Zac: Hi, I'm Zac Lutz, co-President of the SPA Film Club.
RF: I'm Randall Findlay, adviser of the SPA Film Club.
Zac: And we're here to discuss Mr. Vampire, a 1980s Hong Kong martial arts vampire comedy horror flick starring Ching-Ying Lam, who has made over 90 martial arts films including Gui Meng Jao, Mi Zong Cheng Long, and Huang Fei-hong Xi Lie Zhi Yi Dai Shi.
RF: Wow. I didn't know you spoke Chinese. What's Mr. Vampire about?
Zac: Mr. Vampire is a movie that is both exciting and funny while still trying to be nothing but itself, something that seems increasingly rare in modern film. It is about a man, who is a sort of vampire-expert priest guy in charge of the morgue and who sports an aggressive uni-brow. It's also about his two assistants, whose names are strangely very American. The two assistants are quite easy to relate to, as they keep on trying to do their work right, but constantly mess up or fool around, and yet the morgue master guy keeps them around for some reason.
RF: Man, you're right about that uni-brow. I see that the sequel to this movie, and there are five, is entitled One-Eyebrow Priest. And he's a great martial arts master. But he does leave a lot be desired when it comes to hiring employees. The whole plot in Mr. Vampire is moved along by the incompetence of the people who work for him.
Zac: In a way, this seems to be a sort of underlying idea, that despite the comically bumbling nature of the assistants, the morgue master guy still sees how they try so hard to please him, and most of the time they manage to do things right. All of the characters in Mr. Vampire work together very well, and their relationships to one another are definitely believable.
RF: It is interesting that you would say that. After all, the genre of this film is fantasy. I mean, hopping vampires, seductive ghosts, bumbling servants who release zombies because they're screwing around rather than doing their job! Realism is a noun I wouldn't have applied to this film, or the others in the same genre, like Sammo Hung's Close Encounters of the Spooky Kind.
Zac: As far as that goes, there aren't really any parts that seem cheesily unrealistic except for the ghost lady who shows up a bit later and a bit randomly.
RF: Point taken. I remember the first time I saw the film. I saw the vampires hopping, and I started laughing out loud. I thought it was so funny. But at the same time, it's a little creepy. How would you rate this film?
Zac: The vampires themselves are actually fairly menacing, and their stiff hopping seems quite natural as far as how a dead person might move. Overall, the story is easy to follow, although the beginning is a bit confusing, as well as the introduction of the ghost lady, and some of the translations are rather abrupt.
RF: Speaking of abrupt, that's all the time we have. Enjoy the film!
Zac Lutz and R. Findlay
Film Club
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