(1990)
Dir - Jamie Luk
Overall: MEH
Hong Kong took it upon themselves to popularize the jiāngshī film during the 1980s and not to be confused with the sub-genre's Mr. Vampire that jump-started the trend, Doctor Vampire, (Jiang shi yi sheng), mixes both Asian and Western undead motifs into its slapstick trajectory. Boner and gay jokes are also thrown in, (Because what self-respecting comedy from the turn of the 1990s would go without those?), and the results are knowingly stupid and lighthearted. The doctor of the title gets bitten in his junk by a prostitute when his car breaks down in England, (hey, we've all been there), only for the brothel's head vamp Peter Kjaer to demand a bigger taste of Bowie Lam's adult virgin's blood once said prostitute lets him go free because love. Wacky high-jinks ensue once Lam is back home and these include the usual misunderstandings amongst characters, mugging performances, falling down = funny gags, magic rituals gone awry, and Kjaer showing up to kung-fu and out scenery-chew every other vampire that ever graced the screen. More ridiculous than funny, but some of the jokes work, plus director Jamie Luk keeps up a kinetic pace in the third act that saves it from becoming cumbersome.
(1991)
Dir - Yun Lai
Overall: WOOF
The first of only two films from director Yun Lai, Bewitched Area of Thousand Years, (Qian nian mo jie), is a typical Category III sleaze-fest done on a low-rent scale and ergo not without some unintentionally embarrassing amusement. A Taiwanese production, it has a "story", (if you can call it that), of a monster guy with snakes for arms and a woman who starts to grow a scaly beard while her family is melodramatically concerned with the situation at all times. Most scenes revolve around said turning-into-a-snake woman crying, being obnoxiously mopey, and telling people to leave her alone while they insist that she not let them leave her alone. Also, a shaman with a Native American headdress on who literally sounds like a squawking parakeet for some reason shows up, cued synth music lightly plays in the background of nearly every scene, kung fu breaks out once in awhile, some people get torn open by reptilian fangs, and lots more characters talk and cry while sitting or standing around. The pacing is as horrendous as the infrequent special effects and makeup are, plus the whole thing comes off as if it was financed with pocket change and made as an afterthought.
(1992)
Dir - King Hu
Overall: MEH
For his final film Painted Skin, (Hua pi zhi: Yin yang fa wang), director King Hu made a dated and sluggish variation of Ching Siu-tung's A Chinese Ghost Story, going as far as to cast Wu Ma and Joey Wong just to slam home the point. Ma plays yet another mystical practitioner on the side of good and Wong follows her typecasting in one of her many portrayals as a lovely yet doomed spirit who is stuck on our mortal plane for various reasons. The movie is more stylistically akin to Shaw Brothers properties from a decade and some change earlier, with plenty of wire-fu, camera zooms, and low-end special effects. That said, the fogged-up outdoor lair of the villainous Yin-Yang King has some macabre pizzazz to it, but the production design is overall as stock as the story itself. It also has a light tone but little in the way of inventive set pieces or humor that actually lands. Besides Wong and Ma, most of the cast is recognizable from other horror comedy and/or kung fu movie hybrids, but this actually adds to the redundancy of the whole thing. In other words, we have seen stories where bumbling good guys battle cackling bad guys with a pretty girl, supernatural magic showdowns, characters flipping around, and loud fight sound effects thrown into the mix before. Some are better and some are worse, but this one just seems unnecessary at best.
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