VAMPIRES: THE TURNING

Young Connor is on vacation in Thailand with his girlfriend Amanda. One night, after an argument between the two, Amanda decides to walk alone through the city streets, but she is kidnapped and bitten by the ferocious vampire Niran. Connor will immediately set out to search for his girlfriend, but during his attempts to save her, he will discover that two armies of vampires live in Thailand and have been facing each other for 800 years: one led by the evil Niran, a vampire thirsty for human blood and intent on spreading the disease; at the head of the other army are Kiko and the beautiful Song Neng who, unlike Niran, have decided to contain the vampire disease by feeding only on animal blood. Now Connor will have to decide whether to ally with Kiko's army and confront Niran to save his girlfriend or surrender to the forces of evil. Any true horror fan will have had the opportunity to know and watch "Vampires," a small gem about vampires made in 1998 by the master of chills John Carpenter, which turned out to be an absolutely memorable film for its genre thanks to the realization of a perfect blend between the horror genre and the western genre. In addition to this notable association of genres, Carpenter's film was also remembered for beautiful sets enhanced by dirty and dusty settings, for a high gore rate often bordering on splatter, and for a brilliant performance executed by a James Woods perfectly cast as the protagonist Jack Crow. The film had a sequel, "The Catcher of the Dark – Vampires: Los Muertos," which, however, did not have the same success as the first film and was destined for the home video market only. But despite everything, it was an enjoyable film and that, although not at all at the level of the first film, took up the same schemes as Carpenter's film. In 2005, a third chapter arrived, distributed again only for the home video market, "Vampires: The Turning" (in our country it clearly becomes "Vampires 3") directed by a not very experienced Marty Weiss and which turns out to be, in addition to the worst of the trilogy, a film with rather poor and unsatisfactory results. The film, despite bearing the title "Vampires," this time has really nothing to do with the events conceived and developed in '98 by Carpenter. This time the scene shifts to an abandoned Thai city, thus abandoning those dusty deserts that served as a backdrop for the first two films and that had become a characteristic of the saga. But in addition to abandoning the plot conceived by the father of "Halloween" (the only reference to the film is a scene in which some vampire hunters are shown at work and their style is the same adopted by the vampire killers of the first film), with this "Vampires 3" we also move away quite a bit from the horror genre because it is decided to give fundamental importance to the action component. So the film will move forward, therefore, with numerous and repetitive fights with kicks and punches; vampires no longer like to suck people's blood but they enjoy kicking and punching them, putting on "spectacular" martial arts moves. In short, given the course of the film, the viewer would not have been surprised if in the role of the protagonist they would have found a Van Damme or a Steven Seagal or maybe, given the setting, a nice Jackie Chan. Disappointing is also the gore department because this time there is really little blood and the actors who do not manage to get close to the legendary James Woods of the first film nor, much less, to the sufficient performance of the singer Jon Bon Jovi in the second chapter. The only positive aspect of the film is found in the very careful photography and witness that it is not at all an extremely low-budget production and in the brief duration of the film that does not give much space to boredom to take over. A film to avoid... but if you really want to spend an evening of modern vampires, it's better to watch the first "Vampires" directed by Carpenter again.