The planned reburial of a town elder goes awry as the corpse resurrects into a hopping, bloodthirsty vampire, targeting everyone responsible for digging the grave. A Taoist Priest and his two disciples attempt to stop the terror.
A ghost sucks the life-force out of a one of Uncle Nine's student. The other is slowly turned into a vampire. They halt his transformation by filing down his teeth! The female ghost throws her head around like a boomerang to protect herself. Can Mr. Vampire chase away the Succubus and the hopping ghost and save his two students?—Joseph P. Ulibas <[email protected]>
During a reburial, the local priest notices that the corpse has not decomposed and has the blue fingernails typical of a vampire. Before he can destroy the vampire, it escapes. Now he must deal with the menace, aided only by his two bumbling assistants, one of whom is soon infected by the vampire's poison while the other is enjoying the embrace of a life-eating she-ghost. The humorous highlight of the movie are the Chinese vampires, who hop comically, which must be seen to be believed.—Reid Gagle
Master Kow [Ching-Ying Lam] runs the local mortuary and is an expert on vampires andghosts. He and his two bumbling assistants, Man Chor [Ricky Hui] and Chou [Chin Siu-hou], have theresponsibilities of performing funerary rituals and carrying for thebodies of the dead, which includes the eight chiang-shih (hoppingvampires) who, along with the Taoist priest who controls them by ringing abell, are Master Kow's guests. That evening, as Man Chor is checking thewards pasted on the foreheads of the chiang-shih, lighting the incensewhich feeds them, and making sure that the flame which holds themmotionless does not burn out, the joke-playing Chou startles Man byjumping out of a casket wearing a walking corpse* costume. While trying tosave himself, Man stumbles against the altar, extinguishing the flame.Immediately, the wards start falling from the foreheads of thechiang-shih, and they start hopping around. Fortunately, Master Kow andthe priest are able to secure them again, but the priest and hischiang-shih decide to stay elsewhere.
The next day, Master Kow and Man meet Mr Yam for coffee. Mr Yam wantsto talk to them about digging up and reburying his dead father, because hewas told by a fortune-teller that it will bring him good luck. While MrYam and the Master discuss the process, Man has become enamoured of MrYam's daughter Ting Ting [Choi-fung Li], who has just returned from the city where shehas been studying cosmetics. Three days later, everyone gathers atGrandfather Yam's grave for the disinterment. Master Kow tells Yam thatthe ground is contaminated and that they must bury Grandfather Yamelsewhere. He offers to take the body to his mortuary where it can be keptuntil another spot is found. To ease the spirits of the other bodiesburied there, Man and Chou are told to place incense on each grave. One ofthe graves catches Chou's eye. It is the grave of a young girl named Jade.
Later that evening, when the Master looks at Grandfather Yam's body,he notices that his skin is changing and his fingernails are long andblue, signs that he's turning into a vampire. Master Kow prepares a magicink which must be painted at right angles all along the coffin, forming agrid which will help to keep the body from getting free. Unfortunaely, itdoesn't work, and Grandfather Yam [Wah Yuen], now a chiang-shih, escapes during thenight. The first place he hops is over to Yam's house, where he kills hisson. Wai [Billy Lau], the bungling captain of police who also has the hots for TingTing, blames the murder on Master Kow because of his long fingernails andarrests him. Kow warns Man and Chou that Yam will rise as a corpse, too,and bids Man to protect Ting Ting while Chou is to bring him an inkpot andsome sticky rice and meet him at the jail. Just as Chou is delivering thesticky rice (which, unfortunately, he cooked instead of bringing it raw),Yam awakens. After a bit of kung-fooy, during which Wai gets the worst ofit, Master Kow and Chou manage to stake Yam and set his body on fire. Onevampire down, but Grandfather Yam is still out there.
Meanwhile, Grandfather Yam has returned to Yam's house where hechases around Man and Ting Ting for a while. Fortunately, they know that,if you hold your breath, a chiang-shih can't see you, so they manage toelude him until Master Kow, Chou, Wai, and the police show up. In themelee that follows, Man is bitten by Grandfather Yam, who gets away. Nowthey've got another problem on their hands in that Man could turn into avampire, too. The only thing to do is to keep Man moving so that his blooddoesn't turn stiff and to send Chou after some more sticky rice to drawout the poison.
But Chou has his own problem. Jade [Siu-fung Wong], the girl whose grave Chou sawwhen they were digging up Grandfather Yam's body, has fallen in love withChou and come back as a succubus ("Lady ghost") to make love to him. Sheforces the night watchman to flirt with her, then screams for help just asChou is riding by with the sack of rice on his bicycle. He rescues her andtakes her to her home. When a sudden thunderstorm sends down torrents ofrain, she convinces him to stay the night. The next morning, when Choureturns, Master Kow notices the love marks on his neck and surmises thatChou has slept with a ghost. Chou sleeps away the day. When he wakes up,he heads right back to Jade's house. Master Kow follows him, where hefights with the succubus (who does some interesting things with her head)until she flies away.
Later that night, after tying up Chou, the Master waits on the frontporch for Jade to come. When she does, he does magical battle with her.Meanwhile, inside the house, Man has awakened from sleep and found thathe's transformed into a vampire (of the walking corpse type). He tries tobite Chou, but Jade saves him. Chou begs Kow not to harm Jade, so hewashes his hands of their love affair and reminds them only that they arefrom two different worlds. With tears in her eyes, Jade flies away. Nowthe question is why the sticky rice didn't prevent Man from turning into avampire. Master Kow takes a hard look at the stuff and finds that it'sbeen cut with regular rice. He sets Ting Ting to work sorting the grains,while Chou files down Man's fangs.
Suddenly Wai and his men burst in the door. Grandfather Yam is on themove again. Man, Chou, and Ting Ting spread sticky rice all around thehouse, then barricade the doors and windows. But they forgot the skylight.Grandfather Yam, now looking more like a walking corpse, breaks in throughthe skylight and takes them all on. Suddenly, the Taoist priest and hiseight chiang-shih pay a visit. When the priest sees what's going on, heleads his vampires into the house and commands them to surroundGrandfather Yam. But Grandfather Yam is one strong corpse and knocks outall the chiang-shih. At some point, the priest drops a ceiling lantern onGrandfather Yam. He bursts into flames as do the chiang-shih.
*Both the chiang-shih and the walking corpses appear to be vampires, butthe chiang-shih hop and are controllable by the Taoist priest while thewalking corpses lumber along more like ghouls and are difficult to stop.[Original Synopsis by bj_kuehl.]
