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Mr Vampire cast: Chin Siu-lo, Lam Ching-ying, and Moon Lee director: Ricky Lau 94 minutes (15) 1985 widescreen ratio 1.85:1 Hong Kong Legends DVD Region 2 retail RATING: 8/10 reviewed by Emma French |
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Lam Ching-ying gives a stand out performance as a cool-headed Taoist priest responsible for managing the unruly walking corpses. His handsome assistant Chin Siu-lo provides the love interest with the sexy female ghost Moon Lee. Lee's rabid sexuality and fascination with human seduction places her closer to the traditional Western vampire than the bloodsuckers themselves, who are strange creatures, hopping in unison, speechless and blind. The whole film has the same pleasant shock of making the familiar strange, much like Michel Foucault's famous extracts of animal definitions from a Chinese dictionary at the beginning of his seminal work The Order Of Things. What translates less effectively, as is often the case, are the frequent slapstick comic moments. Though part of a tradition of such scenes in Hong Kong cinema, Ching-ying's discomfiture at the etiquette of an English teahouse or the botched wooing techniques of the local PC Plod simply don't cross cultures with the same success as the suspense and gore. More broadly, the ambitious generic mix of horror, comedy and chop-socky action at times falls flat.
The notable DVD extras include an optional audio commentary by Bey Logan, a globally renowned expert on Hong Kong film. The audio commentary is an unusual feature and an extremely worthwhile one in this context as it situates the film for viewers who may be unfamiliar with the Hong Kong horror movie genre. The high calibre of this release rests as much upon its impressive range of extras as it does on the film itself. The lengthy biography of martial arts legend Lam Ching-ying, who died tragically young at age 45 of liver cancer, is fascinating, though in frustratingly small font. Amongst many interesting facts, the best is that Ching-ying mentored Michelle Yeoh at the beginning of her extraordinary transition from classical dancer to action star. In addition to two trailers, the UK promo trailer and the original Hong Kong theatrical trailer, two long and information-packed cast interviews with Chin Siu-lo and Moon Lee grant insight into the lengthy, gruelling and often dangerous filming process. At a time when the ambition of DVD extras is a matter of some debate, this disc provides a powerful argument for including what amounts to a crash course in Hong Kong cinema for beginners, and the extras encourage both repeat viewing of the feature film and exploration of similar titles.