Master Gau, along with his two bumbling assistants, Man Choi and Chou Sheng, are asked to rebury the patriarch of the Yam family in order to generate good luck, but the patriarch turns out to be a vampire and breaks free. Gau, and in his own way, the dim, obnoxious police captain, attempt to destroy the vampire and protect Yamâs daughter, the beautiful Jade, but there are complications. Man Choi is scratched and is slowly turning into a vampire while Chou Sheng is seduced by a ghost.
If your goal is to study the development of Hong Kong horror and comedy in the â80s and early â90s, then Mr. Vampire is a must see. While not the first to use the Chinese hopping vampire, it popularized the monster in film. Unlike their Western counterpart, these vampires move by hopping (makes sense), are controlled by prayers, are blind and hunt by detecting breathing, attack primarily with long fingernails, and wear traditional Chinese garb. Mr. Vampire was the first in a series of films, but also started a whole movement. For a decade, kung fu horror-comedy dominated pure horror in Hong Kong and these vamps became very popular.
If, on the other hand, you have no interest in film history and just want to watch a good film, then letting this one slip by you isn’t a problem. Mr. Vampire doesnât bother with character development. Gau is a Taoist master. Thatâs it. Choi and Sheng are slapstick goofs. Thatâs it. The three get the lionâs share of the screen time but I knew no more about them at the finale than I did after the first scene. None of them have any depth or change in any way. None of them can really be called characters. And Jade is nothing but a pretty face. It is hard to figure why sheâs in the film besides the desire for cute eye candy. She has no part in the fighting and hunting or even the humor. OK; that leaves the traditional female roles of love interest and victim, but she doesnât even get those. The film sets her up as the love interest at the beginning, but abandons that. While she is attacked by the vampire, it is no more consequential than the attack on Man Choi. She ends up being background, literally. In the middle of the film, she simply walks around at the back of scenes, carrying bowls of rice.
The plot wobbles about. The main vampire story starts slowly as weâre given the prelude to the romance that never happens. Then things stop so we can have a ghost story for a while. It all feels cobbled together.
Thereâs also nothing frightening. The âhorrorâ label should be replaced by âfantasy.â
That leaves kung fu and comedy. In the first, it does pretty well. The action scenes are well choreographed, with plenty of unusual variations and a great deal of frantic motion. Technically Iâd rank the fights higher than a majority of the Hong Kong sword epics of the time. The problem is that itâs empty. The actors move well, but with no characters to be concerned with, and no plot to follow, itâs a meaningless dance.
So, itâs down to the comedy and your predilection for the very silly. I have little patience with The Three Stooges, so found nothing here to laugh at. If people falling down, dropping their pants, and getting their heads stuck between bars is your idea of a good time, then youâll do OK. If you’re like me, skip it. But as more people like slipping on banana peels than not, I raised the rating by one Reel. Still, catching it on free TV is all it deserves.