MR. VAMPIRE
A film review by Mark R. Leeper
Copyright 1994 Mark R. Leeper
I recently have had a much appreciated opportunity to see three horror films from Hong Kong: MR. VAMPIRE, A CHINESE GHOST STORY, and CHINESE GHOST STORY II. They were fun films, somewhat similar to each other in approach. Each was heavy on the comedy aspects. Generally I don't care much for comedy in horror, particularly slapstick. But I am told that Chinese audiences really expect it and it would not be a Chinese horror film without being tongue-in-cheek. While horror does not get in the way of the comedy, in my opinion comedy often damages or destroys the impact of the horror. In each of these films the result is a horror film that works no better (though certainly no worse) than ABBOTT AND COSTELLO MEET FRANKENSTEIN. While these films have the pacing that a KWAIDAN lacks, they could afford take themselves a little more seriously like KWAIDAN does. Perhaps what I would enjoy most is something between the Hong Kong approach and the KWAIDAN approach. It would be nice if Hong Kong were making films of the style of Hammer Films of Britain, but that just isn't their style and probably not what their audiences want.
MR. VAMPIRE--which would more aptly be called MR. HOPPING GHOST--has the novelty of adding a new folklore monster to the horror film, at least new to us Americans. I have, though, read a little about Chinese Hopping Ghosts. The idea is that in most dead the Po--that is the soul--has departed for the next world. But some corpses die with unfinished business, for example if the body has not been buried in the corpse's home town. In such circumstances the Po will stay in the corpse, which will then not decay. For even more the corpse may get up and walk. And when it walks it will have superhuman strength and will kill any mortals it can get its hands on. Rigor mortis will, however, make the stiff, well ... stiff. It will be too stiff to walk, but will be able to manage a hop. That is why a hopping ghost hops. So as an American seeing MR. VAMPIRE you have to be part cultural detective as well as being a film fan. But some of the images are as eerie for me as they would be for someone raised with the culture. Some perhaps even more so since they are such alien images. The film opens with a scene of a row of hopping ghosts standing in a monastery, each with a prayer paper seemingly tacked over its face. I suspect it is as weird for me, not knowing what it meant as it would be for someone who did. Perhaps a bit more.
Some of the fun of seeing this film, and it is fun though faint subtitles also make it also hard work, is in trying to figure out the rules that apply to hopping ghosts. If you are being stalked you can make yourself safe as long as you neither move nor breathe. Apparently they home in on their victim's breath. (How long can YOU hold your breath?) They can be stopped by putting some sort of inscription on a piece of paper and attaching it to the hopping ghost's forehead. I don't know what the inscription says since I don't read Chinese, but I think it is a kind of death prayer. They cannot walk on uncooked sticky rice, probably because it absorbs things around it (which is why restaurants will put some rice in with the salt in shakers). They are repelled by inscriptions written with a mixture of Chinese ink and chicken blood. You kill them by burning them coffin and all. So they do have some characteristics in common with cinema vampires but they are not vampiric--they do not seem to suck blood. Instead they strangle and mutilate.
I will say a bit less about CHINESE GHOST STORY 1 & 2 since they are a somewhat better known in this country already. In some ways they borrow a lot from the EVIL DEAD films but they have a panache all their own. A sort of ne'er-do-well happens upon a haunted monastery and soon is facing ghosts and Chinese demons. Eventually he is has a guide through this world in the form of a Taoist master who sings an amusing song that is a sort of commercial for Tao. They are sucked into another world where mythical figures battle. It is fast paced with variable special effects but always watchable. Again the worst touch is the poor subtitles, but much of the action transcends the language barrier. Again, as with MR. VAMPIRE, there is a disadvantage for the Western viewer in that the rules of this universe are foreign. But like spiciness in some Chinese food, for some the foreign-ness of the mythology will be a disadvantage and for others it will be the main advantage and the greatest attraction.
When I was about six years old there was a foreign-language movie theater in the town I lived in. I think it was Polish, but I don't remember for sure. And I found that frustrating because I imagined they had their equivalent of Godzilla films and I was missing them because there was this language barrier between me and the films. As I got older many of these mis-impressions became obvious to me and I realized I wasn't missing a whole lot of great monster movies because I knew only one language. Well, what I am discovering is that my fears were not so foolish, they just were premature. Today in Asia there are a lot of good fantasy films being made, many of which just are not making it to America for years or perhaps never make it. So far there are relatively few films I would miss, but the number is clearly growing.
Mark R. Leeper
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