Mr. Vampire

"Mr. Vampire" is bar none one of the most imaginative, entertaining, and creative stories ever committed to film. In this movie, Master Gau (Ching-Ying Lam), and his two bumbling students, Chou (Siu-hou Chin) and Man (Ricky Hui), deal with the awakened corpse of a man whose body has been buried inauspiciously. The hopping ghost goes on rampage through the town, killing several innocent bystanders. Add to this mix a bumbling cop who, under pressure to apprehend this heinous murderer, decides that one suspect is as good as another and arrests Master Gau. Throw in a ghostly romance and a zombie-on-zombie mêlée and you have one of the East's cinematic masterpieces.

Aside from the truly awe inspiring wire work, gymnastics, acrobatics, and martial arts displays, Mr. Vampire also gives us characters whose company we truly enjoy. In another refreshing turn, verbal wit plays as much a role in the humor of this movie as the Buster Keatonesque slapstick.

Buy it, rent it, do whatever you have to in order to see this. One viewing will hardly be enough.

One hundred out of ten - quite possibly one of the best of its genre and no doubt one of the best ever.

This film has to be one of the most entertaining of all time. There are great fight sequences and a great story and acting. The best part would have to be comedy. I've never laughed so much watching any film. Watch for the scene with the dead uncle and the perverted police officer. It is for me, the funniest scene ever filmed.

I'll say this right now. I'm not a fan, or a follower of kung fu movies, Chinese or otherwise.

That being said, this movie is incredible. It is a perfect blend of slapstick physical comedy, one liners, martial arts, and Chinese superstition. Mr. Vampire is genuinely funny, but not at all in a campy "So bad it's good" way at all. Fight scenes are good and often amusing, but are not the focus of the film.

Some people despise dubbing in foreign films. Having watched both subtitled and dubbed, I'd say the dubbing is funnier. For a complete laugh riot with the DVD, watch both. the jokes made in both versions are quite different, and seeing the way the two interpretations differ is funny in and of itself. The mood of some scenes are distinctly different.

All in all, the film is spectacular. Anyone who likes physical or witty humor which is snappy (but not cheap) should watch Mr. Vampire. Fans of Most Extreme Elimination Challenge will love the dubbing especially.

I do not lie.

This movie is perfect on every count. Its funny, clever, action packed, great musical score, thrilling, scary. You name it, its got it.

Everyone should see this movie. Lam Ching Ying is perfect (as usual) so go watch it now!

The extremely polished production here may obscure one of the film's major virtues. This is pure ensemble movie-making, there are no "auteurs" or "artistes" here. The most recognizable actors in the film - Lam Chi Ying, Chin Siu-hou, Moon Lee, Wu Ma - turn in what were for them(at the time) very uncharacteristic performances, and do so splendidly.

In fact, there is no "star" here, these actors are all taking turns with extraordinary grace as characters who at best "bumble through", and at worst fumble like, well, pretty much like any average person faced with exceptional challenges (how often does one get saved from a rotting zombie by an amorous ghost?).

Despite the stunts, and regardless of its genre origins, this is not a"kung-fu" film, but a top-notch horror-comedy on a par with Polanski'sunderrated "Fearless Vampire killers" and superior to "Abbot & Costello meet Frankenstein" (which admittedly set the standard, after all). Two plus-values in favor of this film: It provides a lot of information about Chinese vampires, ghosts, and zombies (and their traditional remedies), but does so visually or casually, without the heavy-handed verbal explanation frequent in western horror films. And there is an incredibly haunting children's song (!) about a love-lorn female ghost that is wisely used over the closing credits and which is unforgettable. Indeed, the only weakness in the construction of the film is that we really want to know more about the broken-hearted ghost of the sub-plot than the vampire-centered plot allows. Fortunately, Ching Siu Tung apparently also noticed this, and devoted an entire three-film series to investigating the problem, the remarkable "Chinese Ghost Story" trilogy; but Ching Siu Tung is exactly the kind of "auteur" that would weigh a film like "Mr. Vampire" with intellectual burdens its "pure entertainment"-directed plotting simply couldn't bear. "Mr. Vampire" is not a "work-of-art-for-the-ages", but it is a lot of fun, and spooky to boot, and on that level works as really great movie making, regardless of genre or "ethnic origin".