Vampire Effect (2003) Apparently this movie had nineteen minutes deleted from it and some scenes
shuffled around for its American release. I suppose that had I seen the movie
in its original form, it might not have smelled about as bad as the
sweat-stained coffin lining of the five hundred-year-old undead prince seeking
to romance one half of the sensational Cantonese singing duo, Twins. Perhaps
the additional scenes could have fleshed out a few of the characters who were
overshadowed by the movie's obsession with promoting the producer's sensational
Cantonese singing duo, Twins. And maybe with the scenes put back in the
correct order, Jackie Chan's seemingly gratuitous cameo, wouldn't have felt
like a cheap publicity stunt designed solely so that his name and face could be
shoehorned onto the DVD cover. But I rather doubt it. I'm going to hazard a
wild guess that all any of that would have done was make the movie nineteen
minutes worse.
This was one of those movies that started out in fairly mediocre fashion and
only got increasingly putrid as it went along. When I was watching the first
fight between a vampire hunter (Reeve of the Anti-Vampire Federation) and some
vampires, I thought that it was mildly entertaining in a "at least I'm not
having to listen to legendary Cantonese singing duo Twins perform one of their
signature Cantonese pop songs" kind of way. Sure, a lot of the fighting was
that ugly mix of Matrix-style slow motion and Hong Kong-style wire effects that succeeds more in
looking incredibly fake than in anything else, but the important thing was that
a lot of stuff was getting busted up. I never realized how much glass there
could be in an underground train station until I saw all the really poorly
computer generated glass go flying in all directions. I know that there's been some carping in fanboy circles about how terrible it
is that all this CGI stuff is finding its way into Hong Kong cinema, replacing
real life stunts as if watching Jackie Chan try to avoid getting killed jumping
off a bridge onto a ferry confers some sort of certificate of quality on some
otherwise generic HK actioner. I would argue though that it's not that it's a
terrible thing they're using CGI in their movies, so much as it is that they're
using terrible CGI in their movies.  Some of this stuff just doesn't work all that well. You've got scenes of
vampires getting killed and all this computer animated blood spews out looking
like computer animated blood. The aforementioned CG glass looks really bad in a
fight scene in a church where a stained glass window gets shattered. And the
ancient book that the bad guy vampire is trying to open? Not only are they
relying on that hoary old "ancient book that allows the guy who opens it some
unbelievable power" cliche, but it gets its own computer generated effects as
well!
Would that this review could end now with a verdict of "great movie hindered a
bit by poor effects work" instead of "over reliance on ugly computer trickery
only serves to enhance everything else that's wrong with this movie including
characters that we barely know, a couple of ill-advised comedy bits from Jackie
Chan, and a plot that was never allowed to get in the way of what was really
important in this movie (um, way too long fight scenes?)." Those of you hoping
that this would be the kind of band infomercial for Twins like KISS Meets The Phantom of the Park was for KISS or Wild Zero was for Guitar Wolf and whatever his band was called are going to be sorely
disappointed. At the very least, a movie such as this should provide the
viewer with silly moments designed to get over the band's characters super
powers (and for some reason these movies starring bands always imbue them with
powers far beyond those of mortal bands), but Twins doesn't even do a number
for us! Shoot, I didn't even know that this movie was a plot by Twins management to
promote them until after I had finished watching the movie and was doing a
little background check on the principals. I mean, I knew the movie was also
known as Twins Effect, but I just spent the movie waiting for some twins to show up and eventually
just chalked the title up to some dodgy (or optimistic) translation issues.
Those of us who aren't necessarily Twins fans are probably wondering why we
shouldn't just skip this movie altogether (aside from the fact that it's a
really bad movie). Emperor Entertainment Group was thinking about you, too!
