Weirdhouse Cinema Rewind: Mr. Vampire

This is a really fun flick. Yeah. It always has a great uh Taoist priest who who who knows all the spells to keep the dead from reviving? Uh, yeah, it's It's a lot of fun. So this one originally published on July nine, and we hope you enjoyed this Weird House Cinema rewind. Welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind production of My Heart Radio. Hey, welcome to Weird House Cinema. This is Rob Lamb and I'm Joe McCormick.

And today we are hopping into the world of Daoist sorcery, Hong Kong monsters, glutinous rice, martial arts, and and much more with our very first Jong 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 because I think I was in the same boat as you. I I knew about Jan She. I knew they they existed in in Chinese folklore as as being this kind of vampire, kind of zombie zombie creature with with unique characteristics all their own. But I'd never watched a Jiangshi movie. Uh Though, interestingly enough, right this was before you brought up the 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 Jiangshi monsters. It's a in in Dungeons and Dragons. It's a ninth level undead entity with the power to drain the energy of its victims and a shape shift, so young she 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 around like, well, which which youngshi movies should we do? And the signs increasingly pointed to Mr Vampire from five 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 across to

to Uh to the West as well. So 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 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 title was it translates to like hold your breath for a moment or something. Ah, 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 young she 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 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. 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 She cycle. So let's talk for just a little bit about the young She because some of you may 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. 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, jang She literally means the stiff or the rigid dead, and uh and and and the reason for that will become clear when we start talking about how they move, especially, 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 ahead you see several figures in the gloom. Who are they? Are they fellow travelers, perhaps headed to where you're going, or coming from the opposite direction, maybe there 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 bipedal locomotion, and forced to 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 Chain dynasty, decayed corpses, burning with unnatural life. And as they hop, they reach out towards you with elongated finger nails, they gasp with bloody thing tooth jaws, and if they catch you, they will drain every last ounce

of precious chee from your body. 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 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 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 to 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. 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 Yangshi. 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. 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 read rand Acry. 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. 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 jiang Xi seemed to emerge out of a Ching Dynasty 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 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 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, 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 necessarily like immediately discarded, but it might be put somewhere and then 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. 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 fort fortune teller seemingly with some kind of coercion for the for the purchase because it was said to 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 rights and the burial of the body seems to be at the root of whatever

black magic causes the vampire to begin with. Yeah, and that that plays right into this this historical setting out of which it emerges this idea that that that the 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, while the 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 in dealing with the dead, but it perceived cultural decline and funeral custom and and even a decline in devotion to to one's ancestors, which has an enormous cultural significance. Well, this is another thing I would 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 in it, really and it's set during so it was made in the nineteen eighties, but it's set during 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 and you know, 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 who wants to have his ancestor reburied, which again, this is one of 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 inter pritty 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 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 the sense that master Gal 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. Were gonna again that I'm not okay, all right? So that is, I believe 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 I really enjoyed the original language more. I was gonna 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 even if you don't speak

can't and he 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 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. 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 his befitting of a horror comedy. But it's a careful line to walk, like how do you make your hero buffoonish enough but also a 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 Low was born in nineteen nine and Mr. Vampire is is his big hit. I mean it was

a huge hit. So he went on to do and is still doing plenty of films in this vein h including The Romance of the Vampires in nineteen and more recently Dallas Prieste, a film starring Sue Ho Chin, one of the stars from Mr. Vampire. This this is a trend. We'll see a lot. Who is Sue Ho Chen in Mr Vampire. He's the handsome assistant. Uh and we'll get to him in a second. 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 was largely hands off with Mr. Vampire. But we have to point out that Samuel Hung was the producer. Um, and I think everybody's heard of Sama Hung. He's one of the he's one of the big his 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 been in it's been 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

about Jung Shi or is it about something else? I am not entirely sure, but one of the same writers was involved in it. Um, so I know that it has 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 book called Spooky Encounter It's a Guilo's Guide to Hong Kong Horror by Daniel O'Brien, and in that O'Brien says that that

Hung wasn't was. Samohung was inspired by stories that his mother told him when he was a child, as well as a particular story from Poushsong Ling's Tales from a Chinese Studio, which I was excited to 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, the one. The story is called the resurrect Or. No, not the Resurrector Corps, the Resuscitated Corps. Yes, I believe you're right, and it's uh. I was. I was improuded. So the thing about Pooh song links stories is that they 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 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 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 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 that they can't stay outside and there's no it must be an inn because basically 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, right, very very good, very cool. And this is of course getting into the idea, you know, 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 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 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. 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 and he ducks the other side, and 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 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. The end. And that's the great thing about this 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 air of authenticity. Or it ends with something like that, saying like where it was 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 com edy car right, alright. So a couple of the screenwriters were just gonna blow through here kind of quickly, but they were accomplished screenwriters. There's 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 who lived, who worked on such films as Fight Back to School starring Stephen Chow, and two 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 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 would seem to me. Now, the story on this film came from Ying Wong, who was born in nineteen sixty eight. And I don't know much about Ying 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 seven, 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. Uh,

