Weirdhouse Cinema: Mr. Vampire

In this episode of Weirdhouse Cinema, Rob and Joe discuss the 1985 Hong Kong comedy horror film “Mr. Vampire,” in which our heroes use kicks, furniture rice and Taoist sorcery against the deadly Chinese hopping vampires, the jiāng shī.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:03):
Welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind production of My
Heart Radio. Hey, welcome to Weird House Cinema. This is
Rob Land and I'm Joe McCormick. In Today, we are
hopping into the world of Taoist sorcery, Hong Kong monsters,
glutinous rice, martial arts, and and much more with our

(00:26):
very first Young She movie. I've been wanting to do
one of these movies for a while because I had
never actually seen a Young She film, and uh and
and I was aware of them for a while having
I guess I've seen like pictures of them on the internet.
Uh so, so this has been in my mind for years,
and finally we got to see one. Today we're gonna
be talking about Mr Vampire. Yeah. I'm excited as well

(00:49):
because I think I was in the same boat as you.
I knew about Young She. I knew they existed in
in Chinese folklore, as is, being this kind of vampire,
kind of by zombie creature with with unique characteristics all
their own. But I never watched a Jangshi movie. Uh though,
interestingly enough, right this was before you brought up the

(01:10):
idea of of of of doing one. I had picked
up the new Dungeons and Dragons book Van Ripton's Guide
to Raven Loft, and it includes a domain in it
inspired by Chinese mythology and folklore, so it includes stats
for Jangshi monsters. It's a in in Dungeons and Dragons.
It's a ninth level undead entity with the power to

(01:31):
drain the energy of its victims and a shape shift.
So jung shei is both a class of Chinese mythological
monster and a specific genre of especially nineteen eighties Hong
Kong martial arts comedy films. That's correct, Yeah, it's and
this is one of the big films. We started looking

(01:53):
around like, well, which which jangshi movies should we do,
and the signs increasingly pointed to Mr Vampire from because
It's it was a huge hit. It was responsible for
really popularizing it in not only within Chinese cinema and
creating a whole sub genre, but also spreading out and
it was very popular in Japan and ultimately you know

(02:15):
across to to Uh to the West as well. So
and and also this is the one we could rent
from our local video store video Drum. Yeah, these movies
are not widely digitally available at least that I could find,
but at least not right now. I feel like they
have been recently. But um, I have to say Amazon
Prime used to be my go to place for a
lot of weird movies, but I feel like their selection

(02:38):
is not as expansive as it was just a couple
of years ago. So Mr. Vampire is really a title
that sort of grabs me by the fangs or by
the fingernails as it may be. To begin with, Uh,
there's something a little bit cheeky about it. But also
I think this is not a direct translation of the
original title, which I think uh in the Cantonese original

(02:59):
title was it translates to like hold your breath for
a moment or something. Uh. Yeah, and that and the
reason for that is because that's that's one of the
plot points. And how do you avoid the Jungshi discovering
where you are and draining the life out of you. Well,
just don't breathe and then it can't detect your presence.
But Mr Vampire, Uh, that that also that also kind

(03:19):
of works. It's it's not the name of a vampire
in it, but it's referring to our main character, who
is a Dallas priest whose expertise is the management and
sometimes slaying of of of vampires, and therefore he's Mr
Vampire in the same way that someone who comes and
fixes your pipes might be Mr Plumbing or Mr Plumber.

(03:40):
I was thinking of it more along the lines of
Mr Coffee, like he is a machine that is designed
to perfectly execute this function. And so in this case,
our hero in the film, the Taoist priest played by
Uh Chining Lamb, is the machine that perfectly executes the
jung Shei cycle. So let's talk for just a little
bit about the Young she because some of you may

(04:03):
be super familiar with this already. Maybe you've read the
New Raven Loft book and so you know, you're like,
I know all the stats, Rob, you don't have to
go into the details, but I will anyway because it's
super interesting and I think it it enhances our understanding
of this film. Even though this film is very much
a horror comedy, it's not like it has I think,
you know, really deep things to say, but it is.

(04:23):
It is a treatment of some of of a monster,
a monster that emerged out of Chinese history, out of
Chinese folklore and out of real anxieties. So first of all,
jiang she literally means the stiff or the rigid dead,
and uh and and and and the reason for that
will become clear when we start talking about how they move, especially,

(04:45):
So I'd love to just set the scene for you
here if I may. Okay, let's get it. Imagine yourself
out on a road so frustratingly close to the walls
of the city you've been traveling to, and yet night
is falling, the mist is rolling in, and then up
a heads you see several figures in the gloom. Who
are they? Are they fellow travelers, perhaps headed to where

(05:06):
you're going, or coming from the opposite direction, maybe there
are a patrol of guards from the city, And you
even entertain the possibility that they might be bandits. But
then they do something quite unnatural. They hop, They hop,
like creatures whose legs are bound or stiff with rigor mortis,
perhaps even forgetful of proper bipedo locomotion, and forced to

(05:28):
lunge themselves forward through physical space like a writhing worm
stood on end. The creatures hop and they hop again,
ever closer to you, And as they get closer, you
see that they are undead horrors dressed in robes from
the Cheaing dynasty, decayed corpses, burning with unnatural life, and
as they hop, they reach out towards you with elongated

(05:51):
finger nails, they gasp with bloody thing tooth jaws, and
if they catch you, they will drain every last ounce
of precious chea from your body. Oh I got the shivers. Yeah,
I think. I think the thing about the hopping, really,
the hopping is key because it's such a vital part
of of the folklore, and yet at the same time

(06:12):
it can seem ridiculous because it is so unnatural, and
sometimes it's hard for us to really like figure out,
like where does at what point does the unnatural become
the ridiculous? At what point does the ridiculous then become
the uncanny? Well, yeah, I mean, I won't deny that
it looks funny in the movie when they're hopping, and
it clearly is supposed to look funny in the movie,

(06:33):
because this isn't like a straight horror movie. This is
a horror comedy. But I can see how the hopping
could be quite unnerving given the right cultural associations, And
if it were, I don't know, maybe if it were
filmed from the right angle too, because like you can
get the funny aspects, like it's kind of a sack
Ray zombie, right, It's just the feet can't move independently.

(06:54):
It's hopping up and down with the arms outstretched. But
on the other hand, it symbolizes that this body no
longer works as it should. In fact, it is no
longer really a human body, but something else exactly. So,
so that's the the Jiangxi. But as as most of
you know from listening to stuff to blow your mind,
monsters don't just exist in a vacuum. Monsters always means something.

(07:18):
And so I was curious, like I know a number
of you are curious, where does this come from, What
does it mean? What is the hopping all about? Why
does the riga mortis seem to be so key to
this depiction of the undead? And I ran Randy. I
looked at a few different sources, and then I found
this paper by historian Juhy Sue. And this is actually
their Doctor of Philosophy dissertation at Washington University from twenty nineteen,

(07:41):
but it's titled The Afterlife of Corpses, A Social History
of Unburied Dead bodies in the Ching dynasty sixty four
through nineteen eleven. Interesting, So, what can you tell us
about these creatures? Okay? So, while Chinese mythology and folklore
is filled with various ghosts and monsters, obviously, uh, the
jang Hi seemed to immerge out of a Ching dynasty

(08:01):
crisis concerning the burial of the dead. So Sue writes
that numerous records from the eighteenth and nineteenth century discussed
the problem of unburied bodies left on the ground without
proper burial. And the the interesting thing is these were
not exclusively, say, the victims of war or famine or disaster,
you know, something where even in the best of situations

(08:23):
can overwhelm your ability to deal with the dead. They
were seemingly, for the most part, individuals who simply had
no permanent grave, and this, Sue writes, was due to
changing socio economic structure during this time period and the
resulting imbalance between population and arable land. Interesting. Yeah, so,

(08:43):
I mean the idea here is that a family would
need a secure claim to the land in order to
bury a deceased loved one, and if a grave could
not be obtained, then they were then the body would
would just be left out or would be uh you know,
abandoned or lost, um, you know, not necess necessarily like
immediately discarded, but it might be put somewhere and then

(09:04):
it would never find its way to a permanent destination.
This actually plays into the movie. I hadn't thought about this,
but in the plot of Mr. Vampire. Though again this
is a comedy movie, part of the incitement of the
vampire curse in this film seems to be a dispute
about over the land on which a body is buried.

