Mr. Vampire III

Frying Tonight

Mr. Vampire III
aka Ling wan sin sang
aka Mr. Supernatural
Directed by Ricky Lau
Hong Kong 1987
Golden Harvest/Eureka
Blu Ray Zone B


Well this one is pretty great but, before I get on with giving you a short flavour of this movie, I have to first give you a word of caution about Mr. Vampire III. As the second film presented in a box set entitled Hopping Mad - The Mr. Vampire Sequels, you might expect to see some of the trademark hopping vampires in this movie. But you don’t... there’s not even a single vampire that enters the story at any point here, let alone a hopping one. A warning might have been conscientiously provided by Eureka on the Blu Ray box, one might have thought.

While the main actor from the previous two films, Ching-Ying Lam, returns as a character with the same name, who may or may not be the Taoist priest from the first movie (the action returns to ancient times for this movie, preceding the action of the second film, which was set in the 1980s), there is little to connect the two stories.

Having said all that, this movie starts off pretty strong with a comedy action packed opening sequence which then dovetails into... lots more of the same. In fact, one of the strengths of this movie over the other two is that it’s almost non-stop action with just the odd pause to explain to the audience what’s going on and to set up the next scene... but without lingering too much on the story mechanics and, thankfully, without taking itself too seriously in that department.

Okay, so no vampires but the film starts with a wandering Taoist priest, played by Richard Ng, who is conning a family by pretending to exorcise their very real ghosts for money. He uses his own ghosts, who collaborate with him to get the money and then are ‘exorcised’ safely in a taoist prison (in this case an umbrella he carries around from town to town) once the con has been performed. However, almost as soon as this comedy action sequence is complete, the real ghosts who have been bothering the homeowner arrive, a whole clan of them, who kick the priest and his ghosts out. So they flee to the next town where...

They are temporarily mistaken for horse thieves by a group of people protected by the wise Taoist monk played by Ching-Ying Lam. It’s not long before the real band of horse thieves attack the village and are revealed as black magic sorcerers and demons. From that point on and for the rest of the film, it’s a battle of wits... but mostly a battle of cleverly choreographed kung fu style moves, as the comedy and action sequences land one after another and, with this many going on, at least a few should be pretty entertaining. And I’d have to say that, yeah, it worked for me. Despite the absence of the titular hopping vampire, this one was a fast and energetic blend of similar elements to the first film but, done much better and this one didn’t drag in the slightest.

Lam and Ng are great as their respective Taoist monk characters and they make a great pairing here. Unfortunately the music is played for the comedy again, rather than supporting the comedy already inherent and, although there is a credited composer, Chin-Yung Shing, I also noticed in the credits that the use of an entity called the Cavendish Music Library was tapped so, I’m going to have to assume that some of this very broad comedy scoring was just needle dropped in (I hope).

And that’s really all I need to say about Mr. Vampire III, I think. The acting is not subtle (apart from Lam and Ng, I would say) and the basic story is not going to tax anyone or give them much they wouldn’t expect... except maybe the partially deep fried ghost who comes out of hot oil and attacks Ng, looking like a deep fried version of The Oily Maniac (reviewed here). But the film works in spite of all this and I had a good time with it. I’m quite looking forward to the next one now.