This week, we will discuss the low-budget epic Shadow Tracker: Vampire Hunter (1999), an ambitious straight-to-video labor of love shot in upstate New York directed by Joe Bagnardi and written by Bagnardi and horror film expert Bruce G. Hallenbeck.
I found only a handful of reviews (if the hand in question has only two fingers) in your universe for this classic. Reviewer Leofwine_draca writes, "Certainly it's nothing that could be considered a good film." And reviewer Taliesin writes, "The film looks blooming awful, to be honest, and the acting isn’t really much better."
Read on for the truth about Shadow Tracker: Vampire Hunter...
Two men dressed in camouflage gear run through a stream surrounded by forest. A caption appears: Vietnam 1967. The men continue running barefoot through atheforest. The two have escaped from a prison camp, but unfortunately for the soldiers, when they separate, one is set upon by two Asian people dressed in white. His companion, a young man named Tracker, returns to find them eating his friend.
“Tracker, run! Get the hell out of here!” the attacked man yells.
“I can’t! I can’t!”
“Go! Go! Go!”
Tracker runs away and the Asian vampires finish off his friend.
The film moves forward to 1987, 20 years later, as we join Tracker running through a snowy field. The older Tracker finds a young man in the field and asks where someone else is. After the young man tells Tracker his quarry is at The Brimstone, Tracker pulls out a very small wooden stake and quips, “Thanks. Now I’ve got to put you out of my misery.” He stakes the young man.
The film flashes forward again, now to “Present Day” (presumably the late 1990s). A woman visiting a cemetery is attacked by a vampire, but she manages to stab him with a stake that is even smaller than Tracker’s. She speaks into a tape recorder, revealing that she is looking for “the one they call Shadow Tracker.”
The film’s brilliant title sequence begins, in which the cast and crew’s names are superimposed over images of a woman dancing on a stage wearing various outfits. The film’s theme song is nothing if not a lost classic, so I will transcribe the lyrics here.
“From the jungles of Nam he came,
Shadow Tracker was his name.
A man who vowed to rid the world…
Of evil.
He was forced to leave his friend to die,
Guilt carried his soul,
What a shame he wears,
This man is only just a man
But his search goes on from land to land.
He fights with vengeance
In his heart…
Shadow Tracker,
He’s around every corner,
Everywhere you go,
He’ll strike…with a deadly blow!”
The film proper begins as a couple named Rick and Lisa run down the steps of a museum. Lisa expresses the common sentiment that the mummies have made her aware of her own mortality. “Wouldn’t it be great to live forever?”
Rick replies by pretending to be Dracula and chasing her through a park. She bumps into a man who introduces himself as Jonathan Stokes (played by horror film expert and director Bruce G. Hallenbeck). Of course, she strikes up a conversation about immortality with Mr. Stokes, but he quickly excuses himself. Seconds later, he says to himself sinisterly, “We have your whole lifetime to discuss immortality.”
After a quick scene at a diner where the proprietress dumps a bucket of water on a wino (who is apparently from the 1930s, as he wears fingerless gloves), we are introduced to two charming police officers sitting in a car on a stakeout. The female detective quips, somewhat confusingly, “When I got out of uniform and into plain clothes, I didn’t think I’d still be eating donuts.”
Her male partner replies, also somewhat confusingly, “Yeah, I’d hate to see my cholesterol.”
They helpfully mention they are looking for a killer who has killed four people and extracted their blood through throat wounds.
Also, Mr. Stokes attacks a young boy whose ball bounces down an outdoor staircase. (In a chilling scene later, the boy lures an old woman into a tunnel to be attacked by Mr. Stokes.)
Meanwhile, the woman who visited the cemetery earlier, Samantha, follows a cat into a house and extracts blood from it (the cat does not object, of course). Samantha then injects the blood into her own leg as the film makes a poignant, and highly original, comparison between vampirism and drug addiction. Soon she encounters Shadow Tracker, whom she calls Tracker, when she discovers he broke into her apartment. She tells him both are searching for Mr. Stokes, who is Tracker’s friend from the opening sequence in Vietnam. Samantha explains the entire backstory of the film to Mr. Tracker. She also shows him a copy of the New York Post with the massive headline “VAMPIRE STATE,” but the reveal of the newspaper is unexplained, as is the meaning of VAMPIRE STATE (which is not, presumably, the name of a university).
In the parallel story about Rick and Lisa, Lisa visits Mr. Stokes’s house, where she is almost seduced by the older man as they talk about immortality, but he stops himself from biting her throat.
Later, Mr. Tracker has a dream in which he and Mr. Stokes are walking up to a building to volunteer to fight in the Vietnam War. They don’t find it unusual that they are both middle-aged; rather, Mr. Tracker is surprised when Mr. Stokes lunges at him with fangs.
