Ching Ying Lam stars as Master Ko, and does a great job of centering the film, bringing an aura of deadly seriousness to the silliness around him. He has great presence and plays the teacher role perfectly. His assistants, played by Siu Hou Chin and Ricky Hui are also perfect, they are both adept at martial arts, and their comic timing is spot on. They're directed by Ricky Lau, who went on to direct a number of sequels and other vampire-related films.
Mr. Vampire is definitely not your typical vampire movie. It is quirky, it is funny, and it is a lot of fun. The film is never scary in the traditional sense, but there are tense moments where you are not sure what may happen next, there is the "infection" of one of the bumbling assistants, and the ghost that loses her head. It is a wildly different movie than what you get in the West, as well as a pioneering one in Hong Kong. It kicked off a stretch of vampire themed horror/comedies, including one titled Vampire vs. Vampire, which pits an Eastern vampire against a Western one.
Daniel Woolstencroft: Near Dark (1987)
There's a supernatural unholy trinity for me: zombies, vampires, and werewolves. In my younger years, vampires were it. As I've grown up, zombies have overtaken them slightly in my affections, but they're still up there — fascinating me like few of cinema's other creatures.
And of all the vampire movies that I love, one stands head and shoulders above the rest — Near Dark. It's a western, it's a horror movie, and it's a love story - and an involving one at that. Central characters Caleb (Adrian Pasdar, prior to learning to fly in Heroes, and living in a cardboard box in Profit) and Mae (Jenny Wright) make an attractive couple, and the chemistry is immediate and compelling.
It's not long after Caleb and Mae meet that the rest of Mae's "family" show up. After she inadvertently turns Caleb into one their own, the family grudgingly (now there's an understatement) take him in, and it's up to Mae to teach him to kill; to feed. The family is one of the key things that makes Near Dark such a work of art.
Aliens co-stars Bill Paxton (Severen), Jenette Goldstein (Diamondback), and the mighty Lance Henriksen (Jesse) play three members of the vampire clan. The previously mentioned Wright, and Joshua John Miller - as the child-vampire Homer (mispronounce it and I wouldn't wanna be you) - round out the vampiric cast, and Tim Thomerson - something of an icon himself for me when I first saw Near Dark thanks to his role as Jack Deth in Trancers - plays Caleb's father.
Article comments
1 - El Bicho
No "Love at First Bite"?