not you know, our Ghostbusters, but in general Ghostbusters. Most notably, however, Wong co wrote the that other earlier important Hong Kong supernatural comedy Encounters of the Spooky Kind uh that starred Semo Hung in nineteen eighty. 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 Mr Gao 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, and he has a pretty interesting history. 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 Semohunk's the Stunt Team and the two 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 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 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 going to get chinging lamb uh. Though though he also did I want to point out he did. Look it does look like 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 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, 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 unibrow of respect. Yeah, I I was thinking about this, and I think you're right, it seems to be sternness. I can't really tell how comedic it's supposed still 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 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, 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 monta brow is considered a desirable trade. It's considered very handsome or beautiful to

have a single brow. Yeah, it's definitely gonna gonna range across time and uh in space, I think specifically, especially in some like Central Asian culture as a unit 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 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 brows 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,

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 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, 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 characters that came up was a poet by the name of Lee He who lived 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. 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 uh you 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 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 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 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, 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 a good collection of translations of Chinese poetry across the ages. David Hinton's book is awesome. Alright, well 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, Chao Shing, the handsome one, is played by That's exactly right, he is the handsome one.

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

he and uh he's good in this he Uh. It's 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 in this one's wake. He did other stuff to be to 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 twenty thirteen 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 stylish homage

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 twenty keen 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 to the Spooky Kind, then watch Reportis. Oh, man, 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 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 butt of all the jokes. There's a really funny sequence towards the end where he is gradually transforming into a vampire, 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 the film's paraco. To draw back to the Santo picture we discussed, well, I was gonna generally agree, except I also wonder is this film's paraco not Billy law as why the incompetent policeman. Ultimately, Mr Vampire is a is a film with comedy to have

many paracos, or at least two prominent paraicos. You can have two characters that are that 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 rep rised it

in the 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 because in this movie she plays a

very uh she she is 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, it seems to have largely been an action character, while in this one she's not.

You might be tempted to assume O. I guess she's like the damsel in distress, but she's more just 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. Yeah. So she does play

some good pranks in the movie though. For example, when when master Gow and Dan go to a go to English style te 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 eat the sugar with the spoons separately. And then when their father comes back, that's what they're doing, and they

look they're they're 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 from seven, The Avenging Quarter from Yeah, and she was a stunt performer in addition to being an actress. It looks like she ended up doing a lot of you know 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 the had a title so good I had to mention it from the year nineteen ninety, in which she co starred with Robin Show. American audiences might know Robin Show best from movies in the nineties like Mortal Kombat, in which he played Luke 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 eighties six, 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 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 uh, basically the world's worst policeman. Yes, this this character? What's this character's name again? Why? Why? And hey? Yeah he he shows up at first, Yeah he's he's after the love interest played by moon Ley Um. But then from there he just he gets involved in the the investigation of vampire related murders and just botches everything, botches everything

he touches. Uh. So I couldn't It wasn't able to find a found a find a birthdate for him, but 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 I think that's though that's a hung production as well, And I think if i'm if that's the one I'm thinking of, and maybe 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, this is a movie of many pericos 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 su Fon Wong plays Jade, who we we spoiler alert, but we find out she's a ghost. I guess it's pretty clear early on she's a ghost. The first Yeah, she well, she appears being like brought in in the forest in a kind of translucent mist to being being born by these guy eyes in strange h in strange makeup, and then she flies through the air. I think, I

think it's clear she's a ghost. Yeah, so she's a She's an actor, producer born two, within a number of films including Love with the Perfect Stranger from Web 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 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 Gao towards 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 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 had only children creating the effects or envisioning the effects. Thinking about the effects in the 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 it made me sort of contemplate the sometimes thin line between the imperfect and the and the canny. 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 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. 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, Bruce 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. But most of them a 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 is running a restaurant there that is being menaced by the mafia, and then he comes in to defend it from these 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 doesn't influence his style though, right, it's not like Drunken Master. Yeah, Pep Master. No, it's it's not Pep Master. Yeah. Maybe I haven't seen that one at all, main mainly, I guess. But 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. Chuck Norris playing this villainous fighter and it has no facial hair and it's disturbing. Oh yeah, yeah, because he's 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 like a storehouse of music. I don't know, melody like

it is a database. 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 means anything

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

Uh So, after the credits finish, and the credits, by the way, are great, just because they have a wonderful green ooze color to them, but too 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 around with a bunch of incense in this room that is just covered in magical amulets and 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 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. It's my understanding. You still see both used in China, So if you look up like you do a Google image search for Chinese coffins

Chinese caskets. You'll likely see some pictures that include both styles, where you'll see Western variations, and then also these these more or ornate looking traditional coffins that are sometimes described as having humps. Yeah, the humps, or I was actually thinking about it like pedals, Like if you look at the end on they look 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, and this one has uh Jiangshi 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 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 them. Since uh he he also uncovers he like peels back a curtain to reveal a boot camp style lineup of swaying unconscious fiends of some kind. Again, if you don't know the conventions of the genre, you're like, you know,

W T F, 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 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 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, red is considered a 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 dinner, and time for supper, and stuffing the incense

into the coffins. Oh, and he also makes clear that 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. Yeah, So it's an interesting place to to start, especially again if you have known nothing 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 like something that you would work with on a regular basis, so you're not mortified by it, but also you really as 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 cramming 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 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 body in a in a makeup I guess like pranking him, and he 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 jeanshi that

look better, that look more undead. But this this prank, you know, prank's, prank's and 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 clutziness, they end up unleashing all of the jiang chi like they knocked 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.

