Welcome, folks. Pull up a chair, lounge, bed, or pew - as suits you best - and settle in for our first weekend movie matinee. It will come as no great surprise to those who read the post for the 8th of this month that our star is Lam Ching-Ying in the movie that made him an international star. In fact, it almost made him a star in the USA, too. It was being remade with a couple of Hollywood actors brought over to join Lam Sifu in a Western edition. But they both turned out to be such whiny bitches, complaining about not getting the lavish Hollywood treatment and having to work with people who spoke Chinese instead of English (in China!) that the studio heads basically said, "Fuck this- kill it."* So... No Hopping Vampires For You!
That was 1989.
Meanwhile, back in 1985...
In this film, Lam Ching-Ying plays the iconic character type he developed with Sammo Hung Kam-Bo in Close Encounters Of The Spooky Kind II (AKA Spooky Encounters 2 AKA Spooky Encounters, and then it starts getting confusing). Uncle Kau is a Taoist running the local mortuary.
Now, one of the fun things about starting to watch Hong Kong Spooky Comedies, or other supernatural films from HK/China, is learning a whole new set of rules. Crosses against Vampires? Garlic? Running water? Throw all that stuff out. Add in Chinese legend & tradition, and you wind up with...
Man Choi (Man Chor), one of Sifu's assistants, is feeding incense smoke to the unburied dead.
Those yellow slips of paper are Talismans - prayers magically inscribed on the slips to keep the Kyonshi (Jiangshi) at rest. Without them, they might get hungry and start hopping around in search of living blood.
You might wonder about the way the dead are dressed. Rather than dressing as one did in life, they are buried garbed to meet their ancestors in clothing honoring them. So you'll see this type of outfit on most hopping vampires.
One thing similar between Eastern & Western vampires (beyond the obvious blood drinking) is the fact that they're pretty damn strong-
There's new sets of tools to use...
...as you might suspect, the first ingredients are for preparing talismans as seen above.
Another useful tool is the I-Ching Mirror, used to reflect evil spirits and capable of turning back the undead:
This movie doesn't get into the blood of black dogs or the urine of virgin boys, but we'll get some more lore as we go along. (But don't be fooled, we're not doing the whole movie here, only the opening and teases - go watch it!)
After some opening antics with Sifu's too playful assistants, we find Sifu heading to a meeting that sets up the events of the film. This sets up the semi-nebulous time frame of the movie, with the Colonial Tea Room giving something of an anchor to the rather timeless Chinese village life of much of the tale.
As it turns out, his father was buried in a manner designed to curse the family, and it was doing a pretty good job of it. At least the fortune teller who gave the advice told the family to rebury in 20 years so he only ruined one generation, eh? So, we're off to pull the (atypically vertical) coffin, but when opened, birds fly, a black cloud dissipates, and in the coffin...
...it's Yuen Wah! He's one of the Seven Little Fortunes, like Sammo and Jackie Chan, and he's always great. He's been all over, often as a villain, but might most likely be familiar from Stephen Chow Sing-Chi's 2004 film, Kung Fu Hustle. He was the lecherous husband of the legendary kung fu couple hiding out as apartment managers.
Sifu's assistants hustle the body back to the mortuary, but even they are bothered by it...
Those are stabbing nails. Definitely not a good sign.
Mr. Vampire is also an educational film in more than just lore. For instance, how to extract a poison gland from a snake when needed as an ingredient:
Another lesson is how to make an inkpot with (very) fresh chicken blood. This ink is painfully repellent to the undead, and Sifu has his boys seal the coffin with an inked grid. But, being young, foolish, and eager to go play, they didn't seal the bottom...
Of course, the first thing a kyonshi is likely to go for is family. I'm guessing especially family that had him buried in a cursed manner. The next morning...
Which leads us to seeing just what a sleazebag his nephew, the local police chief and luster of cousins, can be...
He's being played by Billy Lau, a very funny actor generally typed as playing sleazebags, dickheads, and assholes, and he does it with gleeful abandon. Of course, he's not the cop you want when you need one...
Unsurprisingly, he winds up arresting the only person who has a clue what's going on. Before he's taken away, he has a few quick words of warning for his assistants...
There's another bit of important lore. If a kyonshi is hunting you, Hold Your Breath! It's almost like a Doctor Who creature gimmick, eh?
