Here Comes a Vampire – review

Director: Cheung-Yan Yuen

Release date: 1990

Contains spoilers

This is, supposedly, a sequel to the 1987 Hong Kong flick Thunder Cops. Now I haven’t seen that film but it concerns cops and ghosts. A look at the cast list indicates some identical cast members with different character names and, so, one assumes this was only loosely a sequel.

The film begins with a police inspector gaining a letter. He arranges a surreptitious meeting with Wu (Fung Woo) and sets him a mission. The male and female SWAT teams are to be disbanded. However, in the first instance they will be merged and sent on a training course. If Wu can get them to resign, all the better, in fact he’ll be promoted and offered a British passport.

Female SWAT team

The two teams are made up of different numbers. There are five members in the male team; Long (Lap-Man Sin), Charlie (Charlie Cho), Sickness, Yung (Billy Lau) and Myths (Andy Hui Chi-On). There are four members in the female team; San (Joanna Chan), Yin, Sister Nine (Sandra Ng Kwan Yue) and May (Yuk-Ting Lau). Also involved is Wu’s female assistant Scimkovaca (Meg Lam). Charlie is told what is going on and offered a job if he rats out his fellows.

Chinese Ouija

On the first night they find a Chinese equivalent to a Ouija board and make contact with a female ghost (King-Tan Yuen), who was raped and killed. She comes through from the other side and decides to take her vengeance out on all those in the camp. She does this by possessing Myths and then, later, May.

Myth possessed

This does not sound too vampiric, I understand, but when she possesses one of the mortals they seem to become a vampire. They aim for the neck, bite and drink blood. The film has a round of ‘misunderstandings’ type comedy, where the others don’t realise that one or the other is possessed. The film is geared more towards comedy, its just a shame that it isn’t very funny.

finding a victim

Strangely the victims, when found, all seem to have puncture wounds in the neck, ala a standard vampire. I say strangely as the possessed do not seem to have fangs. Myth is released from his possession via his prayer beads touching his skin. May is released when black dog’s blood is thrown over her. Myths creates a thunder spell with which to fight the ghost and, ultimately, it is destroyed by bazooka (don’t ask).



ghost

 The back of the Terror Tales Vol 3. DVD suggests, in respect of this film, that you should “Get ready to hurl! For the first time you’ll see a vampire birth! It’s heavy on the plasma cuz this little sucker (pun intended) is hungry!” No such event takes place. It is just a merging of ghost (with possession) and vampire tropes with too much unfunny comedy to ever be effective.

1.5 out of 10. The imdb page is here.