From the land of Kung-Fu, overacting and cheap ceramic figurines (otherwise known as Hong Kong) comes this crazy ass monster movie involving high impact fights, wacky slapstick, and of course, the series's defining characteristic: HOPPING VAMPIRES! Yes, hopping vampires. For those of you who aren't students of Hong Kong horror, vampires are ALWAYS hopping... at least in accordance to the two Hong Kong vampire flicks I've ever seen (this film and VAMPIRE RAIDERS: NINJA QUEEN). Why do they hop? What am I, a fucking historian?! I just said they hop, I never offered an explanation you greedy fucks! Now, if you're done trying to guilt trip me into doing all your work for you, let's get on with the review.

We open in a small town temple, where the local mortician/priest, Master Gau operates his funerary business and plays Ghostbusters on the side. His two bumbling apprentices, Man Choi and Chou, inadvertently release 8 hopping vampires from a trance... WHAT KIND OF FUNERAL HOME IS THIS!? Before the two stooges can pay for their misfortune with their lives, their mustachioed master intervenes. Gau goes wacky Kung-Fu on the Asian Nosferatus, laying on them a General Zso's Chicken style beat down! The zombie pogo people are immobilized by spots of red paint slapped on their foreheads by the fast flying fists of fury. After they've all been tranced, the bounding demons are lined up and strips of yellow toilet paper with ancient Chinese magic scrawled on them are tacked to the ghouls' heads, putting them back into a subservient state so their master (some unfriendly dude in a long, yellow robe and funny hat) can lead them away with his little ice cream man bell. Even the Undead enjoy Master Ping's supper happy fun-sicles! HAHA! The gang also lights some candles and burns some incense, though I figure that's more for cleaning up the air than it is for ritual reasons. After all, while doing all that high impact kung-fu stuff you don't exactly get the focus required for proper bowel control, so that's when the rice decides to come back on you with a vengeance!

Following the misfortune, Master Gau takes Man with him to a coffee lunch ("English Tea") with a big wig fancy pants named Mr. Yam to discuss important business. Comedy of a culturally confused basis ensues. Later, the Three Stooges (Gau=Moe, Chou=Larry, Man Choi=Shemp) dig up Mr. Yam's dead father so they may move the body and bury it properly. Something about good luck, bad ju-ju and vertical burials I think. However, while at the cemetery, bad omens appear, pointing to seriously not-good karma for the House of Yam (as opposed to the bad karma I get after eating at the House of Pancakes). If the source of the problem is Mr. Yam's lovely daughter Ting-Ting (don't know if I could ever take a woman named Ting-Ting serious, no matter how dire the straits... if there's a bad Dire Straits joke, well, I've probably told it!), then Man and Chou have the solution: a wedding! Weddings are always good luck for everyone involved... unless of course it's Shanon Dougherty's... especially if you're the groom... damn her and her crooked eyes... Upon exhuming the body of Yam Sr., Master Gau notices that despite 20 years in the ground, the corpse is nearly flawless from the day it was first buried! The only difference being skin tone and REALLY long fingernails: obviously both signs that Yam Sr. is indeed a vampire! Taking Grandpa Yam back to their temple, Gau whips up some special anti-zombie ink and has the sidekicks scrawl magic symbols and some kind of soul net design on the casket, which should hold fast the disturbed monster inside until Gau can come up with a better plan to take care of Count Yamula. As with all cultures, the Chinese have their own explanation for why people come back as vampires. As Master Gau tells us, the dead come back for fresh air. See, when someone chokes to death, the air trapped in their lungs at the time of death becomes stagnant and the body needs to cough it up and get some clean Oxygen in there... leave it to the Chinese to make creatures as dangerous and enigmatic as vampires into a fucked up joke.

Back to the Ting-Ting wedding thing, Man and Chou's antics in attempting to get into her good graces are funny, namely the little voodoo act they pull with Ting's incestually inclined cousin. Basically they take control of his body and make him look like a bigger ass than even the Lord of The Asses, known to 1-800-CALL-ATT users as Carrot Top. What a dumbass... Meanwhile, Old Man Yamenheimer has indeed returned as a bloodsucking pogo person, escaping his imprisonment in the casket and returning to his old digs to get a bite! Well, at least he keeps this whole vampirism a family affair... "Family Affair"?! They could make a sequel called Mr. French Vampire! Yeah, and he could slap around those little brat kids. How's this for a peanut butter and jelly sandwich, you freakish little ass goblins! RAAAAAAAAAARGH! Heh heh, as I was saying, the killer Yam goes home and feeds on his own son. When the authorities (headed by Yam Jr.'s jackass voodoo nephew) arrive, they chalk up the puncture wounds on the dead Yam's neck as the result of a very accurate dart attack... these guys make the Columbo look like Dick Tracy... When Master Gau arrives and interjects the theory that it may in fact be a vampire's long fingernails behind the killing, his furrowed uni-brow is taken into custody on account of his own extensive scrotum scratchers! Now, if he doesn't confess to the murder of Yam Jr., he'll be dealt with Chinese secret police style: the Chinese symbol for "villainous" will be branded into his forehead! Looks like Master Gau's caught between a rock and a white hot piece of wrought iron! Can his students save him, or can we start investing in facial foundation and Bactine stocks? Knowing Chou and Man Choi, I'd say it's time to talk to my online trader...