In addition to Cantonese superstar singing duo Twins, you can also admire the
acting of EEG's own Hong Kong pop idol Edison Chen! Edd-ie! Edd-ie!  Edison Chen is purportedly a singer that everyone loves over in that part of
the world, but remember, this is also that part of the world that Dokken was
really big in. He doesn't sing in this movie either and my local Wal-Mart is
all sold out of Edison Chen CDs so I'm not qualified to run him down for his
generic syrupy ballads and faux-bad boy uptempo rockers that he surely sings,
but in real life he got his lights punched out by a couple of teenagers some
time ago. Reportedly, one of them taunted him with "hip hop moves" before
delivering the near-lethal blow. Now, that is one sweet trademark! Distract
them by doing the Humpty Dance and WHAM! One teen idol on ice! Normally at
this point we would point out how wimpy Edison was for being dominated by
breakdancing hoods, but after getting tagged Eddie gave chase, caught the two
punks and turned them over to police. And then he refused to press charges
because he didn't want to ruin the kids' life! Teen idol indeed!
Okay, so EEG put a bunch of their pop stars in a movie featuring vampires, but
without any of them singing so much as a theme song. Now, what exactly is this
movie about then? One of the Twins is a realtor who sells a church to Edison
and his vampire groupies. For some vaguely explained reason, Edison and
company are going to be living in the church, though if you're a bunch of
vampires trying to blend in, I'm not sure why you'd be living in a house of
God, but maybe some if it will rub off on them and if they aren't exactly
Strong Christians, they can maybe be Weaker Vampires. Edison and his crew though aren't the real bad guys. That role would fall to
some Eurotrash bloodsucker who is intent on killing off all the members of the
vampire royal family (huh?) so that he can collect their something or other
(probably not souls) and use their essence or whatever to open up this ancient book that
will give him the power to walk around during the daytime, thus making him
master of the world somehow. Eurotrash eventually comes after Edison to finish
up his plans. Helen (the Twins realtor) is the sister of Reeve, the vampire hunter. I don't
know whether the guy that played Reeve had anything to do with EEG, but I'll
bet during auditions he couldn't say enough nice things about all the Twins
concerts he went to or that he thought that Edison Chen had a young, James Dean
quality about him, but with, you know, a really good singing voice. Reeve's
partner is killed at the beginning of the movie in the train station and his
new partner is Gypsy. Gypsy turns out to be one half of iconic Cantonese
singing duo Twins. You may have heard of them.  Gypsy and Helen don't hit it off very well at first as they engage in a furious
rooftop battle over a discarded stuffed animal. Um, wasn't there a bunch of
vampires running around trying to take over the world with a book of the undead
or something? Couldn't the fight over Teddy Ruxpin have waited? In any event,
I was scouring the fight scene to see if I could see any undercurrents that
showed us some tension between these two. Something that could fuel the
inevitable break up rumors I wanted to start. I couldn't tell one way or the
other, but I became convinced that the Hong Kong music scene was a lot more
interesting than the U.S. scene since we never get to see Destiny's Child fight
one another with giant wooden quarter staffs. Sure, there was that deal with
Motley Crue's Vince Neil and G'n'R's Axl Rose, but that was more of an Edison
Chen kind of deal, but with people you didn't care a whit about.
Helen and Gypsy though become closer once Helen reveals to Gypsy that she has
fallen in love with Edison even though Gypsy's and Reeve's job is to hunt down
monster scum like Edison. She implores Gypsy to speak to Reeve on her behalf
and Gypsy agrees. I don't recall that much ever came of this because by this
time, the Eurotrash guy was after Edison and Reeve ended up fighting Eurotrash
instead of Edison. The whole movie is a bit like that. Things start up, go
nowhere, and new things start up. Why did we move into a church? Why did Helen and Edison crash a wedding on
their first date? What's the deal with all these vampires running around? Who
thought it would make any sense for Helen and Edison to not only run into
Jackie Chan at that wedding, but also to run into him at a hospital where he
was employed as an EMT? And to have him help fight off some vampires by
stuffing them full of antidepressants and then turn up the music so the
vampires would be in a better mood and just dance around instead of trying to
kill Helen, Edison, and Jackie? Even Anthony Wong who starred in such embarrassing projects as Ebola Syndrome and The Deadly Camp looks humiliated as Edison's right hand man. I think you know that we're
calling this one Vampire Defect, but I'm sure they'll get it right with the sequel, Twins Effect 2 since that one features the acting debut of Jackie Chan's son Jaycee. And I
only have two words about that: Sage Stallone. Or maybe Kane Kosugi.
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