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Synopsis: Late one night at a Chinese mortuary, one of the apprentices is sweeping up among the vampires that are stored there. He is creeped out, but the vampires remain frozen in place by the Buddhist prayers pasted to their foreheads. Suddenly, he is attacked by a freely moving vampire. He beats the vampire off, only to discover that it is the OTHER mortuary apprentice having fun with him--but during the scuffle, some of the real vampires have been awakened. The masters of the mortuary rush in to the rescue and order is restored. The next day, one of the masters and one of the apprentices meet with Mr. Lam and his gorgeous niece to arrange to have Mr. Lam's father's remains removed to another grave, the grave he is currently in having been spoiled by an irate fortune teller. Things are bad and Mr. Lam's ancestor is moved to the mortuary for safe keeping. Unfortunately, the late Mr. Lam is well on his way to becoming a vampire. Meanwhile, a ghost girl from the spoiled cemetary has latched on to one of the mortuary attendants. Precautions are taken, but not carefully enough, and soon our idiot apprentices are in deep trouble from the powerful vampire that the late Mr. Lam has become and from the ghost girl, who proves to be impressively seductive. Much kung-fu, comedy, and horror ensue....

One of the strangest experiences an American film-goer will ever have is sitting through a Hong Kong Action Horror Movie for the first time. HK horror movies fall into two categories: the repulsive and the insane. The repulsive HK horror movies are those films that go for the throat with gore and violence--the most notorious of these is probably Dr. Lam (a decidedly sick rip-off of The Silence of the Lambs).  Often, the insane Hong Kong horror movie is indistinguishable from insane Hong Kong fantasy movies. Movies as diverse as Ann Hui's Witch from Nepal, Ching Tsui-Tung's Chinese Ghost Story films, or any given Tsui Hark movie (Zu: Warriors from Magic Mountain, We Are Going to Eat You, The Butterfly Murders) will have varying horror and fantasy content, as well as liberal doses of knock-about comedy and  soft-core eroticism. The insane are often charming. Mr. Vampire and its sequels fall squarely in this tradition.

The vampires in Mr. Vampire have a good deal in common with George Romero's zombies--they appear to be mindless. Their primary means of locomotion is hopping. They can be stopped by pasting Buddhist prayers to their foreheads or by specially prepared "sticky rice." The film is a living breathing avatar of the Hong Kong horror movie, in which a witch's head just won't stay attached to her body, The master of the temple is constantly bailing out his idiot pupils, and the bad guy isn't truly defeated until he explodes. To an extent, Hong Kong horror movies are close kin to Sam Raimi's Evil Dead movies (memorably described by Joe Bob Briggs as "spam in a cabin"), which feature the same carnival of weird camera angles, sickening gore, and slapstick. If one is not used to this sort of thing, it can take some patience to sit through since it's not always apparent what reactions the filmmakers want to elicit.

I'm not going to claim that Mr. Vampire, or any Hong Kong horror movie for that matter, is essential viewing. It isn't. Is it entertaining? Sure. But it doesn't resonated down to the base of the spine the way a good horror movie ought, nor is it funny enough to make the cut as effective comedy. The combination works pretty well and it's a strange experience, but I can't help but wonder if horror and comedy work at cross purposes here.