It's "Mr Vampire" meets "The God Must Crazy"! As fun as that sounds, I was a bit disappointed with the movie. Don't worry I'm getting to the Bruceploitation stuff. Lam Ching Ying is hired by Leo to transport his ancestor, a Chinese mummy back to HK. Along the way the plane goes down in Africa. The vampire meets up with N!xau, yes it's THE guy from "The Gods Must Crazy". The vampire unwittingly helps N!xau fight some gweilos and their African henchman. N!xau takes the vampire back to the village where it becomes the protector of the village. Meanwhile Lam Ching Ying and the whiny guy have various encounters with a lion, rhino, monkeys, and an ostrich. The two meet up with N!xau and his friends and it results with Lam Ching Ying having a giant snake swallow his leg. Lam Ching Ying gets into various cross-cultural hijinks while in the village. After they discover the vampire, N!xau leads them back to civilization. The gweilos come to the village with their African henchmen. This time they've brought a witch doctor and his African zombie. The Chinese vampire defeats the African zombie and everyone starts fighting. Of course Lam Ching Ying, N!xau, and the vampire win.
The movie had it's moments, but still I felt it could've been better. But still where else are you gonna see Lam Ching Ying chase monkeys, ride an ostrich, and run around trying to take a dump. I dunno, do you? I was hoping for more magic, vampire fun, and more kung fu. You gots to have the kung fu! The main problem I had was that people where always talking, but I had no idea what was being said. Yeah, the VCD was subtitled, but whenever the African spoke they weren't subbed. Also the movie was narrated by Stephen Chow and Ng Man Tat, but they weren't subbed either. Only the Chinese actors were subbed. At times the movie comes off cartoony with sped up motions and cartoon sound effects like "BOING" and "BONK". Sometimes it works and sometimes it doesn't. It rate this movie as a middle of the road, it has a few good sequences to lift it from the boring pile, but not enough to put it in the kick ass pile. And yes, the coke bottle returns.
Okay the website is called Bruceploitation, and I'm gettin' there alright! At the end when everyone is running fighting the bad guys, Lam Ching Ying gets hit by an arrow, so he can't fight. N!xau is being chased by bunch of the African henchmen. Leo drops a bunch of pictures, one of them is Bruce Lee. Lam Ching Ying uses the picture to channel the spirit and power of Bruce Lee into N!xau. The Enter the Dragon theme starts up and shows various clips of Bruce Lee. N!xau lets out a Bruce Lee cry and opens a can of whup ass on the bad guys. As he kicks and punches it cuts to clips of Bruce Lee doing the same moves. After disposing of the bad guys, Lam Ching Ying releases the spirit of Bruce Lee from N!xau who then thumbs his nose at Lam Ching Ying. This sequence was pretty funny and probably the highlight of the film. N!xau is definitely no screen fighter and was obviously doubled, but still it looks good. They used footage from various Bruce Lee movies. I'd have to watch it closely to pick out all the scenes, but I definitely recognized scenes from The Big Boss and Fist of Fury. In the footage they removed the background and just kept Bruce and/or whoever he was pounding on. Then they changed the colors to make it look softer, kinda like it was glowing or ghostly. Watching N!xau bust out the Bruce Lee poses is hilarious.
Reviewed by Keith