The original Sammo Hung produced Hopping Vampire movie, Mr Vampire was released in 1985 with a jolly nice Eureka Classics UK Blu-ray issue in 2022. Now Eureka have followed up their bouncing baby with a Hopping Mad a collection of all four official sequels in stunning new restored versions on Blu.
So lets leap in (see what I did there) with Mr Vampire II (aka Vampire Family 1986). Set in contemporary Hong Kong and once again produced but not starring Sammo Hung, Mr Vampire II opens with Kwok (Chung Fat), an archeologist and his two incompetent assistants excavating a tomb and discovering the coffins of three vampires one male, one female and the other a child. Greedily assessing the worth of the three bodies on the black market they are loaded onto a trick and whisked back to Kwok’s lab only the child vampire escapes and makes friends with some human children who mistake him for an immigrant from the mainland call him OK Boy). Back in the lab Kwok’s sidekicks accidentally revive the two vampires and one of them gets bitten. To get his bite seen to the poor fellow goes to see Dr Lam ( Lam Ching-ying) who just happens to be a bit of a Van Helsing and it’s up to him and his daughter Gigi (Moon Lee) and her boyfriend Yen (Yuen Biao) to hunt down the vampires and render the streets of Hong Kong safe.
Mr Vampire II is a pretty crazy knockabout Hong Kong comedy horror complete with the obligatory trousers down gags and some nicely choreographed kung fu fighting, but I’m marking it down for the irritating kids so we give it a 555/666.
In Mr Vampire III (1987) we are back to the China of the interwar years where Lucky Stars star Richard Ng is a confidence trickster posing as a Taoist priest extorting money from householders to exorcise their homes which he has haunted with his pair of pet ghosts who pose as hopping vampires. This is fine until he finds himself in a village under attack from the Devil Lady (Pauline Yuk-Wan Wong) and her gang of supernatural bandits, and gets conscripted into the resistance by the headman Uncle Nine (Lam Ching-ying again). I thoroughly enjoyed Mr Vampire III, sure the humour was often a bit juvenile, but it has lovely atmospheric production design, the score by Anders Neisson and Stephen Shing is as intense as the best of James Bernard for Hammer and the action sequences, especially those with horses are quite breathtaking. We give it a 666/666.
Now in Mr Vampire IV (aka Uncle Vampire 1988) we have a bespectacled Taoist priest (Anthony Chan) who in those unenlightened 80s was known as Four Eyes and a Yat-yau Buddhist monk (Wu Ma) living next door to each other. They can’t stand each other but their apprentices Jing Jing (Loletta Lee) and Kar Lok (Chin Kar-lok) are sweet on each other, which is difficult because Four Eyes and Yat-yau spend all their time trying to prank each other. So all’s well until a funerary procession passes through town with the coffin of a Jiangshi or Hopping Vampire. A storm ensures that the magic talisman keeping the vampire dormant is washed away and the vamp goes on the loose. Only Four Eyes and Yat-yau can save the day by teaming up to kill the vampire, but can they put their differences aside?
Full of daft slapstick humour Mr Vampire IV is quite fun, but not as anywhere as funny as Mr Vampire III and the lower budget shows in the production design and effects. It does however demonstrate the origin of the Jiangshi legend when you see a group of corpses being moved cross country their arms attached to twin poles and also features a gorgeous lady ghost, so we give Mr Vampire IV a 555/666.
Finally in Vampire V Vampire (1989) we find Buddhist exorcist One-Eyebrow Priest (Lam Ching-ying) leading a peaceful life in a small village with his two apprentices Ah Ho (Chin Siu-ho) and Ah Fong (David Lui) and a mischievous child Jiangshi. Unfortunately at the local Catholic convent has the undead body of a European vampire in it and One-Eyebrow’s Chinese knowledge is of little help in vanquishing his Transylvanian foe. Vampire V Vampire has nice production design and a few laughs, but we are on a spiral of diminishing returns with these films However it still merits a 555/666.
Hopping Mad: the Mr Vampire Sequels is presented as part of the Eureka Classics range in its UK Blu-ray debut. Available from 22 May 2023, the first print run of 2000 copies featured a Limited-Edition O-card Slipcase and Collector’s Booklet. Hopping Mad: the Mr Vampire Sequels is out now from Eureka Classics and you can buy it from, the Eureka online store here.
SPECIAL EDITION TWO-DISC BLU-RAY FEATURES INCLUDE:
Limited Edition O-Card slipcase featuring new artwork by Darren Wheeling (First Print Run of 2000 copies)| Mr Vampire II and Mr Vampire III presented in 1080p HD from brand new 2K restorations | Mr Vampire IV and Vampire vs Vampire presented in 1080p HD from brand new HD restorations | Cantonese and English audio options on all films | Optional English Subtitles for all films, newly translated for this release | Brand new feature length audio commentaries on Mr Vampire II and Vampire vs Vampire by Asian film expert Frank Djeng (NY Asian Film Festival) | Brand new feature length audio commentaries on Mr Vampire III and Mr Vampire IV by action cinema experts Mike Leeder & Arne Venema | Brand new video piece on the history and resurgent popularity of the jiangshi genre | Reversible sleeve featuring original poster art | Trailers | PLUS: A Limited Edition collector’s booklet featuring new writing on the films and the Jiangshi genre by James Oliver (First Print Run of 2000 copies) |
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