The night following Gau's imprisonment, Yam Jr. also returns as a bouncing fanged beasty, causing havoc in the jail and another undead jack rabbit kung-fu wacky crazy fest breaks out! Gau's not alone though, as Chou has come to break him out! The carnivorous corpse winds up dispatched with a wooden sword through his heart, then torched with magic flash paper to be properly disposed of. Back at the Yam household, Yam Sr. has returned to get a taste of his suck-ulent young granddaughter! The hopping mad monster's got competition though, as Man Choi stands between the ghoul and his midnight snack! After evading the beast for a while, the now released Master Gau and Chou show up to add to the fun, invoking yet another fine example of why there need to be more kung-fu horror flicks! After all the hopping and brawling, Yam Sr. ultimately escapes, leaving young Man Choi injured and infected with the vampire curse! Now Master Gau must cure him of the disease before he too joins the ranks of the plasma hungry zombie bouncers. How do you prevent hopping vampirism? Well, Man will have to keep active to keep his blood from slowing down and hardening. Whereas I would just line up a bunch of Hong Kong's finest $4 hookers, Man instead options to dance around like a crippled chicken with a 1000 volt electrode up it's ass... diff'rent strokes for diff'rent folks... and please, no "wha'choo talkin' 'bout?!" jokes. Man must also walk around on a bed of sticky rice, which should absorb the evil through his feet... I'm not asking. The Chinese culture is very strange and confusing to Western Gaijins like myself, so I'll just sit back and enjoy what I do understand.

While Man, Master Gau and Ting-Ting try to stymie the infection as much as possible, Chou runs into a far better torment, as he's seduced by a beautiful ghost slut named Jade, who saps him of his strength in the most pleasant way possible! Afterwards he returns to Master Gau's place with the sticky rice. Unfortunately for Man though, the infection is unavoidable, as he becomes a vampire as well, all thanx to a rice salesman who cuts a few too many corners. The following night Gau follows Chou as he returns to the succubus Jade's house for some more spiritual lovin'. To save his student from the ghost's seductive ways, Master G must thwart her with his supernatural martial arts magic. Before he can defeat the dead chick though, the sex starved Chou interferes, attacking his own master in his libido induced madness! Jade escapes and Master Gau takes Chou back home, where he's tied to a chair to restrain him from returning to Jade's parasitic embrace. I'll say she's a parasite alright, I bet she sucks like a leech! Man, Master Gau is one bad-ass mortician! Not only does he have to battle unruly hopping fiends and save his naive sidekicks, but now he's gotta deal with a deadly succubus! He's gotta be the toughest corpse handler this side of the Tall Man! Now there's an interesting thought, Master Gau vs. the Tall Man... Jade follows our heroes to their home, where she again tries to seduce Chou. But, since the stooge is bound she'll have to deal with an ass stomping from Master G (who would hand Master P a red-ass beat down)! As for Chou, he's got trouble with Man Choi, whose vampirism has gotten the better of him, causing him to attack his fellow apprentice! Remember, Chou's still tied to a chair too, so it just gets worse for him... makes you wonder why the fuck he'd want to be a mortician in the first place! And there's still Yam Sr. to deal with!

Master Gau wins his battle with the head tossing Jade, sending her away once more, ordering her to forget about his henchstooge Chou. Finally taking care of that little distraction, Gau then bathes Man Choi in a large cauldron of sticky rice soup for ghoul gumbo... oh wait, he's just cleansing his body of foreign something or other, etc. etc. etc. Now, with the little side projects behind him, Master Gau can turn his ass whoopin' to the greater evil: Republicans! And, uhm, of course by Republicans I'm talking about the evil Count Yamula, who's been sneaking around the countryside raping sheep and eating small children for the past few days... not unlike a Republican now that I think about it... Yam Sr. comes for his showdown with Master Gau, and after a very nice bout of Jackie Chan style redecorating (including another appearance by the pussy in the yellow robe and his gang of useless hopping vampire slaves), Yam Sr. is finally burned dead-alive and all the hopping hand-to-hand is halted as everyone's favorite heroic priest/mortician saves the day. Two words: CRAZY SHIT!

Hong Kong flicks are always fun, but when you add in Three Stooges slapstick antics and the notorious horror (and visual humor) of hopping vampire ghost zombies, you can't lose! As with all foreign films, the big problem with reviewing MR. VAMPIRE is that I can't give sound judgment to the acting. This is a plus because I can't say it's horrible and therefore deduct brownie points, however I can't soundly tack on the points needed for a perfect rating. So, I have to give MR. VAMPIRE a 4 face rating based on the cool action sequences, the humor and the all around enjoyment of the whole film. MR. VAMPIRE is like a Hong Kong FRIDAY THE 13TH, popular enough to spawn 4 or 5 sequels as of this review! There's also the NEW MR. VAMPIRE and NEW MR. VAMPIRE 2 movies, though I think they stand separate from this series, seeing as how they were made between the actual MR. VAMPIRE sequels. If you can find the original MR. VAMPIRE, I say buy it! Hell, I only paid $6 for a VCD copy! And the program to play it on my computer? FREE! And the cost of the computer? I stole it! Uhm, scratch that...

Also Known As: MR. STIFF CORPSE

Sequels: MR. VAMPIRE 2; MR. VAMPIRE 3; MR. VAMPIRE 4; MR. VAMPIRE 5; MR. VAMPIRE 1992

If You Liked This Flick, Check Out: VAMPIRE RAIDERS: NINJA QUEEN or FEARLESS HYENA