Mr. Tracker soon discovers Samantha’s secret blood injections so he destroys her hypodermic needle (perhaps the only one in existence), forcing her to kill several homeless men on the shore of a lake. Upon seeing the dead bodies, Mr. Tracker says to her, “Samantha, what happened here?”
“Tracker, look what I’ve done! I’ve killed these innocent people! They were homeless. Now they’re all dead!”
Mr. Tracker responds, with no explanation, “Well, now they have a home.”
“Tracker, you don’t understand. I’m not a drug addict. I’m a half-breed. I’m one of them.”
“What? What do you mean?” Tracker asks, not understanding the complexity of the situation.
“That’s why I’m trying to find Jonathan Stokes. He’s made me what I am.”
They, perhaps confusingly, hug each other, forming an alliance to find Mr. Stokes.
Meanwhile, Mr. Stokes continues his seduction of Lisa by playing music on a jukebox in a bar which becomes a fantasy world of glitter and tinsel and a variety of costume changes where Lisa dances skillfully as an orchestra wearing masks plays. This is the film’s most artful, and possibly second-most confusing, sequence. It ends with Mr. Stokes biting Lisa on the neck.
Next, Mr. Tracker tracks vampires in a drive-in theater playing the unmissable double-feature of Power Rangers and French Kiss. Surprisingly, Mr. Tracker comes across Mr. Stokes at the empty drive-in. Even though this is the first time the two have reunited since Mr. Stokes’s death in Vietnam, Mr. Stokes immediately explains that he likes the Christopher Lee Dracula films projected at the drive-in and has affected an accent in imitation of Mr. Lee (one must note that Mr. Stokes sounds nothing like Mr. Lee).
“As a friend,” says Mr. Tracker, “I’ve come to relieve you of your pain.” He brandishes a small wooden stake.
“Don’t be foolish, Tracker. I offer you friendship for all eternity. Join me!”
“Join you? After all the death you left in your path? I’ll join you. I’ll join you in Hell!”
Mr. Tracker attacks his friend/foe but Mr. Stokes is physically more powerful. He pushes Mr. Tracker down and leaves Mr. Tracker alone in the empty drive-in.
In a scene which must be experienced to be fully appreciated, Lisa returns to Rick at a restaurant and dances seductively, by a certain standard, on his table.
In another standout sequence, Mr. Tracker and Samantha are waylaid while driving by the young boy bouncing his ball who was vampirized earlier. The boy leads Mr. Tracker and Samantha into the forest where they are surrounded by vampire children who sing Ring Around the Rosie. As they reveal their fangs, they begin to sing, “Children of the Night! We’ll give you such a fright! Now we’re in a deadly trance! Give us blood and we will dance!”
Our heroes fend off the vampire children using makeshift crucifixes (despite being outside in the bright daylight, vampires follow many of the traditional rules).
Eventually, Mr. Tracker finds the town doctor. The only person in the doctor’s office is in fact the doctor, who asks Mr. Tracker, “Do you have an appointment?”
“No, but it’s a matter of life or death.”
As any doctor would, the man replies, “That’s what they all say.” He adds, “Why don’t you have a seat over there in my office? I’ll be in in just a sec.” However, the doctor soon kicks Mr. Tracker out of his office when the only identification Mr. Tracker can produce, after asking to see some dead bodies, is a wooden stake. After Mr. Tracker leaves, the doctor is attacked by Mr. Stokes.
Later, Rick’s friend Jay is attacked by his girlfriend Susan, who is now a vampire.
As the story moves along briskly, the two detectives walk in on Mr. Tracker staking the doctor, who has clearly become a vampire. They arrest Mr. Tracker. “Aren’t you going to read me my rights?” asks Mr. Tracker.
The male detective says, “I got your rights right here.” (It is unclear what he is referencing, as he doesn’t point to anything.)
Meanwhile, Rick and Jay are trying to figure out the situation. Rick has already concluded Stokes must be a vampire. Indeed, Rick is (rather clumsily) making small wooden stakes in his garage. Of course, their first step in proving their hypothesis is to find the local wino Bramfield. “I think he’s in the park feeding pigeons,” Rick says, based on unknown (but correct) information.
When Rick and Jay confront Bramfield, they tempt him with liquor and soon find out that Stokes is, surprisingly, headquartered at the local cemetery.
Elsewhere, Mr. Tracker is surprised to find that the detectives have taken him not to a police station but to a boat dock. “We’re taking you in on suspicion of murder,” the male detective says.
“Murder? I didn’t murder those people back there. They were already dead.”
The female detective clarifies the situation wittily (if incoherently): “We don’t mean back there. We suspect that we’ll murder you!”
The detectives take Mr. Tracker on a motorboat ride.
Meanwhile, Samantha is confronted by Mr. Stokes, who tries to force her to drink his blood. She uses a crucifix to fend him off, and he transforms into mist to escape.