(09:24):
That there's like a dispute between this wealthy family. Uh
this you know, this wealthy family with this businessman patriarch
and a fortune teller who originally wanted access to some
kind of burial plot, and the businessman bought it off
the for fortune teller seemingly with some kind of coercion
for the for the purchase because it was said to

(09:45):
be a very lucky place to bury a body that
would bring great fortune to the further, you know, the
future generations of the family. But obviously the fortune teller
who was forced to sell the land didn't like this,
and so a dispute about land to rights and the
burial of the body seems to be at the root
of whatever black magic causes the vampire to begin with. Yeah,

(10:07):
and that that plays right into this this historical setting
out of which it emerges this idea that that that
land in which you can properly bury the dead and
do the dead justice, uh, is in short supply, and
not everyone has has the access that they once enjoyed
to it. And while the sue rights that while the

(10:28):
the young Non region was most impacted by this situation,
it became an empire wide crisis because it wasn't just
about the dead and then dealing with the dead, but
it perceived cultural decline and funeral custom and and even
a decline in devotion to one's ancestors, which has an
enormous cultural significance. Well, this is another thing I would

(10:51):
say in in Mr. Vampire. Again, it's hard to say
because the movie I would say is ultimately it's it's
a light comedy, you know, it's light horror, martial arts comedy,
so it's not getting too serious about anything. But I
also I kind of detect a strain of critique of
modernity and it generally and it's set during so it
was made in the nineteen eighties, but it's set during

(11:14):
the Republican period of China, so in the first half
of the twentieth century, and in it there seems to
be a sort of a critique of of a modern,
maybe Western influenced way of living. There's a very comedic
police officer who seems to embody all the negative attributes
all of the police like he is abusive and stupid,

(11:35):
and you know, is is framing the wrong guy for
the murder, is not addressing any problems. And so there's
this idea, yeah, that the the government and the law
is not maintaining any the necessary order and that this
lack of order also applies to our our honor to
the dead. Yeah. And so the character in the movie

(11:57):
who wants to have his ancestor reburied, which again this
one the inciting incidents in the film, he seems to
be making decisions that could be again I don't know
exactly the right cultural way to read this, but I
think it is to be interpreted as he's making decisions
that are somewhat disrespectful to his own ancestors in hopes
of making money. Yeah, Okay, well, we're maybe sort of

(12:19):
getting ahead of ourselves here because we started getting into
the details. But Rob, what's the basic elevator pitch for
Mr Vampire before we hit the trailer audio? All right?
When Sheean dynasty vampires rise up and cause havoc in
early twentieth century China. Again, this is the Republic of China.
Only the Dallas priest Master Gao and his two assistants
can stop the evil. You know, you kind of get

(12:40):
the sense that Master Gau would have had a better
chance stopping the evil without his two assistants. Well, it's
hard to get good help in the vampire busting business. Yes,
let's hear some audio here going again, I'm gonna I'm

(13:11):
not hey do all right? So that is, I believe

(13:35):
from the original Cantonese trailer. So that is if you
if there's any language in any dialogue in that trailer
that you heard, that is Cantonese, and um, I I
recommend watching the film in Cantonese if you can. I listened.
I watched about half of it dubbed and then switched
over to Cantonese with subtitles. Yeah about halfway through, and

(13:56):
I really enjoyed the original language more. I was going
to say the same thing. I watched it with the
Cantonese audio with subtitles, and I think that's the better
way to do it, because there's a lot of the
line delivery in Cantonese that is quite funny, even though
even if you don't speak cantonies, can't understand what they're saying.
I would single out the main star of the movie,
Chining Lamb for some of his very funny, stern delivery

(14:19):
of particular lines in certain scenes, like I really like
the scene where his his assistant who is turning into
a vampire, is saying, like, what's going to happen to me?
And he says, your blood will stiffen, and then he says, well,
how what will happen when it stiffens? And he says
it will get hard, And it's the way he delivers
his lines in the original language I think is much funnier.

(14:39):
Yeah yeah, um. And we'll get back to him. But
he is. He is indeed great in this. It's hard
to imagine that the film without him, because his character
is at once stern and serious and heroic and capable,
and he had at the same time does occasionally look
like a buffoon, as is befitting of a horror comedy,
but it's a careful line to walk, like how do
you make your hear row buffoonish enough but also a

(15:02):
capable action horror star. I want to come back to
that theme. All right, Well, let's let's start talking about
some of the folks involved in this film, because it
does have a lot of interesting people in it. Uh.
First of all, let's talk about the director, who also
was one of the screenwriters, Ricky Law. Law was born
in nineteen nine and Mr. Vampire is his big hit.

(15:24):
I mean, it was a huge hit, so he went
on to do and is still doing plenty of films
in this vein, including The Romance of the Vampires in
nine and more recently Dallas Priest One, a film starring
Sue Ho Chin, one of the stars from Mr. Vampire.
This this is a trend. We'll see a lot. Who

(15:45):
is Sue Ho Chen in Mr Vampire. He's the handsome assistant.
Uh and we'll get to him in a second. Oh yeah, okay, yeah,
he's good now with the producer on this film is
also a huge name in Hong Kong cinema, though I'm
to understand he is largely hands off with Mr. Vampire.
But we have to point out that Samuel Hung was

(16:05):
the producer. And I think everybody's heard of Samue Hung.
He's one of the he's one of the biggest names
in Hong Kong cinema, certainly outside of Hong Kong, well,
when you get into like just international cinema. He's one
of those people who you just look at a picture
of him and you're like, that guy's the boss. He's
the boss of something. Yeah. Yeah, legendary rotund Hong Kong actor,
martial artist, producer and director and um yeah, he's he's

(16:28):
been in done so many things. In fact, he was
in one of the other key films of this genre,
this the horror comedy, the Hong Kong horror Comedy, and
that was an Encounters of the Spooky Kind that occurred,
uh several years later. It was it was sort of
the first big horror comedy as I understand it. Oh yeah,
so I also wanted to see Encounters of the Spooky Kind.
I haven't seen that one either. But is it also

(16:50):
about Jiung Shi or is it about something else? I
am not entirely sure, but it one of the same
writers was involved in it. Um so I know that
it had as it at least has spooky stuff in it.
It has encounters of the spooky kind in it, But
I said, I sadly haven't seen it yet. It's really
the next one I should see because it's it's a
huge and very influential. Now, I was reading in a

(17:11):
book called Spooky Encounter. It's a Guilos Guide to Hong
Kong Horror by Daniel O'Brien, and in that O'Brien says
that that Hung wasn't was Samo. Hung was inspired by
stories that his mother told him when he was a child,
as well as a particular story from Poush Song Lings
Tales from a Chinese Studio, which I was excited to

(17:33):
read because I'm really fond of tales from a Chinese studio.
I have the I think it's the Penguin Books edition,
which doesn't include all of Poushong Ling's stories and retellings
of these various weird tales from China, but it has
a number of them. Now, you sent me a link
to a e book version of this that did have
the story in it, and so I read this story

(17:54):
the one. The story is called the resurrect or no,
not the resurrection corps, the resuscitated corpse. Yes, I believe
you're right, and it's uh, I was, I was improused.
So the thing about possong links stories is that they
vary wildly in tone. There are some where basically just
he's He's like, hey, um, this scholar from such and
such city told me about this thing that once happened,

(18:16):
and it was weird, and that's the end. Uh. My
son and I enjoy reading them together. And occasionally they
just stopped abruptly like that. It's like a man solid
fairy in the woods the end, um a man saw
some fleas do a cool uh trick or circus performance
on a backpack the end. Other times they're longer. Sometimes
they're just really grotesque and brutal, like a troll choose

(18:39):
on somebody's skull, and then they never find out what
it was about. There's a lot of never finding out
what happened. Something strange happens and no explanation has ever made,
nothing has ever, you know, really done about it. Other
Times they're humorous. Sometimes they're a little bit on the
raunchy side, uh in rare instances. But yeah, this one
is I think an example of of a story that