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 unibrow 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 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 Mr Gau does to fight the the vampires is like doing spells and rituals and stuff like that, but other things. But 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 use of some sort of a set piece like a chair. Yeah, there's there's at least a little 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 these are these are well thought out action sequences that really zing. 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 an another Taoist priest with him, this guy wearing glasses who is at the beginning and the end of the film, and this guy uh together they like I think, what they do is 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 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 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 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 of this monster in general, that it it emerges from anxiety and concern over the improper burial, where 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 he leads them away like they're hopping, they've got the they've got the spell us 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 Gao is hired by a wealthy businessman named Mr Yam to help with a strategic reburial

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 Mr 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 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. 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 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 a rampage, and uh and and so forth, and there's this chain 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 eating, you know, emanating out from this master vampire. But eventually

you're gonna have to deal with that master vampire exactly. Meanwhile, 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. I believe, so, yes, yeah, I've never heard of a ghost targeting somebody in that way before, but 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, or he's riding through the woods on a Is he on a horse, No, he's not. He's not a bicycle, and she she like ghost flies across the forest. It's a one 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 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 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, uh, vampire doesn't show up in a mirror, all those kinds of things. And this universe seems to have similar types of tropes, like there are things that are used for ritual magical effect against vampires or things that seemed 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. Uh. This movie uses Master Gal repeatedly uses sticky rice to ward off vampires or to counteract the effects of a person turning into a vampire when Dan gets fammed. Yeah, I love this part of the film one hand. It makes perfect sense. It reminds me a lot of what we talked about with the use of beans in some cultures as a weighty Zooki beans or or other beans in 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 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 a goodly 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 to fight off the vampire, and an unethical rice shop owner tells his dimwitted 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 just causes the whole outbreak to get even worse. So yeah, I definitely love to use 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 the is made out of

Chinese coins and infused by the power of the moon. Right, 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 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 the idea that lunar 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 to hide from the vampire, because if you're not breathing, the vampire can't find you.

Or is it that they smell your breath? Because remember this the 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 knows in its nostrils can't detect him. 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 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, and he doesn't seem to be as Um is based in scent, so which raises additional questions about exact really how how these these these beings work. But but they it 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 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 was a line that said, who would want a ghostly bride to worship the moon

with her? I didn't know quite what to make of that, but well, I mean, the moon has a has been important roles in Chinese mythology, you know, and is the you know, 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 a lot of a lot of cool

magical ideas about the moon. Is is not only like an entity but a place 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 that it's more like the sun is an entity or multiple entities that must be

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 gotta 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 of a character. I think it's for the murder of 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, way, that doesn't really make sense, and he's like, oh, yeah, that's right, um, 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, but 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 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 bars, the handsome two 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. Seeing 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. 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

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. Yes, 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 go into the cave chased out by a gorilla up

like 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 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 isn't that far out of line to have a sudden guerrilla jag 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 guerrilla is a is a good trick. Yeah, so that scene 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 chief's wacky adventures. Have you ever seen the movie Ape? I think it's just called Ape. It's a bad rip off 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. Yeah, there was a there was an old film title that came from 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 guerrilla movies that

was that was pretty fabulous. And I remember that ape. I definitely remember that ape. Okay, I think maybe we got a call it there from Mr Vampire. Yeah, but hopefully we've we've we we've raised everyone's interest level regarding Mr Vampire. I I it's definitely worth seeking out. I 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 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 place to go for your Mr. Vampire and Mr Vampire related titles. If you do end up watching it, be warned in advanced about content. Uh. Just where 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 there's a dead snake for something. Yeah. I think I read that they the snake that they used was then made into a soup, which I guess is

partially comforting. But yeah, 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 in general. Yeah, IMDb. IMDb has been pretty good for me recently on selections 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 ol cinema, it's a great way, on at least more well known films to just try to just check in and see what has been flagged. And sometimes it's it's hilariously fun where someone will be like, well, it is implied that a human and his 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 bit over the top like that. But then you can also, 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 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 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.

In our core episodes published on Tuesdays and Thursdays, we do 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 podcasts. 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 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 that to work properly, so um uh at anyway, check that out if you're interested. 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, just to say hello, you can email us at contact at stuff to Blow your Mind dot com. Stuff to

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