Elsewhere, the hapless Rick finds something disturbing at his apartment: a little blood on the bed. He realizes from this that Lisa has been turned into a vampire and that he needs help from the local vampire expert, a middle-aged man. “So you want to know about vampires?” he says. “Well, I’ve done a lot of research on them, and this is what I know. We’ve never had any definite proof of them turning into bats, wolves, or mist but that doesn’t mean that there won’t be a first time. They do have hypnotic powers. They do fear garlic and holy water. The true way to destroy them is by driving a wooden stake through their heart.” (Where would Rick be if this expert weren’t living in town? Helpless, that’s where.) The man adds helpfully, “It’s just a myth that they only come out at night. In fact, they come out in the daylight.” After Rick leaves, the filmmakers give us a twist worthy of E.C. Comics. The expert laughs, “Everyone knows there’s no such thing as vampires.” Then, in a burst of orange lighting, the expert reveals himself to be a vampire himself!
Still elsewhere, Mr. Stokes decides to kill the wino Bramfield by hitting him on the head with a rock. Dying, Bramfield sees the bloody rock being lifted above him and quips inappropriately, “I guess you CAN squeeze blood from a stone.”
Looking at the (offscreen) mess, Mr. Stokes makes his own quip: “So you did have brains after all.” He picked something up and eats it. “Mmm. Tastes good, too.”
Returning to Shadow Tracker’s story, the evil detectives force him off their motorboat and into a forest, where they reveal their vampire fangs and attempt to bit him, though he readily escapes and runs into the woods. He destroys the male detective with a handy tree branch and then the female detective with a homemade stake, after she reveals that Mr. Stokes is hiding in the cemetery.
Rick and Jay also come to the conclusion that Mr. Stokes is hiding in the cemetery, so they investigate, carrying their own homemade stakes. Rick is forced to stake the vampire expert. Also, Jay is forced to stake his vampirized girlfriend Susan.
Not to be outdone, Mr. Tracker, upon arrival at the cemetery, is forced to fend off a horde of zombie-like vampires.
In a brutal irony, Jay is mistakenly killed via wooden stake by Mr. Tracker, who based on no evidence believes Jay is a vampire. Mr. Tracker simply walks away while Jay and Susan, both dying, confess their love for each other.
In fact, in this thrilling action sequence, several people and vampires stake several other people and vampires in an almost willy-nilly fashion.
In the film’s climax, Samantha stakes many vampires before being staked herself. The dying Samantha reveals to Mr. Tracker that Stokes is in fact her father. “So that explains it, then,” Mr. Tracker says, unfortunately not letting the audience in on the explanation. Rick finally discovers Mr. Stokes, who is coincidentally in the middle of marrying Lisa.
Of course, Rick and Tracker interrupt the ceremony, leading to the climactic confrontation. Mr. Tracker and Mr. Stokes fight in an epic explosion of middle-aged wrestling, interrupted only when Lisa, for some reason, stakes Mr. Stokes, allowing Mr. Tracker to also stake Mr. Stokes.
Mr. Tracker kneels over the dying Mr. Stokes. “I’m sorry, Johnny.”
“I’m sorry too,” Mr. Stokes says matter-of-factly, his English accent evaporating tragically, “but I’m glad it was you. You’re the closest thing to a brother I’ve ever had.”
The film fades out (actually, it pixelates out) on the poetic image of the dead Mr. Stokes’s skeleton and his vampire cape.
(Then there is an effective stinger in which a random unnamed vampire returns.)
With a runtime just under two hours, Shadow Tracker: Vampire Hunter can only be described as epic. The various plot threads (separately following Mr. Shadow Tracker; Samantha; Rick, Lisa, Jay, and Susan; the wino Bramfield; the detectives; and any others I might have forgotten) intersect and finally mesh together in a thrilling climax. The film is expertly structured, with each scene giving us a hint of information from one character's perspective, then fading to black so we can pick up the story of a different character. After nearly two hours, all the characters realize at the same time that Mr. Stokes's hiding place is, shockingly, in the town cemetery, so they converge there are foil his evil plan to marry Lisa. Along the way, they learn bits and pieces about vampires, which are either well established in this universe (implied by the "VAMPIRE STATE" newspaper front page) or are mythological creatures thought not to exist (implied by the vampire expert's flip-flopping on this very point). The film is impressive with its world-building, even if the world it builds is somewhat ambiguous. In fact, the entire effort is hugely impressive given the resources available to the filmmakers; it shows a massive amount of commitment and love for the genre that would have (and has) derailed lesser artists.
After 1999, director Joe Bagnardi directed films called Blood of the Werewolf (2001), The Edge of Reality (2003), and Project D: Classified (2016). Writer Bruce G. Hallenbeck had already been active with a reimagining of Dreyer's Vampyr called Vampyre (1990). Neither appears to have revisited the world of Shadow Tracker: Vampire Hunter, unfortunately, but both seem to be still active in filmmaking, so there is always hope of another visit to this fascinating, action-packed, dangerous world of vampires.