(19:01):
is both terrifying in parts but also ultimately ridiculous and humorous. Yeah, so,
the basic story here is that there are four travelers
who arrive at is it an inn or a house
that they're they're on the road, and they get to
someplace where they really need to stay for the night
because the night has come on and they can't stay outside,
and there's no it must be an inn because basically

(19:22):
there's no room at the end, and they say, okay,
well can you give us somewhere to stay, you know,
even if we don't have our own rooms. And so
the homeowner, the innkeeper, is like, well, okay, you can
stay in this room with my dead daughter in law's
corpse that hasn't been buried yet. Very very good, very cool.
And this is of course getting into the idea, you know,

(19:43):
like she hasn't been buried yet perhaps because they have
they have not found a place to bury her right,
and again getting into these big concerns about you know,
maybe bad magic comes on when somebody doesn't receive the
right kind of ritual burial in a timely manner. So
the four travelers go to sleep in the room and
then in the middle of the night, one of them
wakes up and realizes that the body of the dead

(20:06):
daughter in law is getting up off of the table
where it's resting, and the dead daughter in law goes
around to each of the sleeping travelers and breathes in
their faces, and the breathing on them there seems to
be something very sinister about this. But eventually the one
traveler who's awake while this is happening gets up and
runs out, and the dead daughter in law is very

(20:29):
mad about him running away, and she chases him, chases
him all the way to a monastery where he bangs
on the door and begs to be let in, and
the priest is like, I don't know who you are.
You can't come in, And so he's running around outside.
He hides behind a tree and then the the zombie
lady attacks him, but gets her arms wrapped around the tree.

(20:51):
Did I understand that right? Yeah? Like basically like he
she reaches to the left and he ducks to the
other side, and then she reaches on that side, he
ducks the other side. They're just going back and forth.
It's like it's it's very much a Hong Kong martial
arts comedy skit, and they do this until they're absolutely exhausted,
the both of them, even the corpse. Uh. And then

(21:11):
I guess the corpse gets the bright idea, I'll just
reach out and grab him on both sides of the
tree at the same time. But then what happens is
her long, scary ghost fingernails get stuck in the tree,
and so she's just stuck to the trees. And the
next morning the authorities come and this resurrected corpse is
stuck to the tree with her fingernails in the wood

(21:32):
the end. And that's the great thing about the stories.
I think I think the last I may be remembering
this wrong, but I think the last line is something
like the local governor made a report of the incident. Yes,
they often ill often that's the form of these stories.
They'll often begin with saying, uh, telling you who told
you this? Who told him this story? You know to
give it, I guess kind of it gives it an

(21:53):
air of authenticity. Or it ends with something like that,
saying like where it's recorded, and uh, yeah, I love it,
and then everything was fine. So Mr Vampire not a
direct adaptation of that, but you can definitely see some
of the connections there, some of the you know, the
comedic car right, Alright, So a couple of the screenwriters

(22:13):
were just gonna blow through here kind of quickly, but
they were accomplished screenwriters. There's a Chuck Hon Sato I
believe it is, who wrote on some major Hong Kong
films featuring stars such as Jackie Chan and Jet Lee.
Their screenwriter Barry Wong Whoo, who worked on such films
as Fight Back to School starring Stephen Chow, and two

(22:36):
different John Wu films, Heart Boiled and The Killer, both
starring Chow Yun Fat, some of the most famous of
the recent well not that recent anymore, but recent decades
Hong Kong action movies. Yeah, definitely names in Hong Kong
cinema that resonate globally. Yeah, But it's interesting to see
the connection to Stephen Chow as well, because I would say,
in many ways, I think Stephen Chow is kind of

(22:59):
a modern inheritor of this kind of martial arts action
comedy thing with with supernatural elements like we see in Mr. Vampire.
Not so much in the horror vein, but still supernatural
fighting comedies. I'm thinking of his working Kung Fu Hustle.
I think has some some some inspiration points in films
like Mr. Vampire. It would seem to me. Now the

(23:20):
story on this film came from Ying Wong, who was
born in nineteen sixty eight. And I don't know much
about Yeing Wong, but he's had his hands in a
number of really cool looking film projects, both as a
writer and a director. He wrote the novel that served
as the basis for nineteen eight Threes Bastard Swordsman, and
his other credits include Return of the Demon from Night Seven,

(23:41):
which he also directed nineteen nineties The Swordsman, and an
interesting looking Chinese mummy movie, which said just based on
based on the cover, it looks like it involves like
jade armor, like jade burial armor. Um. And I think
that that one also has Ghostbusters in it, not you
know our ghostbusters, but roal Ghostbusters. Most notably, however, Wong

(24:03):
co wrote the that other earlier important Hong Kong supernatural
comedy Encounters of the Spooky Kind uh that starred Semo
Hung in eight. Okay, well, that one's still in the
list for me, But I feel like we got to
get to our star. We've been sort of burying the
lead as we sometimes do here because I've just been
wanting to talk about Chin Ying Lamb. Yes, he plays

(24:25):
Mr Gau a k A. Mr Vampire. Um, he's a
He's an actor who lived nineteen fifty two through so,
you know, sadly short lived, but boy he he acted
a lot during that period. Um, he's very much the
star of this picture. He's our Mono brow Dallas priest
who specializes in the handling of Jiangshi and other various spirits,

(24:48):
and he has a pretty interesting history. He started out
in stunt work for the Shaw Brothers and Golden Harvest studio.
He was a personal assistant to Bruce Lee and then
he joined Samo Hunks, the stunt team and the who
became friends. He'd done various roles prior to Mr. Vampire,
but this was the role that really made him famous.
So it should come as no surprise that he played

(25:08):
a lot of Dallas priests battled supernatural forces during his career.
I can't even begin to list them all here, but
they include all sorts of Mr. Vampire inspired films, loose
Mr Vampire spinoffs, and the Vampire Expert TV show, so
you might consider him in a way repeatedly typecast and
a certain type of supernatural horror movie hero role, the

(25:31):
way like Peter Cushing would have been in the Hammer
horror movies, you know, repeatedly playing this Van Helsing type character. Yeah,
even though like we're not even dealing with direct sequels,
it's like we want, we want that character in our film,
even if we call him something else. Who were going
to get to play him? Of course we're gonna get
chinging lamb uh. Though though he also did I want
to point out he did. Look it does look like

(25:52):
he did some unrelated and serious roles as well, so
you know, hopefully it balanced out in his career. So
in this movie, they have made a very interesting costuming
and makeup decision to give our hero the sort of

(26:14):
the unflappable, stern, competent master Taoist priest a unibrow as
you as you said, a mono brow. I guess you
could use either term, but I was thinking about the
meaning of the unibrow in this movie. It wasn't just
his natural facial hair that is that that is something
they clearly have accented with makeup and in American cinema.

(26:37):
The unibrow is used exclusively for comedy, right, It's something
that's supposed to look funny, and this is a comedy movie.
But I don't think Master Gow's unibrow is supposed to
be funny. This is a unibrow that signals an eagle
like seriousness, dignity, knowledge. It reads to me as a

(26:58):
unibrow of respect. At Yeah, I I was thinking about this,
and I think you're right. It seems to be sternness.
I can't really tell how comediic it's supposed to look,
because it it doesn't look just ridiculous. It does look
like it's part of the costume. But but in that respect,
it's not as ridiculous as is some of the the

(27:21):
hair and makeup effects that you see in you certainly
earlier Hong Kong cinema, because you know, if you see
various Shaolin type films, you'll see a lot of obvious
fake facial hair and you know, long hair, uh, you know,
whatever you can do to sort of differentiate one character
from another, even if they're played by you know, sort
of the same troop of of of of stunt people. Clearly,

(27:45):
the the cultural the valance of a unibrow changes with culture.
I mean, again, as we said in American movies, it
is something that is always taken as funny. But there
are cultures where a unibrow or mono brow is considered
a desirable trade. It's can that are very handsome or
beautiful to have a single brow. Yeah, it's definitely gonna
gonna range across time and uh in space. I think

(28:07):
specifically especially in some like Central Asian culture, as a
uni brow was considered very desirable. Yeah. Now I was
looking around for any indication on what it might have
meant uh to Chinese audiences, or if it was a
statement on something that was common, uh, you know amongst
say Dallas priest or something. And I couldn't really find
an answer. I mean, you see bushy eyebrow show up

