. Larry is upset because he suspects his wife is keeping a secret from him. Their chief (John Saxon) wishes they would just solve the case, especially when the killer targets his own daughter. The problem is that Louis is so driven and prone to violence that he has managed to get himself suspended from the force. Why does that always happen to good cops?

The Baby Doll Murders is a straight-to-video thriller that used to be popular on cable, back in the Skinemax days. Probably the most memorable thing about the film is the absurd lengths it goes to find an excuse for every woman in the film to have at least one topless scene before being attacked by the baby doll murderer. Otherwise, it is a predictable movie with a better than average cast. A talented character actor, Jeff Kober gets a rare lead role here and Bobby Di Cicco has some good moments as his neurotic partner. Any film that features John Saxon as an authority figure can not be considered a total loss. Saxon does not get much screen time but he does get all of the best lines. When Kober theorizes that the murderer might have a political agenda, Saxon snaps back, “Now, wait a minute, Louis,” a lot of people have the same beliefs as the baby doll murderer and, “not all of them are killers!” Saxon delivers his lines like a champ.

Film Review: Trancers III (1993, dir. C. Courtney Joyner)

Posted on December 3, 2015 by Valerie Troutman

This was a little sad to watch. At least it didn’t make me feel even more depressed than I did after the scene in the transploitation “documentary” Let Me Die A Woman (1977) where a trans woman cuts off her own penis. Thanks, Ms. 45 (1981)! It probably didn’t help that I also watched Crackdown Mission (1988) where Godfrey Ho spliced a Pierre Kirby buddy cop movie into a Taiwanese remake of Ms. 45 either.

The last time we left Jack Deth (Tim Thomerson), he and Lena (Helen Hunt) had dealt with Trancers in early 1990’s Los Angeles. This movie picks up in 1992. And yes, Helen Hunt is in this. If memory serves, she did this as a favor to the filmmakers considering she was on Mad About You at this point. It opens with the usual voiceover from Jack and then we see a really sad commercial for the Jack Deth detective agency.

Yep, just like the first film, this one also has a part of it that takes place during the Christmas season. Then we see what happens when a guy who seems to barely speak English tries to rob a convenience store run by another guy who also seems to barely speak English.

It causes this guy to show up in a time machine. He’s there for Jack. Cut to Jack talking on the phone to Lena. Turns out they’re getting a divorce! Can’t really blame her. It’s either a guy who has futuristic zombies coming after him like this.

Or a guy who wants to hang a giant poster of Attack of the 50 Foot Woman in their apartment.

As Helen puts it.

I think she made the right choice.

After finding Jack, him and the reject from the third season of Star Trek: Enterprise travel into the future of 2352. There he finds that they were also able to get back Telma Hopkins as Cmdr. Rains…

and Megan Ward as Alice Stillwell.

This was three years before she would get her own show on NBC as well called Dark Skies. Unfortunately, that show didn’t succeed like the two other shows I remember them packaging with it: The Pretender and Profiler.

The gist here is that something happened in the past that led to a huge Trancer army overrunning the humans. You know what that means? Jack has to go back to the future to stop it. That means he has to go back to 2005. And by 2005, I mean we cut to a strip club.

Hey, I know that name! Thanks, Mötley Crüe!

I’ve got the screenshots, but there’s no menage a trois here, nor breaking any of Frenchies laws. However, this guy seems to like what he sees.

This scene introduces us to R.J. played by Melanie Smith.

She’s joined a special corps of people who are being enhanced to be able to Trance at will through the use of drugs. The guy I posted before decides to beat some people up before being shot to death. This scene only exists to introduce us to her and the whole drug thing. Well, that and since it has…

Travis McKenna as the bartender, it gives me an excuse to post one of my favorite scenes from Road House (1989).

I guess you could say that other guy was “too stupid to have a good time.” Now we are introduced to the villain of this movie and…

I guess this movie was an audition for Star Trek: Deep Space Nine. Melanie Smith would have a recurring role on the show, and that’s Andrew Robinson who would play Garak, the Cardassian tailor who was also a semi-retired dangerous spy and assassin. He really is the only good thing about this movie. Even through this stupid half assed sequel, he manages to show us exactly why he got hired to play that role. Funny that the previous Trancers movie had Jeffrey Combs in it who would also go on to play one of the most memorable characters from that show: Weyoun.

Anyways, after Jack goes back in time and shows us what being asked to make Trancers III was like…

by falling into a pile of trash, we get some pointless scenes till Jack shows up at Lena’s 2005 apartment.

And by 2005, I mean as seen from 1993. Making that girl wear that hat is cruel and unusual punishment. Turns out R.J. went to Lena because Lena has been writing about this Trancer core. It’s actually just an excuse to get her with Jack and let Tim and Helen say their goodbyes.

From this point till the final scenes of the movie can be summed as stalling for time by having pointless scenes with the villain, pointless fighting between his soldiers, and pointless conversations between Jack and R.J. The only thing worth mentioning here is that it’s not a good idea to pit a piete girl and against decent sized guy in a fight when they certainly don’t come across as martial artists. I say that because one of the scenes is like watching an ant try to beat up a beetle.

Well, eventually Jack and R.J. are captured. R.J. breaks Jack out, but starts to Trance because of the drugs, so she asks Jack to kill her, which he does. Then what must have been a joke happens. The fish head guy from earlier shows up out of nowhere to help Jack, but the second they turn to go through the door to fight the bad guys, this happens.

The guy freezes up leaving Jack to deal with them. And deal with them he does by gun, fist, and sword. I bet that was supposed to be a hint or inspiration for the next Trancers movie. Afterwards, it turns out fish head’s circuit board had malfunctioned, but came back to life as soon as the battle was done. Jack returns to the future future and goes before the council.

They give Jack a fancy new title, which Jack correctly knows is just an excuse so they can send him anywhere in time they please along with his new buddy. And that’s it! There’s no reason to see this. I remember stumbling across this at a video store when I was young. No wonder I basically forgot about it’s existence. Since it worked so well at the end of the Trancers II review. Here’s another shot of Thomerson giving a help me I’m stuck making Trancers movies face.