Movie Details
| Title: | Mr. Vampire | |
| Director: | Ricky Lau | |
| Year: | 2025 | |
| Genre: | Kung-Fu | |
| Times Seen: | 1 | |
| Last Seen: | 11.01.25 |
Other Movies Seen By This Director (0)
| Date Viewed | Venue | Note |
| 11.01.25 | Internet | This Screening is part of event: Virtual All Night Horror Movie Marathon 6 Well, Grant was once again nice enough to invite me to his and his Portland friends' all night horror movie marathon. Not that I'm complaining but it was somewhat late notice so unlike last year where I started early, this year I'm starting late. I think they all started at around 9pm and I'm not starting until 11. So once again I'm out of sync with them and not joining the zoom or slack but at least I'll get to watch the movies, or at least that's the plan. I might have to watch the last one tomorrow because it's already late. We'll see. As a quick reminder, Grant and his friends each picked a horror movie for the group to watch, then Grant put them up for us to grab with the titles removed (like "movie-1.mkv") so we go in blind. The first movie of the night is a Hong Kong Kung-Fu movie called Mr. Vampire. I am not well versed in Hong Kong movies at all but imdb trivia tells me this was pretty influential and spawned a wave of supernatural/horror films in its wake. For me, I kept thinking of a movie I know as Thunder Cops. Back in my Alamo days, they used to play an astounding trailer for this movie called Thunder Cops that was maybe the craziest thing I'd seen too date. It was so absolutely batshit insane... I loved it so much. Then one day a fellow Alamo regular tracked down a copy of the film and we all got together to watch it and it was... surprising. The trailer had this serious tone which made it surprising when the imagery kept escalating getting crazier and crazier but the movie was mostly a comedy. Like slapstick comedy, so the tone was all over the place. As I recall, the trailer wound up including footage from another movie entirely which contributed to its whiplash cuts (like there's a bunch of fighting between cops shooting then there's a wave of zombies then there's RC helicoptors chasing a flying decapitated head). I think if I hadn't seen Thunder Cops I'd be really confused by this movie, but instead I'm thinking maybe Thunder Cops (also known as Operation Pink Squad 2) is one of those movies made on the back of Mr. Zombie's success? I don't know. So Mr. Zombie. Um... these guys that run a mortuary (which i think ALREADY have zombies with the yellow script tags on their foreheads just hanging out behind a curtain) do some ceremony where they unearth an old coffin but that coffin holds a vampire who gets out and kills people with his long fingernails who then turn into zombies unless they sleep on glutinous rice... or something. There's also a woman ghost who's sort of a succubus type figure that's chasing one of the guys. Throw in some animal violence and fight scenes and slapstick humor and you've got yourself a movie. I can't pretend to have any sort of cultural context for a movie like this. I barely know where Hong Kong is on a map, but I liked how the zombies jumped rather than walked or ran. I like how they hear you breathe so holding your breath makes them lose track of you. All the supernatural elements basically I thought were pretty cool. This is also the early days of wire work which still feel cool in this context, how the woman ghost glides onto the back of the guys bicycle is pretty cool. I also liked the end fight with the woman ghost and how they portrayed the illusions she was spinning in her opponents' minds. I did not love the comedy stuff. I just don't want it in my kung-fu. I'm not sure what the deal is, like they were scared that having a vampire might seem scary so they felt the need to include like a voodoo doll slap-yourself body-control gag? I also don't know what was going on with that wooman ghost. WHy's she in the movie? I kinda like that in this world spirits are super common like it's no big deal to have eight zombies hanging out in your shop but the whole succubus thing struck me as the first draft of the script coming in at 55 minutes and them needing to pad out the running time. So, kung-fu movies continue to not be my favorite genre, but I'm glad I watched this. I feel like it gives my memory of Thunder Cops a little more context. And... I dunno, that's that. It's already 1:30. I don't want this all-night movie marathon to actually go all night, although I do get an extra hour for daylight savings tonight so let's see how many more I can fit in. |
