Mr. Vampire II (1986)

This is the first, unofficial sequel of 1985's Mr. Vampire. The movie's events are set in modern times. A group of explorers steal three corpses from an ancient cave and plan to sell them for a large amount of money. Unfortunately, they do not know that the corpses are actually a family of vampires and, after taking them to Hong Kong, they revive and threaten to wreak havoc on mankind.The two adult vampires, played by Wing-Cheung Cheung and Pauline Wang Yu-Huan, are the menaces while the child vampire, played by Kin-Wai Ho, is a harmless and friendly creature who befriended two children in the city. The subplot of the child vampire and the children distracts from the main plot a little, but fortunately, the kiddie scenes do not take too much screen time. The main plot involves local herbs Master Lam, played by Lam Ching Ying, discovering that one of the explorers was bitten by a vampire and goes to investigate with his daughter, played by Moon Lee, and future photographer son-in-law, played by Yuen Biao. What follows is what I think the highlight of the movie - the three protagonists go head-to-head with the adult vampires in slow motion (a jar of "retarder" accidentally spills onto them, resulting in slowed movements). Composer Anders Nelsson provided a wonderful piece of orchestral music score, inserting music to action and comedy scenes where appropriate.What depletes from this film are the Kung-Fu action. Being a movie with martial arts stars like Lam Ching Ying and Yuen Biao, more Kung-Fu sequences would have made this movie more entertaining. And, a bunch of popular Hong Kong actors made cameos in the movie and I wished more of them would have been given more screen time. I also wished the adult vampires would have been portrayed as a little more menacing - they are after all supposed to be a threat to mankind. Overall, a more sub-par movie of the Hong Kong vampire/ghost genre, but still an OK and pretty fun movie to past the time on a slow Saturday night.Grade B-

No story relation to the first but also starring Lam Ching Ying and Moon Lee, along with Yuen Biao, one of the three well-known members of the Painted Faces group. Like Jackie Chan and Sammo Hung, he's a gifted comedian as well. Unfortunately, like all sequels rushed out to capitalize on the success of the first, this movie is quite unoriginal in its humor and what's worse is that it includes a (vampire) child, probably to make the movie more accessible to children and grandparents. There is nothing for the kid to do except "act cute" and the villains aren't really even villains 'coz they're just vampire parents who want their child back. The fight scenes are decent but they made a main one really stupid by having everyone move in slow motion.

This film is a complete change in tone from "Mr. Vampire". This sequel is really only an extension of the vampire-gone-loose idea, and is set in modern times. We have very little brought from the original, and what is brought (Lam Ching-Ying), is quite dis-connected anyway.That said, this film is quite odd. Lam Ching-Ying is excellent as usual as the kind of hard-case Taoist priest, and we seem him up against vampires in the usual sense. Yuen Biao is quite under-used as the Taoist Priest's off-sider, and is quite clumsy and reluctant to engage in kung-fu technique it seems. I was waiting for him to really do something but it never really came for me. Most of this film is wrestling back and forth with a pair of vampires.The vampires are portrayed (for my tastes), as too human. Whereas in Mr. Vampire 1, the corpse is sort of without personality, and has ceased being human, the vampires in this film are really portrayed as a family unit. We are asked to sympathise with them quite often.Do not expect anything like Mr. Vampire 1 and you'll be fine. If you do, you may have to see it at least twice as I have to judge it on it's own merits. It really is a very separate film to the original, and the title does it more harm than good I believe.

The original MR VAMPIRE was a ground-breaking all time classic. The sequel doesn't try to match it, and has next to nothing in common with it, other than the appearance of hopping vampires. This is a wise move, because the original was simply perfection. MR VAMPIRE 2 is entertaining but not in the same league as its predecessor.There are some jokes that are just not funny (the formaldehyde fight scene) and some annoying sub-plots (the "cute" vampire kid), but in the end these can't detract from the fact that this is insane Hong-Kong action cinema, which completely wipes the floor with anything Hollywood could ever produce.