★★½
“Hop to it!”
I would have sworn I had seen every example of Hong Kong girls-with-guns movies from the eighties. But this one had managed to escape my attention completely for 35 years, until accidentally stumbling across it on YouTube. It’s perhaps partly because it never seems to have received any kind of post-VHS release, being unavailable on DVD or streaming sites. Which is a little surprising since it combines two genres that have been quite popular in the West: not just GWG, but also hopping vampires, as in the Mr. Vampire franchise. It’s a rather awkward combo, and there’s definitely significant potential wasted. Yet I’m fairly certain it’s going to be unlike anything you’ve seen before.
It begins with a gang robbing a mausoleum of antiques for their boss, Yiang Wei (Wei). However, included in their haul is a pearl, which was the only thing keeping a traditional Chinese vampire (Kwai) pinned down. It’s now free to roam the land, terrorizing the possessor of the pearl, who is the only person that can see it. Meanwhile, a special police squad has been set up to investigate the ring behind the recent slew of antique thefts. In charge of it is Sergeant Wang Wai Shan (Hu), who follows the evidence to Wei, after one of his minions turns up dead, a victim of the vampire. Wang and her mostly-female team then find themselves having to take on both the hopping undead and the criminals.
The results are kinda decent, but it’s not hard to think of ways it could have been better, particularly from the perspective of this site. I was expecting to get a final battle pitting Wang against Wei. Doesn’t happen. I did like how the cops find a way to control the vampire, and I was thinking it was then going to end up as Wang + vampire against Wei. Doesn’t happen either, with Wang entirely sidelined, and replaced with a climax which is simply villain versus vampire (before an ending which is… certainly an ending, and that’s all I can say). Hu deserves better, and so does Sophia Crawford, who is one of Wei’s minions, and gets almost nothing to do. Admittedly, it was only Crawford’s second film.
Not to say that Wei is a slouch. I simply preferred earlier scenes, such as Wang and her squad battling the largely invisible vampire around her father’s apartment, with a range of improvised weapons, from crosses – would those really work on a Chinese vampire? – to flamethrowers. It’s fairly refreshing how nobody really mentions the fact a woman is in charge, with everyone apparently accepting Wang’s role, and there’s not too much in the way of dumb slapstick, which can derail proceedings. As horror, it’s certainly light in tone. Perhaps it might have benefited from sticking to one genre or the other, instead of trying to be two things at once, and coming in as largely forgettable in both departments.
Dir: Chiu-Jun Lee
Star: Sibelle Hu, Dick Wei, Kara Ying, Kwai Po Chun