In a world of Elevated Horror, Intelligent Horror, Woke Horror, Provocative Horror and horror that generally wants to be ‘of the moment’ and earnestly saying something important, there’s a definite pleasure to be had from seeing a film that does not hold both the genre and its audience in thinly-veiled, omnipresent contempt. The joys of the 1985 Hong Kong horror comedy Mr Vampire are, for the most part, lightweight and disposable, and are all the better for that.
Ironically, back in the day, Mr Vampire was – somewhat accidentally – revolutionary stuff. Horror has long been a global industry, but it’s fair to say that few Hong Kong genre movies had made it to the West beyond those that were caught up in the 1970s martial arts craze – the closest Western audiences came to seeing a Chinese vampire movie was in the Hammer/Shaw Brothers film The Legend of the 7 Golden Vampires, which was an ambitious and entertaining hybrid, but ultimately neither one thing nor the other. It wasn’t until a handful of movies – with A Chinese Ghost Story, Zu Warriors of the Magic Mountain and this one being at the forefront – broke through at the start of the 1990s to find a whole new audience that was understandably dazzled by their originality and visual style. Alongside the bullet ballet films of directors like John Woo, Chinese horror genuinely felt unlike anything that we’d seen before – visually beautiful, dynamic, breathlessly fast-paced and with a winning combination of action, humour and melodrama, this new generation of films – that were just as groundbreaking in Hong Kong as far as production values went, to be fair – felt like a breath of fresh air in a genre that was otherwise becoming increasingly stale and directionless.
For a few years, Hong Kong horror and action was the most fashionable thing around, guaranteed a place at genre film festivals, securing seasons on Channel 4 TV in the UK and launching several video labels that quickly exhausted the good stuff and ended up having to try to hype second or third rate nonsense as the latest Hong Kong classic. Like many a craze centred around a movie nationality – from giallo to J-horror – the tendency has often been to claim that every movie emerging from the country du jour is a masterpiece, a suggestion that is as blinkered as the previous critical dismissal of these films had been. The prime reason these films often ended up being once again rather marginalised is because too much substandard tat flooded the market, with few critics wanting to step out of line and point out the King’s new clothes. A backlash was inevitable and so genuinely great films were once again overlooked by fans who had become suspicious of the hype – and who had often moved on to the next fashionable thing. It took several years for Hong Kong horror, alongside other Far Eastern genre cinema, to simply be judged on its own merits.
Ricky Lau’s Mr Vampire was one of the pioneers of the new Hong Kong horror movement – a 1985 domestic hit that spawned several sequels, spin-offs and imitators, it was a shot in the arm for the Hong Kong film industry and set the template for many films to come. It’s a hugely important film because of what it helped spawn, but of course, ‘important’ doesn’t necessarily always mean ‘good’. Many a film – many an Eighties film in particular – can feel clumsy and lacklustre when watched again, especially if you are to take the rose-tinted glasses of youth off. Thankfully, this is not the case here – watching the film again for the first time since the early 1990s, I was struck by just how well it holds up, even after years of glossier, faster-paced Hong Kong movies and the inevitable dilution of the sense of originality thanks to the endless sequels and imitators.
The film follows the adventures of Master Kau (Lam Ching-ying), an expert on the supernatural and burial master, who – along with his buffonish students Man Choi (Ricky Hui) and Chou (Chin Siu-Ho) are tasked with re-burying an unquiet corpse. Unfortunately for them, the corpse turns out to be a particularly lively vampire, who is soon causing chaos as it rampages through the locale, trying to vampirise its granddaughter (Moon Lee).
This is the film that introduced Western audiences to the idea of the hopping vampire, a distinctly Chinese variation on the undead, and that – alongside the very localised methods of combating the overly active corpse, including the use of sticky rice and magic spells – still feels fresh now. The vampires here are arguably sometimes more like zombies (especially the animated corpses that Master Lau and his associates transport around), but the titular character is both comedic and creepy. And that’s a good way to describe the film as a whole – this is a horror comedy, and the humour is often very broad. Hong Kong films didn’t, by and large, go for subtle humour, and if you don’t like slapstick, wild facial mugging and exaggerated hysteria, then this might not be for you. But it works within the story, where everything is somewhat over-the-top, and doesn’t feel contrived or forced in the way that some of its Western contemporaries do. This is a film that revels in its silliness and pokes affectionate fun at both Chinese folklore and the martial arts film tradition, while still knowing when to play things straight – there are moments of genuine suspense and relentless threat, as well as a hauntingly sweet subplot involving a romantic ghost.
The most significant aspect of Mr Vampire, when seen again, is just how fresh it still feels. Despite the hopping vampire being run into the ground by countless films, this still works remarkably well as a highly original piece of entertainment. It’s not a film that tries to do anything other than entertain, but it does that very well indeed. Life is currently darker and scarier than any horror film could suggest, and so there’s a lot to be said for a film that doesn’t leave you feeling worse after you’ve seen it. This is joyful, charming and – in the best way possible – pleasingly throwaway. Hop to it!
DAVID FLINT
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