Fist of the Vampire is set in Pennsylvania & starts during 1977 late one night as a man named Reno (Len Kabasinski) witnesses two Vampires named Jade (Darian Caine) & Nicholas (Brian 'Blue Meanie' Heffron) killing a woman, shocked Reno heads straight home & calls the police but both Jade & Nicholas break into his house, attack Reno & kill his wife as the house burns to the ground around them. Decades later & the case remains unsolved as Jade, Nicholas & Reno who is now a Vampire run an illegal fighting tournament & gambling ring, anyone can enter & try to earn big money & be crown champion including undercover cops Stephen Lee (Brian Anthony Fabian) & Davidson (Cheyenne King) who take part in the tournament in order to get closer to the organisers. But the two cops soon realise that they are not dealing with ordinary criminals & are in fact up against undead Vampires...
Written, produced & directed by Len Kabasinski who also has an acting role in it Fist of the Vampire is maybe the worst film I seen since Kabasinski's previous martial arts horror abomination Swamp Zombies (2005). I suppose th title Fist of the Vampire is quite cool & conjures up images of an Asian martial arts horror filming involving Vampires (which it isn't, by the way) but everything else about it is utter crap. Where do you even start to try & critically evaluate such a poor piece of filmmaking? How can I possibly hope to get across just how unrelentingly bad Fist of the Vampire actually is? The script which one might say tries to mix Fight Club (1999) & Blade (1998) is an absolute mess with no identifiable structure to it all, the plot (if you can call it that) is wafer thin & amounts to nothing more than a jumbled collection of poor set-pieces that vary between martial arts fighting & horror although the film sorely lacks on both counts. I can't believe how bad the script & plot is, I can't believe how empty & devoid of character, incident & forward momentum it is. Nothing is explained or given any sort of background, from the character's who are paper thin to the shallowness of it all. I mean the Vampires are given no background (why was Nichols dressed as a Sheriff & talking to a news crew at the start & what happened to his career in law enforcement?) as to how they became Vampires, what can or can't kill them or even why they are operating a Mortal Kombat style fighting tournament. Was it for financial gain? Did they like the power? Did they just get a kick out of watching the fights? Was it to select strong, athletic, fit & healthy victims from whom to drink blood? What were they trying to get out of it exactly? What was with the pointless subplot about rival drug dealers? Neither of the two undercover cops are given any background either, neither are fleshed out & it's not even explained as to how they became unbeatable martial arts fighters. At an hour & a half Fist of the Vampire feels like it goes on forever, seriously I was considering turning the thing off & how made it through to the end I'll never know. I don't think even the filmmakers keep track of the character's, who they are & their relevance. A complete waste of time & surely one of the very worst films ever commercially released & an abysmal way to spend an hour & a half.
As well as being a conceptual mess with no structure or flow or legible plot to speak of Fist of the Vampire feels & looks like it was made by a bunch of friends just fooling around a with a camcorder, that may sound harsh but Fist of the Vampire is an incompetent eyesore of a film. There are a few gun fights (why was Lee chasing & shooting at that woman at the start again? Oh yeah, it's never explained why) & all the bullets, nozzle flashes, sparks & damage are CGI computer effects & they look embarrassingly bad. There are also some awful CGI fire effects including a car blowing up which would look bad in a computer game. There's even some terrible looking CGI blood splatter, when a film can't even afford to or be bothered to use real fake blood for even a simple bullet wound then you know your in trouble. There's not much gore & the fight scenes are laughably bad with awful choreography, the fighters & their moves are horribly stiff, awkward, poorly edited, directed & lit in some really boring fights. The sound is also awful, the sound effects are just strange & often don't match the on screen action & the terrible heavy metal style music is inappropriate & is just another annoying reason to dislike Fist of the Vampire.
The production values are rock bottom, the opening sequence is supposed to feature rain but it's clearly not raining & the fake CGI rain looks awful, lighting conditions change between shots in the same scene, the sound is often terrible with ambient noise like passing cars drowning out the actor's & dialogue while the locations are ugly & look like basements most of the time. For some bizarre director Kabasinski insists on placing awful looking CGI smoke & sparks in lots of scenes for no apparent reason. The acting is atrocious too. WWF wrestler Brian Heffron makes an appearance with a silly looking beard.