(28:30):
in in various Chinese um illustrations and depictions, often attributed
to gods and immortals. You know, there's a there's a
wise nature to it. But I just couldn't find anything
about mono browse other than I did see that our
our our priest character in this film is sometimes described
as uh something that is translated as one eyebrow priest. Huh. Well,

(28:53):
I'm trying to think how to read that. Does that
mean more that it's just a particular trait of this
one character, or that he is of a type like
the one eyebrowed priest type. I don't know. I mean
it's I wonder if there are other mono browed Dallas
priests in films that are not depicted as an homage

(29:14):
to this film, you know, I guess that's an open question.
I want to talk about another personal grooming thing that
ties in interestingly with the plot, which is that both
the monsters in this film and the hero have long fingernails. Yes,
uh so Chinging Lung has these the very the long sculpted,

(29:34):
well manicured fingernails, but also the vampires do. And the
vampires not only have them, they use them to kill,
sometimes in lieu of using the fangs to kill. Yeah. Now,
in our our past episode on fingernails, we we talked
a little bit about about long fingernails of particularly Amanda
Chinese scholars in the old days, and one of the

(29:55):
characters that came up was a poet by the name
of Lee he He He who lived uh I believe a
seven ninety or seven ninety one through eight sixteen or
eight seventeen. See, yeah, he was a Tang dynasty poet.
You remember you have found some source that described him
as like the bad boy of Tang dynasty poets. He was.

(30:16):
He was like a very weird poet who wrote strange
almost This sounds like an anachronistic comment to make, but
having read a lot of his poems, now I think
it's sort of accurate. Almost psychedelic poetry. Yeah, like talking
about what owl's burning with goblin fire in the forest,
things of that nature. Uh. And I think he did
have kind of you know, he had kind of a uh,
you know, this bad boy image, this kind of you

(30:39):
know he was he was interested in kind of dark
and mysterious and magical things, yes, totally. But he was
also considered morbid, kind of deathly. Uh. For some reason,
I'm associating him with connotations of illness and morbidity, and
yet he had this very distinctive personal style that definitely
included long fingernails. The crazy thing, though, is this is

(31:03):
not something we realized previously. But I had just looked
him up to to make sure I had the right
individual in mind, and um, I pulled up the Wikipedia
page on him and just did like a quick search
for fingernails to make sure that I wasn't misremembering his fingernails.
But the Wikipedia article not only mentions his nails, it
mentions his uni brow. What. Yeah, apparently he was known
for his uni brow according to this Wikipedia entry. So

(31:27):
so again I've got to ask, is this tap Is
this just a coincidence? Is this tapping a broader cultural
meaning in Chinese history of the uni brow? Or maybe
in some way is the Is the Taoist priest of
the Mr. Vampire franchise a take on Lee He? I'm
not sure. I think it'll have to remain an open question.
Just to give a taste of that psychedelic nous, I
just found a place where I transcribed one of his

(31:49):
poems as translated by a Chinese poetry scholar named David Hinton,
who has a wonderful collection of translations of classic Chinese
poetry that I highly recommend. But Hinton's translation of one
of Lehi's poems called Cheating Spirit Song, I just want
to read a few lines from that. It goes black
as your Puma, cat, weeping blood, fox, dyeing a cold death,

(32:12):
an opalescent dragon, on ancient walls, tail inscribed in gold.
Then the rain god writing it down into a lake's
autumn waters, and that ancient hundred year old owl. It's
a forest demon now, sound of laughter, emerald fire rising
up out of its nest. It's beautiful. I love it.
So Yeah, serious recommendation in this if you're looking for

(32:34):
a good collection of translations of Chinese poetry across the ages,
David Hinton's book is awesome. All right, let's get back
to Mr Vampire. We've we've we've discussed Mr Gao, and
we'll keep coming back to him. But let's talk about
his two assistants. So first up, Choo Shing, the handsome one,
is played by That's exactly right, he is the handsome one.

(32:55):
I was trying to remember what his name is, like
the English translation was, because in the subtitles they give
them English translated names, or at least one of them.
The less handsome assistant is named Dan. Yeah, but I
forget what this one's name was. But yeah, this guy
is the the less comedic, more competent, more martial arts competent,
and just generally uh handsome and heroic of the two. Yeah.

(33:19):
He and and he's good in this he uh is
another case though, where Mr. Vampire was so successful that
it was I think perhaps hard or impossible or just
you know, just not reasonable to to try and do
anything other than various other vampire films. So Chen went
on to do various vampire films that follow loosely and
this one's wake. He did other stuff to be to

(33:39):
be sure, including some important roles in big Hong Kong
films like tai Chi Master and Fist of Legend. And
he also started in the film Rigor Mortis, which I
have not seen. I think I almost saw it, Like
I think I rented it and never watched it, and
I'm glad that I didn't now because its whole thing
is that it's supposed to be a style, a homage

(34:01):
to the old vampire movies, including Mr. Vampire. So I
feel like a lot of that would have been lost
on me if I just skipped right to the uh
stylish homage, as opposed to you know, watching at least
Mr Vampire. Yeah, better do it. In order, we should
watch all of the Mr. Vampire sequels, then do Encounters
at the Spooky Kind, then watch Rick Mortis. Oh man,

(34:22):
I think our eyes might be bigger than our stomach
on that one. There's so many. Yeah, alright, so that's
the handsome one. But then there's also Dan. I think
his actual character's name is man Cho, I think, but
the the captions and the dubbing refer to him as Dan. Yeah.
And he's played by Ricky who who lived Leven. And

(34:43):
this guy is totally our comic relief character. And he's
he's pretty fabulous. Oh yeah, he's he's an excellent physical
comedy actor. He's got he's got a very funny haircut
in the movie. It kind of he's got a kind
of like one of those sagging bowl cuts that I
think is clearly supposed to look funny. And he's the
out of all the jokes. There's a really funny sequence
towards the end where he is gradually transforming into a vampire,

(35:05):
and in order to prevent the transformation, he has to
keep doing all these things like lying on a bed
of glutinous rice and continually dancing in a in a
ludicrous fashion. Yes, yes, while also having regular freakouts about
what's happening to him. Uh yeah, he's he's great, and
he's our drop. Oh he's this film's drop o, he's
this film's sort of this film's paraco. To draw back

(35:29):
to the Santo picture we discussed, well, I was gonna
generally agree, except I also wonder is this film's paraco
not Billy Lao as why the incompetent policeman. Ultimately, Mr.
Vampire is a is a film with comedy many paraos,
or at least two prominent paricos. You can have two

(35:49):
characters they're they are performed with a broad physical style
of comedic acting that defies all language barriers. I hope
Dan is in all of the Mr. Vampire sequels. He's
he's He's actually not. He seems to this actor seems
to have been successful enough and enough of like a
comedy star, uh that he he reprised it in the

(36:10):
in the movie Mr. Vampire. But otherwise he doesn't seem
to have drunk from the the Mr. V well as
much as as some of the other people involved were.
He he was in several big comedy blockbusters in Hong
Kong back in the seventies and eighties. Now, the next
star in the movie we should probably mention is Moon Lee,
and upon looking at her biography, I was very interested

(36:33):
because in this movie she plays a very uh. She
she's a very passive character. You know, she's the daughter
of the rich businessman who is you know, the beautiful
daughter who is the object of love by several characters.
But it turns out that she actually had a career
mostly doing like stunts and action movies and playing characters
who would blow your head off with a big gun. Yeah, yeah, Moonley,

(36:57):
it seems to have largely been an action character while
and this one she's not. You might be tempted to assume, all,
I guess she's like the damsel in distress, but she's
more just the the necessary female for comedic interaction. Yeah,
she's not really in distress much. She's mostly like hanging out,
hanging out while other characters just act ridiculous. So she
does play some good pranks in the movie though. For example,

(37:20):
when when Master Gow and Dan go to a go
to English style tea to a tea house, uh, to
meet with the rich with her rich father, the businessman Mr.
M she pranks them by convincing them that they're supposed
to drink their coffee and their creams separately because they're
not familiar with the conventions of coffee. Oh, and to

(37:41):
eat the sugar with the spoons separately. And then when
their father comes back, that's what they're doing, and they
look there they are quite ashamed. Yes, but she did
a number of of Hong Kong action movies from the
eighties through the nineties. Yeah, a couple of that came
up for me. And again I'm not familiar with these pictures,
but Fighting Madam Seven, the Avenging Quarter from Yeah, and

(38:04):
she was a stunt performer in addition to being an actress.
It looks like she ended up doing a lot of
you know your your high octane crime thrillers where she
would play a cop with a big gun who hunts
down diamond smugglers or something. And in one movie, I
found one movie she was in that had a title
so good I had to mention it from the year
nineteen ninety in which she co starred with Robin Show.

