Mr. Vampire

The film that, along with producer Sammo Hung’s SPOOKY ENCOUNTERS, launched an entire hopping-vampire horror-comedy subgenre is Hong Kong cinema at its most gleefully inventive and gloriously unrestrained. The franchise’s recurring star Lam Ching-Ying plays a unibrowed Taoist priest who, when a bloodthirsty revivified corpse pogoes its way out of the grave and begins terrorizing his town, must use a mix of magic and kung fu to stop the mayhem. Unfortunately, his two bumbling assistants (Ricky Hui and Chin Siu-Ho) cause nearly as much trouble as the bouncing bloodsucker.