But, you see, the undead don't typically have fully functional eyes and so they detect the living by their breathing. I mentioned in a previous post how they like to dance around the line between horror and comedy in the Spooky Comedy genre, and this tradition can be the source of a great deal of such skipping back & forth. Like when Sifu accidentally gets his head stuck between the bars of his cell while a fresh corpse is stalking his first prey...
How will Lam Sifu deal with the Vampires?
With style, by the gods!
I mentioned previously that Lam Ching-Ying was a Wing Chun master, and that gave him an incredible precision of movement for his spells and rituals. Just being able to casually, with fluidly smooth movements, just stick his finger into a bowl of rice, pull up a single grain, run his finger through a candle to catch it on fire and flick it into the chicken blood ink mix to catalyze the potion...
...that precision gave him an almost unEarthly quality, especially combined with his bottomless font of wisdom in matters arcane. And this was a large part of why he was my #1 choice to play Doctor Strange while he yet lived.
And Sifu's assistants? Well, Chin Siu-Ho is one of my favorite assistants for Lam Sifu (and brother to Chin Kar-Lok, whom we saw as the Green Hornet in the Video Whozit quiz).
His character, Sang, is clever...
...and Ricky Hui's Choi is brave...
Yeah, it's gonna be a mess...
Besides having to deal with Mr. Vampire and any corpses he sets to walking, Sifu's got to cope with his own assistants and we've got a Lovely Ghost story going on. (That's a tradition we'll get to at another time, because entire movies are wrapped around that concept, going back to Pu Song-Ling's writings in his Liao Zhai Zhi yi.)
Moon Lee and Pauline Wong Siu-Fung, our lovely leading ladies, are barely seen here but both delights in their roles.
Mixing martial arts, Taoist magicks, and arcane knowledge to combat undead, ghostly and demonic menaces, Lam Ching-Ying creates a fun movie, sparks a genre and makes himself a star. Not a bad way to introduce yourself to his films. Mr. Vampire launched a host of sequels, including Mr. Vampire 2, Mr. Vampire3, Mr. Vampire 4, Magic Cop (My favorite), Mr. Vampire 1992, New Mr. Vampire, etc.,...
But, don't make the common mistake of thinking that's all there is to his works. They may have been his most popular characters ( He was about to start the third season of his Vampire Priest tv series when he died) but he's also played everything from chain-swinging supercop to maniacal military officer to tragic pedicab driver.
Here's the DVD cover, and the original Hong Kong movie poster for your bonus enjoyments-
===
*(The actual quote is more akin to "We've barely begun. There's no reason to finish.")
That was 1989.
Meanwhile, back in 1985...
In this film, Lam Ching-Ying plays the iconic character type he developed with Sammo Hung Kam-Bo in Close Encounters Of The Spooky Kind II (AKA Spooky Encounters 2 AKA Spooky Encounters, and then it starts getting confusing). Uncle Kau is a Taoist running the local mortuary.
Now, one of the fun things about starting to watch Hong Kong Spooky Comedies, or other supernatural films from HK/China, is learning a whole new set of rules. Crosses against Vampires? Garlic? Running water? Throw all that stuff out. Add in Chinese legend & tradition, and you wind up with...
Man Choi (Man Chor), one of Sifu's assistants, is feeding incense smoke to the unburied dead.
Those yellow slips of paper are Talismans - prayers magically inscribed on the slips to keep the Kyonshi (Jiangshi) at rest. Without them, they might get hungry and start hopping around in search of living blood.
You might wonder about the way the dead are dressed. Rather than dressing as one did in life, they are buried garbed to meet their ancestors in clothing honoring them. So you'll see this type of outfit on most hopping vampires.
One thing similar between Eastern & Western vampires (beyond the obvious blood drinking) is the fact that they're pretty damn strong-
There's new sets of tools to use...
...as you might suspect, the first ingredients are for preparing talismans as seen above.
Another useful tool is the I-Ching Mirror, used to reflect evil spirits and capable of turning back the undead:
This movie doesn't get into the blood of black dogs or the urine of virgin boys, but we'll get some more lore as we go along. (But don't be fooled, we're not doing the whole movie here, only the opening and teases - go watch it!)
After some opening antics with Sifu's too playful assistants, we find Sifu heading to a meeting that sets up the events of the film. This sets up the semi-nebulous time frame of the movie, with the Colonial Tea Room giving something of an anchor to the rather timeless Chinese village life of much of the tale.