(38:24):
American audiences might know Robin Show best from movies in
the nineties like Mortal Kombat and which he played Lu
Kang or Beverly Hills Ninja. But you know, he's a
long time the actor who did a lot of a
lot of Chinese action movies and stuff. But the movie
they were in together in nineteen nine is called Fatal Termination.
Moonley is also in Mr. Vampire two from nineteen eighty six,

(38:47):
which makes me think again, the sequels might be worth
a look. I kind of feel like, maybe I'm gonna
watch all of these sequels if I can get my
hands on them. I'm not sure, but it might be
worth it. But also I read that so I mentioned
that she was also a stunt performer. I think at
some point it was either in the late eighties or
early nineties. I read that she was seriously injured performing

(39:09):
a stunt for some action movie she was in, Like
she was supposed to jump out of a window and
then there was an explosion that was supposed to happen
in the room she was jumping out of, but the
pyrotechnics went off early and she was pretty badly burned.
But she she survived and she's apparently doing fine. All right.
We mentioned this next actor briefly, but Billy Law plays

(39:30):
basically the world's worst policeman. Yes, this this character. What's
this character's name again? Why? Why? And he? Yeah? He
he shows up at first, Yeah, he's he's after the
love interest played by moon Lee. Um. But then from
there he just he gets involved in the the investigation

(39:51):
of vampire related murders and just botches everything, botches everything
he touches. Uh. So I couldn't it wasn't able to
find a find a find a birthdate for him by
He seems to be still active as of twenty At
least of as nineteen, he did a lot of comedic
action roles, including Eastern Condors from seven. I think that's
a that's a hung production as well, And I think

(40:12):
if I'm if that's the one I'm thinking of, and
maybe can I think that one might be an ensemble
cast that somehow involves a mission to Vietnam. Um. And
then Billy Low also shows up in a number of
vampire movies, including rid Or Mortis. Another tick in that column. Yeh,
Billy Low is way over the top in this movie.
But he's also he's good. He's very funny. Like I said,

(40:33):
this is a movie of many paricos and uh and
you know what, they played pretty well together in this.
He plays a character with almost every negative characteristic you
could imagine. He's just this like dumb incompetent creep. Yeah,
he's great. Alright. The next actor of note um Uh
Sue Fung Wong plays Jade, who we we spoiler alert,

(40:55):
but we find out she's a ghost. I guess it's
pretty clear early on she's a ghost that she you
know from the first Yeah, she well, she appears being
like brought in in the forest in a kind of
translucent mist, to being being borne by these guys in
strange in strange makeup, and then she flies through the air.
I think, I think it's clear she's a ghost. Yeah,

(41:16):
so she's a She's an actor producer born sixty two,
within a number of films including Love with the Perfect
Stranger from five, Web of Deception, and plus it looks
seems like a fair sprinkling of vampire and supernatural films.
One thing that's funny about her character, So the movie
basically has two major supernatural antagonists. One is the main

(41:39):
vampire and the other is the ghost played by Sufing Wong,
And these two antagonists kind of a running parallel storylines
that are in some cases not even fully intertwined from
what I could tell, except that they involved the same characters.
But then also there's a funny thing about so her
when her true form is revealed by Master Gau towards

(42:00):
the end of the movie. She wears some exceptionally not
good monster makeup that somehow works anyway. It involves a
sort of eyeball and a stalk that juts out of
her half rotten face. Yeah, this is what was interesting
about this to me is that on one level, you
look at it and you're like, oh, well, that that
didn't They didn't quite pull that off, did they. And
yet it does kind of work, and it it reminds

(42:22):
me of the deliberate, uh special effects choices in the
famous Japanese Haunted House movie house, you know, where there
was a deliberate choice by the director to have effects
that were I'm not sure how to describe them exactly,
because I don't want to say shoddy, but almost I
think childlike like like it is if if if you

(42:43):
had only children creating the effects or envisioning the effects.
Thinking about the effects in house, I might say, in
some cases almost kind of stagy, more like the special
effects you would see in a good stage production rather
than in a movie. Yeah, that's a that's a good description.
So I thought about that, and and it made me

(43:03):
sort of contemplate the sometimes thin line between the imperfect
and the and the uncanny. You know, it kind of
comes back to the idea of the hopping vampire, Like,
on one level, it's ridiculous, but it's also unnatural. It's
also uncanny. Yeah, yeah, all right, And finally there there
is an actor by the name of Way Yun who
plays the vampire. Born nineteen fifty. I'm gonna mention him

(43:25):
because he has a hundred He had a hundred nine
three acting credits, including The Landlord and Kung Fu Hustle
from four Oh. He's the guy with the when it's
revealed that he's a kung Fu master. Spoiler sorry, he's
got the floppy rubbery body. Yeah, I think so. It's
been a while since I've seen Kung Fu Hustle, but
but this guy did stunts. In nineteen seventy two is
The Way of the Dragon, starring Bruce Lee and Chuck Norris.

(43:48):
So he's been in tons of things. Have you seen
Way of the Dragon? You know that one? I think
this is one. I probably saw parts of it on
TBS back in the day, but I don't have a
clear memory of it. Of so, you know, brew Lee
had this this short but very memorable run of films
in the early seventies, maybe the late sixties too. I
think maybe the first one was in seventy or so.

(44:08):
But most of them are great martial arts action movies,
but they're very serious. Way of the Dragon is definitely
the most comedy oriented of them. It's the one where
Bruce Lee travels to Rome. It actually takes place in
Italy because he's got a relative who I think he's
running a restaurant there that is being menaced by the mafia,
and then he comes in to defend it from these

(44:30):
these mafia thugs, and so they end up recruiting their
own fighters, such as Chuck Norris. So they bring in
Chuck Norris to defeat Bruce Lee, but Norris doesn't stand
a chance. But anyway, that movie is actually quite silly
as well, because, like I remember, there's a major subplot
in it about Bruce Lee eating too much soup and
then having to go pee a lot. All right, he

(44:52):
doesn't influence his style though, right, it's not like run Master. Yeah,
pp Master. No, it's it's not pp Master. Oh yeah,
maybe I haven't seen that one at all. Main Mainly
I guess that my the main Bruce Lee. Movie I've
seen is of course Entered the Dragon, which is is
pretty serious. One last thing about Way of the Dragon.

(45:14):
Chuck Norris playing this villainous fighter and it has no
facial hair and it's disturbing. Oh yeah, yeah, because he
has known for the beer in the mustache um. Normally,
at this point I mentioned the music. Well, the music
is fine in this is not like the music is offensive.
But the score is credited to one Melody Bank, which
I'm sure is not someone's name. I'm thinking it's just

(45:37):
like a storehouse of music. I don't know, melody like
it is a database or yeah, and they're they're only
five films credited to Melody Bank on on IMDb. Maybe
I'm wrong, but the theme music was composed by Alistair
Monteth Hodge and California born Anders Nelson. So if that

(45:57):
means anything to you, there you go. Now, I guess
here we're getting to the part where we would usually
go into a full plot breakdown. But I was thinking
for talking about this today, just to mix it up
a bit, I thought maybe rather than going scene by

(46:18):
scene in order, I would just sort of lay down
the basic plot situation and then we could mention a
few things throughout the run time that we thought were interesting,
But before I get into that, I did want to
mention the opening scene in detail, because because the opening
scene is fabulous. It really is one of the most
memorable things about the movie, and it really sets the
tone for the movie. So after the credits finish, and

(46:41):
the credits, by the way, are great just because they
have a wonderful green ooze color to them. But two,
once we finally open on the action to someone not
familiar with the conventions of Jong Shei movies, as I
was not really once I started watching this, it's a
very w t F kind of opening because we have
this guy going around who we find out is one
of the assistance of the Taoist priest. But he's going

