Mr. Vampire

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Geung see sin sang ("Hold Your Breath for a Moment") or Mr. Vampire, as it is titled in the West, is vampire comedy horror. More emphasis on the comedy than the horror. It's not very gory at all, although all the makeup effects are rather impressive, and it leans more towards slightly slapsticky martial arts comedy style than true scariness. Not helping the matters is the fact that apparently in Chinese culture vampires hop. I'm not even kidding. They're called jiangshi and their main method of getting around is to hop around while keeping as stiff as possible. It looks hilarious. But, as this is a comedy, that's one hundred percent alright. The gist of the story is that there's this priest in charge of a town's funeral arrangements and all things spiritual. He gets a commission to dig up and rebury the late head of a wealthy family, only to find out that the body has not decomposed at all. Smelling something fishy, he has the body transferred to his workshop. If only his two apprentices were not complete morons. Hijinks ensue. Most of the film's comedy rises from these two knuckleheads, and luckily they're played by two extremely talented physical actors, Ricky Hui and Chin Siu-ho, who can sell all the martial art and wire scenes while making it as funny as possible. Furthermore, the film has a cool style and while the characters are rather over the top, that's all part of the fun. And it can be legitimately scary when it wants to be, although as stated before, it's a comedy first and foremost. Definitely a vampire film you won't see every day and as thus most certainly worth a watch for all fans of the genre.

There are five Ricky Lau-directed Mr. Vampire movies - Mr. Vampire. Mr. Vampire II, Mr. Vampire III, Mr. Vampire IV and Mr. Vampire 1992 (the only direct sequel) followed by several connected movies by other directors, such as Billy Chan and Leung Chung's New Mr. Vampire (these first six movies will be the ones that we'll be covering), Lam Ching-ying's Vampire vs Vampire and Magic Cop (AKA Mr. Vampire 5), Chan's Crazy Safari (also known as The Gods Must Be Crazy II), Andrew Lau's The Ultimate Vampire, Wilson Tong's The Musical Vampire, Wu Ma's Exorcist Master, Wellson Chin's The Era of Vampires and Juno Mak's tribute to this series, Rigor Mortis. There are also two TV series: Vampire Expert and My Date with a Vampire. All of these movies have the Chinese vampire in common. Called the jiangshi, these hopping corpses of Chinese folklore are as much zombies as they are vampires. They first appeared in Hong Kong cinema in Sammo Hung's Encounters of the Spooky Kind. Mr. Vampire (1985) Master Kau (Lam Ching-ying) is pretty much Dr. Strange by way of Taoist priesthood, as he keeps control over the spirits and vampires of China from his large home, which is protected by many talismans and amulets, staffed by his students Man-Choi (Ricky Hui) and Chau-sang (Chin Siu-ho). Master Yam hires Kau to move the burial site of his father to ensure prosperity for his family. However, the body looks near perfect, showing that it may be a vampire. Taking it home, Kau instructs his students to write all over the coffin with enchanted ink. They forget to do the bottom of the coffin, which means that the vampire escapes and murders his rich son, turning him into a jiangshi. Wai (Billy Lau) is a policeman who is sure that Kau is responsible (he also has a grudge because a girl (Moon Lee) he likes has eyes for Kau), so he arrests him even as the vampire begins killing others. Kau's students are tested by a vampire's boat and also a seductive spirit, but when Master Yam becomes a fully vampiric demon, only the help of another Taoist priest named Four-Eyes (Anthony Chan) can save the day. Based on stories producer Hung heard from his mother, this movie nearly tripled its budget at the box office. Just a warning - not just Italian movies have real animal violence. There's a moment where a real snake is sliced apart instead of a fake one due to budget. The snake was used to make soup, but there's no report on whether the chicken whose throat was cut on screen was used as stock after. Golden Harvest tried to make an American version - Demon Hunters - with Yuen Wah playing Master Kau and American actors Jack Scalia and Michele Phillips (taking over from Tonya Roberts) were in Hong Kong to film scenes, but the movie was stopped after just a few weeks.

This is a very original film concerning a Daoist/Taoist priest, or "One-Eyebrow Priest", (Lam Ching-Ying) and his involvement with what begins as a murder mystery. We follow this character and his comedic assistants as they go up against supernatural forces, including ghosts and vampires. The mix of action and plot is excellent, and a lot of devices used in this film have been borrowed in Hollywood I believe. The acrobatic stunts and Lam Ching-Ying's Kung-Fu are great - watching the vampire (Yuen Wah) receive this punishment is really entertaining stuff. The vampire of the title is mischievous and brutal. He is represented as an unstoppable force and superhuman in power. So, do not expect a Western-style vampire. The Chinese vampire is quite different and much more interesting to watch; they are actually inhuman. No sensitive-new-age-god-i'm-so-tortured-Gothic Tom Cruise types here. Rather, he is a tortured soul, intent on causing death with either his long, sharp fingernails or overflowing mouthful of teeth. He doesn't fly, he is not a bat, and his limbs are inflexible and stiff. (The literal translation of the title is "Mr. Stiff Corpse"!) There are loads of highlights, (the scene involving the vampires lair and the rodents around him is genuinely gruesome), and the supporting cast is great, especially Ricky Hui, Pauline Wong and Moon Lee. Siu-hou Chin is a great assistant to the priest, and is the more cocky and acrobatic character. His stunts are fluid and performed with the signature HK matter-of-fact style. But, modern audiences may find the humour too broad, (slapstick is out of style right?), and some of the clever wordplay is surely lost.

