Mr. Vampire

A country town. The head of a wealthy family wants his father's grave moved; the site is said to be unlucky. The grave is opened and the body has not decayed in twenty years. That is a bad sign. Before long the dead man stands up and starts moving about in hops. The town's Taoist master, Uncle Nine, has to deal with it along with his two useless students. Ricky Lau directs. Lam Ching-ying plays Uncle Nine. It is the best known of the films that carried the jiangshi figure of Chinese folklore into cinema. These creatures move by hopping, find the living by smell and are stopped with a written charm stuck to the forehead; after this film those rules became the standard of the genre. The production uses horror, comedy and martial arts at once and counts among the most successful examples of Hong Kong's practice of mixing genres. It was a large commercial success and was followed by many sequels and imitations. Lam Ching-ying became identified with the part and played similar characters for the rest of his career. The effects are practical: wires, makeup and choreography. There is no computer work, and that gives the scenes a physical weight. Who it is for: viewers who like Hong Kong genre cinema and eighties horror comedy. Who it is not for: the humour is coarse, the women have no function, and some of the rules look arbitrary without knowledge of the folklore.