Carry On Kung Fu Exorcist

In 1985, Ricky Lau’s hopping vampire movie was a seminal moment in Hong Kong cinema, deftly blending Western cinematographic techniques with Chinese myths to create a popular classic

Mr Vampire Dir Ricky Lau, Hong Kong 1985 Eureka, £19.99 (Blu-ray)

In the early 1970s, most of the Chinese language films seen in the West were kung-fu action stories, with an occasional wu xia epic and very few outright fantasies. Between Zu Warriors (1983) and A Chinese Ghost Story (1987) the filmic exploration of supernatural fiction suffered quite a dearth; surprising, really, considering the significant profile of such stories in Chinese literature.

One anthology of supernatural tales — the Liaozhai Zhiyi, otherwise known as Strange Stories from a Chinese Studio — has been regularly plundered and adapted for modern Chinese audiences since it was compiled in the 17th century. While its principal stories enshrine archaic myths and beliefs about spirits, magic and the transmigration of souls, it contains no bloodthirsty vampires as the West imagines them. Instead, its dominant trope is the sad fate of female spirits — sometimes humans wronged in love or life, sometimes evil or lovelorn fox or tree spirits — who waylay men and drain them of their life force. In their case it is chi — the essence of life energy — not blood they are after.

Where other directors aligned their work with highbrow historical literature, Ricky Lau’s direction of Mr Vampire is entirely rooted in the magical rituals of ‘street’ Daoism practised daily by most of his ordinary cinemagoing audiences. His ‘vampires’, while more Western, were still hungry for chi instead of blood, and, to the bewilderment of the western audiences, they hopped! (Hopping ghosts are an ancient type throughout the Far East)

The story concerns a rich family who commission a professional exorcist to rebury an ancestor and ward off ensuing bad luck. During the exhumation, it is discovered that the previous burial was incompetent and has turned the ancestor into a ‘vampire lord’. A classic farce ensues as the Daoist exorcist and his inept team subdue the increasing number of vampires. Adding to the mayhem, the young men compete for the family’s pretty but naive daughter, while an inadvertently awakened fox spirit lustfully pursues one of the assistants.

It had all the ingredients of an exotic Whitehall farce – think ‘Carry On Kung Fu Exorcist’ – but the way the plots interconnected while spiralling chaotically out of control delighted the homegrown audience. Farce works best with character stereotypes, as this film demonstrates. It is Lam ChingYing who is most memorable; despite his expertise in martial arts and stunt work, he reveals a surprising talent for comedy. His po-faced magician ‘Master Gau’ is the perfect straight man for his hapless assistants and their knockabout antics. A close second is Ricky Hui’s simple-minded and well-intentioned but bumbling assistant ‘Man Choi’, to me a sort of Chinese incarnation of Norman Wisdom.

During this period, the West began taking an interest in kung-fu movies, while at the same time Hong Kong cinema was incorporating more Western themes and techniques into its home-grown productions. This is nowhere better demonstrated than the scene in Mr Vampire in which ‘Master Gau’ and his team go to a ‘foreign’ coffee shop for the first time and are baffled by the Western etiquette of drinking coffee with milk and sugar. In effect, it dramatised, in a fascinating way, both Chinese curiosity about everyday Western manners and the way these were being assimilated into their own everyday culture.

More importantly, Mr Vampire had the audacity to make fun of ‘street’ Daoism and its rituals, so important to the daily life of the Chinese. When Steve Moore and I first saw the film (in some Wardour Street preview room) we were surprised (joyfully) by the gentle mockery of the yellow paper talismans, the spasmodic finger gestures and daft joss-stick lore (beware of the ‘one long, two short’ configuration).

With Mr Vampire, Ricky Lau created a franchise that spawned four sequels between 1986 and 1992. In each, Lau directed and Lam Ching-Ying reprised ‘Master Gau’, his magisterial, mono-browed, Daoist magician. Indeed, Lam seems to have created a stereotype that Chinese audiences quickly embraced; so much so that his overly serious and self-promoting exorcist was shamelessly expropriated by other, later films.

This remaster of a seminal and still hugely enjoyable classic is extremely welcome.

Bob Rickard

★★★★★

Ricky Lau’s film is rooted in the magical rituals of ‘street’ Daoism