There's a (sub)plot in "Mr. Vampire" that held me in greater thrall than that concerning the title character, namely the "Lady Ghost" (Pauline Wong, unknown to me like the rest of the cast) who takes a shin(ing) to one of the young pupils of the usually exasperated spirit-battling Master. Wong's not as "conventionally pretty" as the other female character ("Ting Ting," which sounds like a better name for a Panda bear than a person) but I think her face has more character to it. She first appears at night in a carriage shlepped by four rather fey ghostly underlings who obligingly disappear (along with the carriage) when she picks out the target of her amorous urgings. Hitching a ride on the back of his transportation, she seems all set to make her move when an inconvenient tree branch knocks her onto her ethereal derriere. Of course it would spoil one's enjoyment of the story to ponder why ghosts are sometimes prone to the same physical mishaps as are we warm folk; it'd be like asking why Chinese eat with chopsticks: well, why not? Later when the Master and the ghost are engaged in combat, the latter detaches her head and flings it at him, thus going Oddjob from "Goldfinger" one better. As for the vampire, who is usually referred to as "the corpse" by other characters, he may prove something of a head-scratcher for devotees of British and American bloodsuckers. He and the other vampires (who physically resemble Fu Manchu and a bunch of clones of same) hop around like bunnies in slow motion and each is rendered ineffective by a piece of yellow paper attached to his head. A mortal can hide in plain sight from them by holding his/her breath, which I thought was the movie's best touch, reminiscent of Schwarzenegger disguising himself with mud in "Predator." Eventually Mr. Vampire morphs into a more conventional (thus less interesting) monster, stops hopping and starts blowing down doors like the Big Bad Wolf. Lots of mayhem ensues laced with the kind of broad slapstick antics that one comes to expect from Chinese action/horror/fantasy flicks, at least until they got "arty" in the last few years. Any viewer who grew up on Hollywood fare got used to having his/her emotional reactions dictated to him/her----"OKAY, HERE'S THE FUNNY PART, NOW HERE'S THE SCARY PART, NOW HERE'S THE SEXY PART, NOW IT'S SCARY AGAIN" ----but in Asia they seem less concerned with such strict demarcations---"We just present it, you do the reacting." This gets really intriguing when they take the same approach to topics we would consider "sensitive," like torture or homosexuality. One wonders how director Ricky Lau or his compatriots would have tackled a topic like, say, Abu Ghraib---maybe it would've become a musical comedy. I'd probably rather watch that than a version by Steven Spielberg or Mel ("Holy snuff film, Batman!") Gibson… Anyway if you rent the video from Facets, the subtitles are in both Chinese and English and not always easy to read, but the gist of it is pretty get-able. There's some nice satire of social niceties e.g. the "English tea" scene. The clearly limited special-effects budget is put to good use. A good time should be had by all who view it receptively, preferably having consumed some alcohol. Only one disappointment as I saw it---remember there was a spoiler warning! ---the Lady Ghost is sent packing without her object of desire. She seemed like a lot more fun than that dour Master…. As for why "sticky rice" should have vampire-battling properties lacked by regular rice: again, why not? How'd that whole garlic thing get going, anyway? Making it up as we went along, were we, Mr. Stoker?

The extremely polished production here may obscure one of the film's major virtues. This is pure ensemble movie-making, there are no "auteurs" or "artistes" here. The most recognizable actors in the film - Lam Chi Ying, Chin Siu-hou, Moon Lee, Wu Ma - turn in what were for them(at the time) very uncharacteristic performances, and do so splendidly. In fact, there is no "star" here, these actors are all taking turns with extraordinary grace as characters who at best "bumble through", and at worst fumble like, well, pretty much like any average person faced with exceptional challenges (how often does one get saved from a rotting zombie by an amorous ghost?). Despite the stunts, and regardless of its genre origins, this is not a"kung-fu" film, but a top-notch horror-comedy on a par with Polanski'sunderrated "Fearless Vampire killers" and superior to "Abbot & Costello meet Frankenstein" (which admittedly set the standard, after all). Two plus-values in favor of this film: It provides a lot of information about Chinese vampires, ghosts, and zombies (and their traditional remedies), but does so visually or casually, without the heavy-handed verbal explanation frequent in western horror films. And there is an incredibly haunting children's song (!) about a love-lorn female ghost that is wisely used over the closing credits and which is unforgettable. Indeed, the only weakness in the construction of the film is that we really want to know more about the broken-hearted ghost of the sub-plot than the vampire-centered plot allows. Fortunately, Ching Siu Tung apparently also noticed this, and devoted an entire three-film series to investigating the problem, the remarkable "Chinese Ghost Story" trilogy; but Ching Siu Tung is exactly the kind of "auteur" that would weigh a film like "Mr. Vampire" with intellectual burdens its "pure entertainment"-directed plotting simply couldn't bear. "Mr. Vampire" is not a "work-of-art-for-the-ages", but it is a lot of fun, and spooky to boot, and on that level works as really great movie making, regardless of genre or "ethnic origin".

I'll say this right now. I'm not a fan, or a follower of kung fu movies, Chinese or otherwise. That being said, this movie is incredible. It is a perfect blend of slapstick physical comedy, one liners, martial arts, and Chinese superstition. Mr. Vampire is genuinely funny, but not at all in a campy "So bad it's good" way at all. Fight scenes are good and often amusing, but are not the focus of the film. Some people despise dubbing in foreign films. Having watched both subtitled and dubbed, I'd say the dubbing is funnier. For a complete laugh riot with the DVD, watch both. the jokes made in both versions are quite different, and seeing the way the two interpretations differ is funny in and of itself. The mood of some scenes are distinctly different. All in all, the film is spectacular. Anyone who likes physical or witty humor which is snappy (but not cheap) should watch Mr. Vampire. Fans of Most Extreme Elimination Challenge will love the dubbing especially.