Musical Vampire, The (1990)

After a stolen corpse is injected with chemicals that makes it immune to traditional Taoist charms, it escapes to terrorize the locals while three bungling corpse herders and a Taoist master (Lam Ching-ying) attempt to stop it.

Smelling like a week-old corpse delivered to your front door one hop at a time is Wilson Tong’s The Musical Vampire, a cheap rip-off of Mr. Vampire. Sadly, Lam Ching-ying sullies his image by making an extended cameo in his usual Taoist get-up. More disappointing is seeing the incredible Xiong Xin-xin (Once Upon a Time in China and America) reduced to being a second-string corpse herder assistant despite having the kung fu skills to kick the life out of everyone in attendance, plastic fangs or not. And what happened to Wilson Tong? This guy was once one of the top kung fu actors and action choreographers who contributed to classics like The 36th Chamber of Shaolin and The Victim. But in the ’80s he joined the horror comedy boom and went downhill fast without the genius of Sammo Hung or Lau Kar-leung to steer him straight.

The plot and characters of The Musical Vampire follow Mr. Vampire closely, with minor variations here and there, particularly when it comes to sucking and I don’t mean tanking on blood. Ah Choo (get it?) and Ah Keung (Xiong Xin-xin) are knucklehead assistants to a filthy nose and toe-picking Taoist loser played by Stanley Fung who screw up royally. Certainly karma hits home for after playing around with corpses intended for delivery to their families, Choo (Lee Ga-sing) loses one to a gang of thieves. This next part makes no sense whatsoever. A French doctor with aspirations of winning the Nobel Prize injects chemicals into the corpse. Will man never learn to stop tampering with the undead? The corpse comes alive, not only as a bloodsucking vampire, but a bloodsucking vampire who is resistant to Taoist magic. He runs/hops off to kill at random while Choo, Keung and their master are thrown in jail for botching a simple corpse delivery. As the bodies begin to pile up, the police captain gives the trio three days to bring in their vampire. Nothing they do can pacify the creature except the tune, “London Bridges,” hence the movie’s title. Unable to keep the tune going indefinitely, they’re forced to rely on the help of Lam Ching-ying, a fellow Taoist who has been trailing the vampire with bow and arrows. He comes up with some obscure plan to use a lunar eclipse and needles to overcome the chemicals in the film’s not-so-action-packed finale.

The Musical Vampire is an ultra-low budget movie with bad lighting, camera work and make-up. Solid martial arts choreography could have rescued this flick from the waste bin, but all we get are two brief scenes. Xiong Xin-xin cuts loose on a hopping corpse at the beginning and Lam Ching-ying briefly wields a kwan dao with deft skill towards the end. That’s it. The rest is low rent comedy nonsense and awful Chinese vampire action.

The best moment in the film is when Lam Ching-ying chides his Toaist cohorts over their unhygienic table habits. He admonishes them to use the “public chopsticks” when dipping into plates of food and scolds Stanley Tong for picking his feet at the table. It’s the one genuinely funny moment in an otherwise forgettable feature.