As it turns out, his father was buried in a manner designed to curse the family, and it was doing a pretty good job of it. At least the fortune teller who gave the advice told the family to rebury in 20 years so he only ruined one generation, eh? So, we're off to pull the (atypically vertical) coffin, but when opened, birds fly, a black cloud dissipates, and in the coffin...
...it's Yuen Wah! He's one of the Seven Little Fortunes, like Sammo and Jackie Chan, and he's always great. He's been all over, often as a villain, but might most likely be familiar from Stephen Chow Sing-Chi's 2004 film, Kung Fu Hustle. He was the lecherous husband of the legendary kung fu couple hiding out as apartment managers.
Sifu's assistants hustle the body back to the mortuary, but even they are bothered by it...
Those are stabbing nails. Definitely not a good sign.
Mr. Vampire is also an educational film in more than just lore. For instance, how to extract a poison gland from a snake when needed as an ingredient:
Another lesson is how to make an inkpot with (very) fresh chicken blood. This ink is painfully repellent to the undead, and Sifu has his boys seal the coffin with an inked grid. But, being young, foolish, and eager to go play, they didn't seal the bottom...
Of course, the first thing a kyonshi is likely to go for is family. I'm guessing especially family that had him buried in a cursed manner. The next morning...
Which leads us to seeing just what a sleazebag his nephew, the local police chief and luster of cousins, can be...
He's being played by Billy Lau, a very funny actor generally typed as playing sleazebags, dickheads, and assholes, and he does it with gleeful abandon. Of course, he's not the cop you want when you need one...
Unsurprisingly, he winds up arresting the only person who has a clue what's going on. Before he's taken away, he has a few quick words of warning for his assistants...
There's another bit of important lore. If a kyonshi is hunting you, Hold Your Breath! It's almost like a Doctor Who creature gimmick, eh?
But, you see, the undead don't typically have fully functional eyes and so they detect the living by their breathing. I mentioned in a previous post how they like to dance around the line between horror and comedy in the Spooky Comedy genre, and this tradition can be the source of a great deal of such skipping back & forth. Like when Sifu accidentally gets his head stuck between the bars of his cell while a fresh corpse is stalking his first prey...
How will Lam Sifu deal with the Vampires?
With style, by the gods!
I mentioned previously that Lam Ching-Ying was a Wing Chun master, and that gave him an incredible precision of movement for his spells and rituals. Just being able to casually, with fluidly smooth movements, just stick his finger into a bowl of rice, pull up a single grain, run his finger through a candle to catch it on fire and flick it into the chicken blood ink mix to catalyze the potion...
...that precision gave him an almost unEarthly quality, especially combined with his bottomless font of wisdom in matters arcane. And this was a large part of why he was my #1 choice to play Doctor Strange while he yet lived.
And Sifu's assistants? Well, Chin Siu-Ho is one of my favorite assistants for Lam Sifu (and brother to Chin Kar-Lok, whom we saw as the Green Hornet in the Video Whozit quiz).
His character, Sang, is clever...
...and Ricky Hui's Choi is brave...
Yeah, it's gonna be a mess...
Besides having to deal with Mr. Vampire and any corpses he sets to walking, Sifu's got to cope with his own assistants and we've got a Lovely Ghost story going on. (That's a tradition we'll get to at another time, because entire movies are wrapped around that concept, going back to Pu Song-Ling's writings in his Liao Zhai Zhi yi.)
Moon Lee and Pauline Wong Siu-Fung, our lovely leading ladies, are barely seen here but both delights in their roles.
Mixing martial arts, Taoist magicks, and arcane knowledge to combat undead, ghostly and demonic menaces, Lam Ching-Ying creates a fun movie, sparks a genre and makes himself a star. Not a bad way to introduce yourself to his films. Mr. Vampire launched a host of sequels, including Mr. Vampire 2, Mr. Vampire3, Mr. Vampire 4, Magic Cop (My favorite), Mr. Vampire 1992, New Mr. Vampire, etc.,...
But, don't make the common mistake of thinking that's all there is to his works. They may have been his most popular characters ( He was about to start the third season of his Vampire Priest tv series when he died) but he's also played everything from chain-swinging supercop to maniacal military officer to tragic pedicab driver.
Here's the DVD cover, and the original Hong Kong movie poster for your bonus enjoyments-
frames from Mr. Vampire (1985)
===
*(The actual quote is more akin to "We've barely begun. There's no reason to finish.")
