Yat mei dou yan

April 2021

Vampire Vs Vampire, another likeable as ever Mr Vampire sequel with Lam Ching YIng once again starring.

Sandra Ng and Billy Lau also star to supply plenty of comedy along with the horror and action elements.

Again a must watch.

9 out of 10.

Lam Ching-Ying is one of the coolest Hong Kong action actors ever!

But most of you don't seem to realize that. This film has some great action scenes and it's funny too! Go get it!

Interesting to see the star of the Mr. Vampire series; the unibrowed taoist priest himself, Lam Ching-Ying star/direct this unofficial spin-off Mr Vampire film. I enjoyed it, especially since this time around they take on a Western Vampire instead of the Chinese hopping vampires. Though there is one, a kid vampire, mainly played for laughs ala Mr Vampire 2. The supernatural element of the story can be off-the-rocker, probably more so than the previous Mr Vampire entries. At times episodic (with the amount of entities they encounter) and a touch drawn out, but the last half-hour is where it really comes to life.

Lam Ching Ying plays yet another Taoist priest (this time with a monobrow) in yet another Chinese vampire film. There's the expected hopping vampire in the form of a little kid who chirps like a chick, but this one also chucks in a whole load of other supernatural nonsense, including a female palm tree ghost, evil bats that terrorise some nuns, the spirit of a dead woman who possesses the priest's apprentices, and a Western Dracula-style bloodsucker who is revived by a stupid army captain. All of this is presented in such a chaotic fashion that it proves hard to follow. And if, like me, you struggle with Chinese comedy, the film's constant silly humour goes to make this even more of a chore to sit through.

From the opening scene in which a toothy, slimy monster oozes from a jar, to the ending in which two frogs with glowing Chinese symbols on their skin hop out of some quicksand, I was totally perplexed and not very amused.

3/10. Watch Mr. Vampire instead.

Chinese exorcist One-Eyebrow Priest (Lam Ching-ying) leads a peaceful life with two disciples Ah Ho (Chin Siu-ho) and Ah Fong (David Lui) in a small town together with a mischievous miniature jiangshi. While finding new water sources one day, the priest encounters a European vampire in the nearby church who is aided by a dead countess. Although the priest manages to get rid of the countess, his Chinese exorcism fails on the European vampire.

The title refers to the interaction between a jiangshi child, a creature from Chinese "hopping" corpse fiction, and a British vampire based on Western vampire fiction. The latter one is quite a formidable and scary foe, and appears in the last 28 minutes. That's when the film preps up, otherwise the rest has pace issues, isn't as focused as the first four official Mr Vampire films. Even the humour is flat, however there's good imaginative scenes, especially featuring the baby vampire. Some of the action scenes such as the crossing the dodgy bridge are well done.