Fist of the Vampire is a truly terrible film, there is not one redeeming aspect to it, from the dire script with no plot to the horrendous production values which offend both the eyes & ears. Trust the pathetically low IMDb User Rating score & avoid at all costs!
Written, produced & directed by Len Kabasinski who also has an acting role in it Fist of the Vampire is maybe the worst film I seen since Kabasinski's previous martial arts horror abomination Swamp Zombies (2005). I suppose th title Fist of the Vampire is quite cool & conjures up images of an Asian martial arts horror filming involving Vampires (which it isn't, by the way) but everything else about it is utter crap. Where do you even start to try & critically evaluate such a poor piece of filmmaking? How can I possibly hope to get across just how unrelentingly bad Fist of the Vampire actually is? The script which one might say tries to mix Fight Club (1999) & Blade (1998) is an absolute mess with no identifiable structure to it all, the plot (if you can call it that) is wafer thin & amounts to nothing more than a jumbled collection of poor set-pieces that vary between martial arts fighting & horror although the film sorely lacks on both counts. I can't believe how bad the script & plot is, I can't believe how empty & devoid of character, incident & forward momentum it is. Nothing is explained or given any sort of background, from the character's who are paper thin to the shallowness of it all. I mean the Vampires are given no background (why was Nichols dressed as a Sheriff & talking to a news crew at the start & what happened to his career in law enforcement?) as to how they became Vampires, what can or can't kill them or even why they are operating a Mortal Kombat style fighting tournament. Was it for financial gain? Did they like the power? Did they just get a kick out of watching the fights? Was it to select strong, athletic, fit & healthy victims from whom to drink blood? What were they trying to get out of it exactly? What was with the pointless subplot about rival drug dealers? Neither of the two undercover cops are given any background either, neither are fleshed out & it's not even explained as to how they became unbeatable martial arts fighters. At an hour & a half Fist of the Vampire feels like it goes on forever, seriously I was considering turning the thing off & how made it through to the end I'll never know. I don't think even the filmmakers keep track of the character's, who they are & their relevance. A complete waste of time & surely one of the very worst films ever commercially released & an abysmal way to spend an hour & a half.
As well as being a conceptual mess with no structure or flow or legible plot to speak of Fist of the Vampire feels & looks like it was made by a bunch of friends just fooling around a with a camcorder, that may sound harsh but Fist of the Vampire is an incompetent eyesore of a film. There are a few gun fights (why was Lee chasing & shooting at that woman at the start again? Oh yeah, it's never explained why) & all the bullets, nozzle flashes, sparks & damage are CGI computer effects & they look embarrassingly bad. There are also some awful CGI fire effects including a car blowing up which would look bad in a computer game. There's even some terrible looking CGI blood splatter, when a film can't even afford to or be bothered to use real fake blood for even a simple bullet wound then you know your in trouble. There's not much gore & the fight scenes are laughably bad with awful choreography, the fighters & their moves are horribly stiff, awkward, poorly edited, directed & lit in some really boring fights. The sound is also awful, the sound effects are just strange & often don't match the on screen action & the terrible heavy metal style music is inappropriate & is just another annoying reason to dislike Fist of the Vampire.
The production values are rock bottom, the opening sequence is supposed to feature rain but it's clearly not raining & the fake CGI rain looks awful, lighting conditions change between shots in the same scene, the sound is often terrible with ambient noise like passing cars drowning out the actor's & dialogue while the locations are ugly & look like basements most of the time. For some bizarre director Kabasinski insists on placing awful looking CGI smoke & sparks in lots of scenes for no apparent reason. The acting is atrocious too. WWF wrestler Brian Heffron makes an appearance with a silly looking beard.
Fist of the Vampire is a truly terrible film, there is not one redeeming aspect to it, from the dire script with no plot to the horrendous production values which offend both the eyes & ears. Trust the pathetically low IMDb User Rating score & avoid at all costs!