(47:04):
around with a bunch of incense in this room that
is just covered in magical amulets and trinkets and pieces
of paper with writing on them, things that seem like
they have magical significance in one way or another, and
he is tending to coffins in this room. At first,
I wasn't sure what these objects were, but they're these
It's just these rows of horizontal wooden cylinders you do

(47:27):
find out that their coffins. Yeah, and I was not
really I don't know that I've really seen I don't
know if I've seen these before, but these are depictions
of basically the traditional Chinese style of of casket, which
looks rather different from the Western style. I think it's
my understanding. You still see both used in China. So
if you look up, I can do a Google image

(47:47):
search for Chinese coffins Chinese caskets, you'll likely see some
pictures that include both styles. When you'll see Western variations.
And then also these these more or ornate look king
traditional coffins that are sometimes described as having humps. Yeah,
the humps or I was actually thinking about it like petals,
Like if you look at them end on, they look

(48:09):
kind of like a flower with four petals. Yeah, yeah,
they're quite beautiful. Though of course I can't help but
look at a picture of it. I'm just like, oh, yeah, well,
that one has a Western vampire in it. This one
has a jangshi in it. Um so am I thinking
of That may also be compounded by the by the
fact that I know that there two or more films
in which a Western vampire and an Eastern Vampire meet

(48:33):
in Chinese cinema. That's worth looking up. Yeah, but I
also like that Mr. Vampire does not make you wait
to see vampires. It's not like you've got to get
into the you know, have to have all the magic unleashed.
It's their right from the opening. So while the assistant
is going around doing all this stuff, we see Dan
messing around with the sense uh he He also uncovers

(48:54):
he like peels back a curtain to reveal a boot
camp style lineup of swaying, uncon anxious fiends of some kind. Again,
if you don't know the conventions of the genre, you're like,
you know, wtf what is this? And there again, they're
dressed in this Ching Dynasty era clothing with these hats on,
and there are yellow strips of paper covered in red

(49:16):
writing pinned to their hats so that they hang down
over their faces. Yeah, and these are essentially spells that
are binding them and keeping them from running them up. Yeah. Look,
this movie is to suggest, and I guess this is
somewhat historically accurate, that a lot of Taoist magic rituals
involved like writing a spell on a piece of paper
and then doing something with that paper, like eating it

(49:37):
or putting it on something. Yeah. I mean, ultimately, I
guess it comes down to the magical use of language. Yeah.
And also I noted that the spells tend to be
in I think every case I can think of in
the movie, written in some kind of red color, red ink,
or in some cases in blood. And that made me
think that I do believe it's the case that in
broadly in Chinese culture read is can that are a

(50:00):
lucky or holy color? Right? Yes? And in addition to that,
there are obviously all these amulets and everything everywhere, And
and Dan is going around with a bunch of sticks
of burning incense, and he's he's saying to the corpses
in the in the coffins, He's like, here's your dinner,
time for time, time for supper, and stuffing the incense
into the coffins. Oh, and he also makes clear that

(50:22):
there's a candle burning in front of all the young
chie lined up with the spells over their faces, and
he can't let the candle go out because if the
candle goes out, they will get loose. And he makes
clear he's like, I can't handle all of you, so
I've got to keep you. I don't know what in
a trance or whatever it is. Yes, it's an interesting
place to start, especially again if you have known nothing

(50:43):
about the genre, where you have not just a supernatural element,
but this kind of magical containment, ongoing magical containment and
management of supernatural entities. Right. They regard these particular vampires
that are lined up here not really with utter terror,
but more is like something that you know, you more

(51:03):
like something that you would work with on a regular basis,
so you're not mortified by it, but also you realize
it could be dangerous if you screw up when you're
dealing with it. It's like like handling dangerous chemicals or something. Right,
And so he's going around craming the incense and the coffins,
and then there's there's a really funny part where one
of the coffins, like a skull pops out of it

(51:24):
and bites him on the hand. Um, so I enjoyed
the skull bite. But then there's a good vampire fake out. So, uh,
the Dan gets attacked by what you think is one
of the vampires. It hops at him and menaces him
with fangs. But then oh no, it's like a cat scare.
It turns out that it's not really him. It's his
handsome buddy in a in a makeup I guess like

(51:45):
pranking him, and it comes dangerously close to the film
mistake of making your fake monster look a little bit
too good. Um well, he really does look exactly like
the real ones. So I I was a little confused
when that happened. But it's not too long. Much longer
that you have to wait until you see some more vampires,
and some of them isn't more of the jang xi
that look better, that look more undead. But this, this prank,

(52:10):
you know, prank's pranks in horror movie is just a
bad idea because it of course leads to I don't
remember exactly how they do this, but through some clutzinus,
they end up unleashing all of the jiang chi, like
they knock the I think they knocked the candle over,
and then the strips of writing come off of their
foreheads and then they start hopping around attacking them. So
of course the bumbling students need help from their master.

(52:32):
And these two students that the master they work for
is played by Chinging Lamb. This is the this is
master Gao the hero of the film, and from the
moment you see him, you know he means business. This
is the moment when I noticed the uni brow when
he first comes in, and I was thinking, like, that's
not a funny unibrow, that's a unibrow I respect. Yeah,
he's serious and he he knows what he's doing, like

(52:53):
when he starts fixing the problem, he gets fixed. He's fast,
he's deliberate, he's got the moves. Yeah, speaking of moves.
So it turns in this movie has an interesting combination
of magic and martial arts. So a lot of what MMR.
Gau does to fight the vampires is like doing spells
and rituals and stuff like that, but other things. But

(53:14):
but on the other hand, it's also just like fighting.
It's you know, kicks and punches and standard comedy martial arts.
Maybe not quite as virtuosic as you'd see in like
one of the comedy action movies of Jackie Chan, but
a similar kind of vibe that you know, funny fighting. Yeah. Yeah,
it did remind me of some of the Jackie Chan
films I've seen, where they'll be really great and inventive

(53:35):
use of some sort of a set piece like a chair. Yeah,
there's that. There's at least a little of the of
that in this. And I have to admit I'm not
I'm not well versed enough in Hong Kong action to
know you have if what I'm watching in Mr. Vampire
he is truly great comedy martial arts or if it's
just like really good or even just decent, but it
certainly feels awesome when I'm watching it on screen, like

(53:57):
these are these are well thought out action sequences. Yeah,
same here, I agree. And so there are a lot
of funny things to it, Like one of them is
that actually when Master Gal comes in, there's another Taoist
priest with him, this guy wearing glasses who is at
the beginning and the end of the film, and this
guy together they like I think, what they do is

(54:18):
they bite their fingers and make them bleed, and then
they use the blood on their fingertips to touch the
foreheads of the vampires to essentially pause them, like freeze
them in place. And I think, again, this is because
of either it's something about the blood or it could
have to do with putting the red color on their foreheads.
But but it's funny because they will they will have

(54:40):
to like pause them and unpause them. So, for example,
the other priest, at one point, one of the vampires
is choking him, and he puts the mark on the
vampire's forehead and it freezes the vampire. But now it's
frozen choking him, and he has to wipe it off
and unfreeze him so that he'll get his hands off
of him and then he can freeze him again. Yeah,
there's a there's there's a level of attention shown to

(55:00):
the to the the action in a film like this.
It did not even just to say action, but like
the physical movements, like every physical movement in one of
these scenes is is so elegantly choreographed. It's it's it's
wonderful to watch, right. But eventually they fix all the
malfunctioning vampires. They fix them with martial arts and magic,
and then they send them off with this other priests.
The guy wearing glasses. Uh. And I was wondering at

(55:22):
the beginning, what did this guy like buy a bunch
of jung shi from from Master Gal? But I don't
think so. I think actually he's another priest, and I
think what's happening is he is taking them off somewhere
to be to be given a proper burial so that
they are no longer vampires. Yeah, that was That was
what I got from it too, which which again it
ties in with what we discussed earlier about the origin

(55:44):
of this monster in general, that it it emerges from
anxiety and concern over the improper burial or the lack
of burial for individuals. And so it makes sense that
our Dallas priests here are are they're part of the solution.
They're trying to get these folks buried, putting the uh,
the unruly dead to rest. Yeah. And then and when

(56:05):
he leads them away, like they're hopping, they've got the
they've got the spells back on their faces, so they're
not hopping of their own accord. They're sort of hopping
as directed. They're being obedient now. But other than that,
just to give an idea of the main plot situation.
So after this, Master GW is hired by a wealthy
businessman named Mr Yam to help with a strategic reburial

(56:28):
of Mr. Yam's dead father. And the story is that
a perhaps ski vie or perhaps revenge oriented fortune teller
has prophesied that if Yam that if Master Yam digs
up his father's corpse and buries it in a different place,
this will lead to great fortune. And I think this
great fortune is to be interpreted as money because he

(56:50):
mentions that his business is not doing so well lately.
And then it's also worth noting that Mr Yam has
a beautiful daughter named Ting. This is Moonlely, and then
a nephew named Why who is this guy? We mentioned?
This odious and just magnificently incompetent police commander who is
also romantically obsessed with his cousin Ting. Yeah, he's fabulous.

