Saturday, February 28, 2009

Vampire Honeymoon - review

Director: Law Man Dick

First released: 2003

Contains spoilers


This is on a DVD called Terror Tales Volume 1 and the best thing I can say about this film is that the Terror Tales cover is excellent – a great fun, schlock cover. As for the film itself – well the edition on the disc is in Cantonese with subtitles in Chinese and English – at the same time. The English subtitles are very literal but the film itself does not hold together very well anyway.

We start with scenes in a police station where Tim (Eric Wan) is holding a team meeting with his detectives. They seem to be going on about a case, and the deposition given by someone called Judy, but to be candidly honest it has very little to do with the rest of the film as far as I could see. Following this they arrest some people in a club.

Tim falls asleep and has a bizarre dream about a ball that seems to move around of its own accord and Buddhist statues. He then dreams of dancers in a club and they are all vampires. Then he dreams of a girl wearing a satin slip. Suddenly the phone wakes him and he is called into see Mr Wong – his boss. Wong says he has given the latest case to Ling as he should be going on leave – he’s getting married.

We don’t see the wedding but we do see Fei Fei and Tim going on their honeymoon. They book into a hotel and ask for a suite but for some reason are given a very pokey little room. There is a little scene at the desk after they leave as the couple have been given room 602 – a room that is not meant to be given out. The room smells a little but Tim assumes it is musty.

Anyway, Ling seems not to be on a case but undercover with her old teacher – Aunty Mui, a Buddhist magician. Why? Who knows – certainly having watched the film I am none the wiser. As a result, however, they visit Tim (on his honeymoon) and interrupt him (having a wee against a tree!!) and suggest that evil is coming and he should leave – which he scoffs at. Mui says it is fate – if that is the case why bother warning him.

Tim is visited by the woman in the satin slip – she is a ghost. She asks for his help as she was killed by Ka Fu Yan. He refuses at first but she kisses his cheek. This leaves a lipstick smear that has Fei Fei going home to mother and threatening divorce. After she goes Tim, at night, develops glowing eyes and fangs and starts sucking blood. The ghost will help him if he helps her.

To be honest I don’t know what help she actually needed. Ka Fu Yan married her and then caused her father, who owned the hotel, to have a heart attack and then choked her. He buried her in the wall of Room 602. He took over the hotel and is visiting that week and she gets her revenge by killing him. Tim’s part in all this is less than negligible.

In the meantime he is being possessed by a ‘1000 years corpse’ and Mui, Ling and (when she returns) Fei Fei have to help him by him being exorcised. That’s about it folks… Vampire wise we have fangs, glowing eyes and blood drinking. The vampirism is possession and there is no other lore really. We get some atypical vampire bite scenes but very little else.

The story is almost not there and the vampire cop has blooming precious little to do but bite innocent passers-by (of course it isn’t his fault so that’s alright then). The film is peppered with awful direction moments – meaningless shots staring into a scene with little composure or construction. The acting is bad generally. A poor example of the Hong Kong cinema scene. 1 out of 10.

At the time of review I can find no imdb page.

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