Mr. Vampire
Mr. Vampire
殭屍先生
Overview
"A Taoist priest and his two inept assistants are hired to rebury a wealthy family's patriarch. However, the corpse has reanimated as a Jiangshi (hopping vampire). The undead creature escapes, biting its own son, and the team must use a bizarre array of spiritual tools, spells, and martial arts to stop the infection."
Iconic Tracked Scenes
- ▶
The team frantically tries to hold their breath in a dark room to render themselves invisible to the blind, leaping vampires constantly hopping past them.
"holding breath from vampire""hopping vampires mortuary" - ▶
Master Kau utilizes a complex array of Taoist tools—including a wooden sword, chanted spells, and yellow paper talismans—to paralyze the undead.
"fighting with taoist magic""paper talismans" - ▶
The assistants accidentally mix regular rice with sticky rice, causing their anti-vampire defenses to fail catastrophically during a major attack on the house.
"sticky rice defense""vampire attacks the house"
Why It's Remembered
- ★Holding their breath in the mortuary to hide from the hopping vampires.
- ★The intense supernatural fights using wooden swords, blood ink, and sticky rice.
- ★The romantic subplot involving a beautiful but dangerous female ghost.
Cultural Context
- ◈Launched the massive 'Jiangshi' (hopping vampire/zombie) subgenre in Hong Kong cinema.
- ◈Solidified the specific folklore rules of the genre: holding your breath makes you invisible to vampires, sticky rice burns them, and paper talismans freeze them.
- ◈Star Lam Ching-Ying became irrevocably typecast as the definitive Taoist Priest action hero for the rest of his career.
About the Action Elements
Mr. Vampire is widely celebrated among martial arts cinema fans for sequences involving holding breath, hopping, jiangshi, comedy, suspense. One of the most memorable sequences features Lam Ching-Ying naturally executing holding breath from vampire, where the choreography and unique set pieces become the unexpected highlight of the film.