(57:12):
So Master Gao serves as a kind of ritual magic
consultant for the reburial process of Yam's father, and unfortunately,
once the body is disinterred, Gal notices the telltale signs
of vampiresm that his body is fat and fresh when
it should have been decomposed. So it ends up being
transported to GAO's magical workshop and sealed shut and its

(57:36):
coffin for protection. And I guess for him to ultimately
figure out what to do with it, maybe find a
place to bury it. But of course, you know, in
a movie like this, no coffin can stay sealed, so
the vampire is unleashed, setting off a chain of vampiric
infections and transformations. Mr Yam gets at first, his father
comes to him and vamps him. Then he goes on

(57:56):
a rampage, and uh and and so forth, and there's
this scene of you know how vampire movie goes after
this that the structure is very similar to the vampire movies.
You know, yeah, like there's gonna be cascading effects leading,
you know, emanating out from this master vampire, but eventually
you're gonna have to deal with that master vampire exactly. Meanwhile,

(58:17):
I mentioned there's also this simultaneous plot where the handsome
young hero, one of the two assistants, is targeted by
a malicious ghost who I think attaches to him after
he looks at her tombstone. Yes, yeah, I've never heard
of a ghost targeting somebody in that way before, but

(58:37):
but that seems to be what happens. He like looks
at her tombstone and he hears a voice, and after
that she's just creeping on him. There's this great scene
where he's writing by the cemetery, I think, where he's
riding through the woods on a Is he on a horse, No,
he's not a bicycle. He's on a bicycle, and she
she like ghost flies across the forest. It's a one

(58:57):
one of several wonderful wire based martial arts effects where
she flies through the forest and she she lands gingerly
right on the back of his bicycle, like all right,
I'm with you, now, let's go. But then he does.
He rides underneath a low hanging tree branch and he ducks,
and then the branch hits her and knocks her off
the bicycle. Um which which of course reminded me of

(59:21):
John Carpenter's Big Trouble and a Little China, where we
have the low pon the the ghost of the spirit
entity who passes through a vehicle. But then as also,
you know, we can see that he can pass through things,
but he can also be hit by a truck, very
similar in this film, where this ghost has all these
ghostly powers, but she can also just run smack into
a tree limb. So I wanted to think for a

(59:42):
minute about some of the conventions of of these vampire movies,
because so in Western vampire movies you've got the tropes
that always appear you've got the things that can be
used to defeat the vampire, like you know, steaks, crosses, garlic,
h vampire doesn't show up in a mirror, all those
kinds of things. And this universe seems to have uh

(01:00:02):
similar types of tropes, Like there are things that are
used for ritual magical effect against vampires or things that
seem to be true of the vampires, and I wanted
to try to think about what some of them were.
One that I found very interesting was the power of
glutinous rice. Yuh, this movie uses Master Gal repeatedly uses
sticky rice to ward off vampires or to counteract the

(01:00:26):
effects of a person turning into a vampire when Dan
gets vammed. Yeah, I love this part of the film.
The one hand, it makes perfect sense. It reminds me
a lot of what we talked about with the use
of beans and some cultures as a zooki beans or
or other beans and other cultures used as in a
way to fight back against the supernatural or having some
link to the supernatural. So yeah, I love the idea

(01:00:48):
that that the sticky rice could be utilized in such
a fashion. But this film goes even further by by
asking the question, Well, what happens when an outbreak of
of vampires in your town or city causes, um uh,
a huge demand for sticky rice. How does the local
rice shop owners respond? And in this film, they respond

(01:01:09):
crookedly by cutting of sticky rice with other varieties of rice.
That was one of my favorite parts of the movie. Yeah.
So there's a commodities demand problem. Uh you need all
the sticky rice to fight vampires, and it turns out
regular rice is no good, does not help you at all.
It's got to be sticky rice. And so yeah, there's
a scene where a character is sent to the rice
shop to get a whole bunch of sticky rice to

(01:01:31):
to fight off the vampire. And an unethical rice shop
owner tells his dim witted son, why don't you mix
thirty caddies of of regular rice with the twenty of
sticky rice. They'll never know the difference. And so and
I think the dimwitted sun gets it wrong, but still
does dilute it. Yeah, and of course that is causes
the whole outbreak to get even worse. Uh So, yeah,

(01:01:52):
I definitely love the use of the sticky rice. We
already mentioned the spells, but Master Gal uses a number
of different like holy relics and artifacts to battle. I
think my favorite one that he uses against the vampires
is the glowing dagger, the dagger that is made out
of Chinese coins and infused by the power of the moon. Right,

(01:02:14):
there's a part focuses the power of the moon on
it and it makes it glow. Yeah. I don't know
what to deal with that is, but I thought that
was cool. Yeah. So I mean we I guess, you know,
we we do see some of the similar ideas like
holy elements, elements involving reflections and light um, celestial energy,
you know, solar energy and the more western varieties, but

(01:02:35):
the idea that lunar and energy could be utilized as well.
I like that. Yeah. But there here's one thing. I
don't know if you picked up on this seeming contradiction,
maybe I just don't understand. But um, so, one thing
is it's implied that the vampires are blind and that
they can only detect you by hearing you, right, And
that was the reason that you could hold your breath

(01:02:56):
to hide from the vampire, because if you're not breathe ing,
the vampire can't find you. Or is it that they
smell your breath, because remember there's a scene where Dan
buys himself a few moments of time to escape, which
he you know, doesn't use. He just like gloats, I
think for a second, but he sticks some things in
the young cheese nos in its nostrils can't detect him.

(01:03:18):
Maybe it is the smell, so for it's either hearing
or smell or some combination thereof the vampire can't find
you if you're not breathing, so characters repeatedly hold their
breath for a moment. As the original title says, while
the vampires like looking right in their face, whatever the effect,
it's supposed to not be able to see them. But
also I've read that it's supposed to be a convention
of these stories that the vampires are afraid of their

(01:03:41):
own reflections in a mirror, and I wondered how that
works if they can't actually see So I'm not sure
about that. Maybe it's just something that's not consistent in
the lore, or maybe I don't quite understand well. Also,
the Master Vampire, and this seems to be less limited
when he comes back after his first initial defeat um
because when he comes back, he looks a bit different.
He seems to be looking around with eyes more. He

(01:04:02):
doesn't seem to be as Um is based in scent,
so which raises additional questions about exactly how how these
these these beings work, but they seems to come back
more powerful. So generally in Daoist rituals, is the moon
considered a holy thing that can ward off evil because
I remember there's also a part where Um when the

(01:04:25):
ghost first appears to try to uh, to seduce the
handsome young hero in the forest. Uh. There's a song
that is being sung on the soundtrack and the translation
on the subtitles of the song there is a line
that said, who would want a ghostly bride to worship
the moon with her? I didn't know quite what to

(01:04:46):
make of that, but well, I mean, the moon has
a has been important roles in Chinese mythology, you know,
and is in the place of the elixir of the immortals.
That is a you know, a place where the goddess resides.
It is a place where the where the rabbit lives.
I mean, there's there's a lot of a lot of
cool magical ideas about the moon. Is is not only

(01:05:07):
like an entity but a place in in in Chinese mythology,
whereas I'm not sure that the response that there's as
much about that with the sun. You know, when you
think about prominent solar Chinese myths, I mean, obviously the
one that comes to mind is the shooting of the
surplus suns out of the sky by the Great Archer,
But in that it's like that, it's more like the
sun is an entity or multiple entities that must be

