Showing posts with label Mr Vampire. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Mr Vampire. Show all posts
Saturday, April 27, 2024
Mr Vampire - Lam Ching-ying (1985) - Lung Yeuk Tau, Fanling
We are back to the open space next to the Tang Chung Ling Ancestral Hall and Tin Hau temple in Fanling. As mentioned previously, it was a very popular filming location throughout the 70s and 80s and it appears once again. In Mr Vampire we see it during the scene where a recently discovered victim of the hopping "Jiangshi" is immediately cremated. The cremation pyre was constructed in the area that is now a public carpark.
Friday, April 26, 2024
Mr Vampire - Lam Ching-ying (1985) - Nr Wong Chuk Yeung, Sai Kung
Once again I have Jonathan Ross to thank for my introduction to Mr Vampire as it was one of the movies screened on Channel 4 in 1990 for the short run of "Chinese Ghost Stories". This wasn't long after Ross's "Incredibly Strange Film Show" that featured the likes of Tsui Hark and Jackie Chan, so it was a boon to UK-based HK film fans at the time.
The film really stands the test of time and it's such a shame that Lam Ching-ying died so young (age 43) in 1996. Lam stars as Uncle Ko, a Taoist priest, who runs a funerary and spiritual services business in a small Chinese town. He's employed by a wealthy businessman to exhume his father's body for reburial but on exhumation discovers that the corpse has not decomposed and is most likely a vampire/zombie. The vampire (played by a heavily prosthetically disguised Yuen Wah) subsequently breaks loose and wreaks havoc on the town before Ko and his two novices are able to defeat it. There's also a small subplot that involves one of Ko's novices (played by Chin Siu-ho) getting seduced by a ghost (Pauline Wong).
According to wikipedia, most of the sets were constructed in Taipei including the houses and the temple where the film's characters live, as well as the red brick street that features in a few of the scenes. Watching the film it's quite obvious that the street set was based on the red brick buildings that can still be found on Di Hua Street today (you may remember a post I did on The Sand Pebbles). However, there are at least two locations in Hong Kong that I can identify and so worthy of posting about here. The first will be very familiar because I have covered it a few times in recent weeks - it's the flat area of ground near to the fire lookout at Wong Chuk Yeung. This is the scene when the coffin containing the vampire is first exhumed. The grave was obviously a prop. The last but one image shows the view looking north towards Tolo Harbour, showing a similar view to the one seen in The Blood Brothers (in that link see the second image down of David Chiang).
This is the view looking towards Tolo Harbour in the north
The film really stands the test of time and it's such a shame that Lam Ching-ying died so young (age 43) in 1996. Lam stars as Uncle Ko, a Taoist priest, who runs a funerary and spiritual services business in a small Chinese town. He's employed by a wealthy businessman to exhume his father's body for reburial but on exhumation discovers that the corpse has not decomposed and is most likely a vampire/zombie. The vampire (played by a heavily prosthetically disguised Yuen Wah) subsequently breaks loose and wreaks havoc on the town before Ko and his two novices are able to defeat it. There's also a small subplot that involves one of Ko's novices (played by Chin Siu-ho) getting seduced by a ghost (Pauline Wong).
According to wikipedia, most of the sets were constructed in Taipei including the houses and the temple where the film's characters live, as well as the red brick street that features in a few of the scenes. Watching the film it's quite obvious that the street set was based on the red brick buildings that can still be found on Di Hua Street today (you may remember a post I did on The Sand Pebbles). However, there are at least two locations in Hong Kong that I can identify and so worthy of posting about here. The first will be very familiar because I have covered it a few times in recent weeks - it's the flat area of ground near to the fire lookout at Wong Chuk Yeung. This is the scene when the coffin containing the vampire is first exhumed. The grave was obviously a prop. The last but one image shows the view looking north towards Tolo Harbour, showing a similar view to the one seen in The Blood Brothers (in that link see the second image down of David Chiang).
This is the view looking towards Tolo Harbour in the north
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