(01:05:29):
dealt with. I'm sure I'm missing something that there's a
lot of Chinese mythology is a broad tent, and uh
likely there's some exceptions to this that I just don't
have in my head at the moment. I guess we
got to wrap up in a minute here. But one
more thing I wanted to do before we did was
the excellent jail scene. I love Yes. So one point
in the movie, Master Gao is framed for the murder

(01:05:52):
of a character. I think it's for the murder of
Mr Yam, the wealthy businessman who hired him, and it
goes like this. He shows up when the body is found,
and why the incompetent policeman is saying, well, he has
holes in his neck, so those must have been caused
by a gun, and then everybody's like, wait, that doesn't
really make sense, and he's like, oh, yeah, that's right, um,

(01:06:14):
because the neck is really torn up. And then he's like,
well it maybe it was caused by someone who is
a martial arts expert, who was an expert in the
ninefold darts. I don't know what that means. I tried
to look that up and I couldn't find anything about it,
so maybe I was not using the right search terms.
But then finally Master Gau reveals it looks like these
holes were actually made by long fingernails, right, so the

(01:06:39):
the vampire like sticks long fingernails in the victim's neck
and then why the Policeman's like, hey, Master Gau, you
have long fingernails. You're under arrest, and then he takes
him back to the jail to torture him for information.
But while he's in his jail cell overnight and repeatedly
getting his head stuck between the bar, the handsome two

(01:07:02):
of his assistants shows up to rescue him, but then
the vampire also comes to life, and then why is
running around causing problems as well. There's a great fight
scene that that that whole part was one of the
best parts of the movie. I agree. But before we
go should we should we discuss the gorilla scene. What
was that supposed to be a gorilla? Okay, so I
think it was Okay, Okay, we're setting the scene here.

(01:07:24):
At one point, the police, I guess, being led by
by why the world's worst policemen are out in the countryside.
They've left the city and they're like on a on
a grassy hill and they find a cave opening, and
the police go out into the cave opening, I think
with their guns drawn, uh, maybe believing that the vampire

(01:07:45):
is in the cave. That That's one thing that's interesting
in this movie. The police are fully on board with
the supernatural villain and they're they're ready to go fight
the vampire with guns. Say what you will about them.
Once it's clear that it's supernatural, they're like, all right, yeah,
we're on board. We'll do what we need to do.
We'll go we'll help go find this thing before it
gets dark and it becomes more powerful. But when they

(01:08:06):
go into the cave chased out by a guerrilla yeah,
chase a guy in a guerrilla suit. Yeah, I mean
I haven't really researched it or anything and see what
what critics have said about it over the years by
but based on just a couple of brief mentions, I
think this was just included as a gag. It's it's
just like a sight gag of like, what if then

(01:08:28):
a guerrilla chased them out of the cave, wouldn't that
be funny? Um? Though it it does seem at least
to my you know, um, you know my eyes. And
again I'm not familiar with all, you know, everything that
would have been considered like normal within comedy at the time,
Like what what makes a normal action comedy in mid
nineteen eighties Hong Kong cinema? Uh Like, so maybe this

(01:08:51):
isn't that far out of line to have a sudden
guerrilla jagg show up, but it felt out of line.
It felt like like where did that come from? I
almost feel like I'm part of one of those those
guerrilla costume experiments where they're they're checking to see if
you're paying attention to the scene. Well deployed random gorilla
is a is a good trick. Yeah, So that scene

(01:09:11):
is just really that's that's a really crazy sequence that
that doesn't have huge bearing on the plot. I guess
that's the other thing. It doesn't really connect to any
other sequence, so you can sort of compartmentalize it is
just one of the one of the police chiefs um
wacky adventures. Have you ever seen the movie Ape? I
think it's just called Ape. It's a bad rip off

(01:09:32):
of King Kong. It's just a giant ape movie. But
the main thing I remember about it, it's been a
long time since I saw it. The main thing I
remember is there's a scene where a guy in a
guerrilla costume just gives the middle finger to the camera
for a solid fifteen seconds. Oh, I've I have seen
that sequence. I believe there was you know, there was
a there was an old film title that came from

(01:09:52):
Hollywood that Dan Ackroyd and John Candy and a number
of folks did, and it had a lot of clips
from old films um and they had a whole section
on guerilla movies that was that was pretty fabulous. And
I remember that APE. I definitely remember that Ape. Okay,
I think maybe we gotta call it there from Mr Vampire. Yeah,
but hopefully we've we've we we've raised everyone's interest level

(01:10:15):
regarding Mr. Vampire. I it's definitely worth seeking out. I look,
I didn't look around much for this. I think there's
some some rips of it out there, but I can't
speak to the quality. There have been various DVD and
Blu Ray releases over the years. The DVD version is
the one that we watched, and we rented it from
Atlanta's own Video Drome, the last video rental store here

(01:10:39):
in Atlanta. But I think you can buy copies of it.
I think it's commercially available. Uh. And I have seen
it on streaming services before, just I don't think currently.
But this stuff changes, so who knows it may become.
Perhaps there's and and it's also possible that there's maybe
a Hong Kong cinema centric service that I'm just not
privy to that would be the ideal placed you go

(01:11:00):
for your Mr. Vampire and Mr Vampire related titles. If
you do end up watching it, be warned in advanced
about content. Uh, it's just worth reading about a bit. Uh.
There's one thing that came to my mind, which is
that there are a couple of scenes in the movie
where it appears that real animals are killed on screen,
like there's a chicken and a and a snake, I
think a dead snake for something. Yeah, I think I

(01:11:24):
read that they the snake that they used was then
made into a soup, which I guess is partially comforting.
But yes, so be aware. But then again I think
it's a good idea if you're if you're looking at
some of these older movies, UM would be aware. In general, Yeah, IMDb.
IMDb has been pretty good for me recently on selections

(01:11:45):
where they have the parental um guidance section, which I
used to just not care about, but especially as a
as a parent, now I care about it. But also
in terms of selecting things for weird house cinema. It's
a great way on at least more well known films
to just trying to just check in and see what
has been flagged. And sometimes it's it's hilariously fun where

(01:12:06):
someone will be like, well, it is implied that a
human is naked in this film. It is not shown,
but it is heavily implied, so beware. Uh. So I
love the uh some of the warnings that are just
a bet over the top like that, But then you
can also if you know, find out if there are
you know, examples of potential animal cruelty or depicted animal
cruelty that you just might not want to watch, even

(01:12:28):
if it uh, you know, even if no animals are harmed.
Sometimes you don't want to see the fictional version of
something either. So I've had good luck with the IMDb
Parental Guidance section. A good idea, used as needed, used
as needed. All Right, We're gonna go ahead and close
the coffin on this one and uh and give it
a proper burial. But who knows, maybe in the future

(01:12:49):
we will be back with more Jangshi action. I have
to admit there is there's at least one title that
has been on my list uh since the beginning of
World Weird How Cinema. We may come back to Weird
How Cinema, of course, is are a Friday episode that
we put out in the Stuff to Blow Your Mind
podcast feed. We're normally a science and culture podcast, and
our core episodes published on Tuesdays and Thursdays. We do

(01:13:12):
a little bit of listener mail on Monday's. We do
the Artifact on Wednesdays, which is a short form episode,
But then Friday is Weird Our Cinema and You can
find all of this wherever you get your podcast. Just
look for the Stuff to Blow your Mind podcast feed.
If you want to get to it quickly, you can
go to stuff to Blow your Mind dot com. That
will sends you over to the I Heart Radio um

(01:13:34):
page for our show, and there's actually a store button
on there. You can go there if you want, and
you can buy some stuff to Blow your Mind merch
and you can actually buy some weird how cinema merch. Now,
as of this recording, the only thing available is a
button no sorry, a sticker or a magnet. But I'm
hoping that we get a shirt in there soon. We
just have to get some other sort of file for

(01:13:55):
that to work properly, so um uh at anyway, check
that out if you're interests huge thanks as always to
our excellent audio producer Seth Nicholas Johnson. If you would
like to get in touch with us with feedback on
this episode or any other to suggest topic for the future,
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(01:14:22):
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