SYNOPSIS:
Legend
has it that in the peaceful and tranquility town of “No
Name” lays buried unimaginable amount of wealth. Among
the treasures, nothing is more valuable than the pair of Jade
Sparrows. With all these buried treasures, it soon lures the
wrong type of attention.
MOVIE REVIEW:
Err... notice the difference in English title for this
movie?
Take note of the synopsis provided above as the movie will
not place much emphasis on it anymore or even bother informing
viewers about such treasure attraction.
Instead
it jumps straight to a Japanese merchant digging for treasures
in the graveyard. In the midst of the thieving, the town mayor
happens to be passing by and was attacked by a vampire. A
tribal girl who happens to be nearby, tried to rescue the
mayor but instead both the mayor and the tribal girl lost
their lives.
This help to push forward to the introduction of the main
characters and the crux of the whole movie, the new mayor
(Yuen Wah) and his companion who had arrived in town to investigate
the death of the last mayor. Their plan to dissect the mayor’s
corpse was hindered by the effeminate coffin home keeper (Chin
Kar Lok) and even before any decision was made, the tribal
girl’s sister arrived to investigate the questionable
death of her sister.
With
such a ghostly title, haunting will soon emerges and police
officers who involved with the tribal girl’s incident
are dropping dead one by one while the new mayor and companion
are haunted by vampire.
Remember
the synopsis? This film will muddle through those haunting
mention above, a few weak attempts at creating romance between
characters and bland subplots, making little to no mention
of it until it’s near the end so that it could wrap
it up for a “climatic” finale. Of course such
weak structuring is screaming major plot holes that just fuel
more dislike for this movie.
I
am not a bad rip off!
Borrowing
the guise of the popular Vampire supernatural genre from Hong
Kong, this China production tried unsuccessful to copy the
comedic elements of the past even with the assistance of a
few familiar faces (such as Yuen Wah and Chin Kok Long) from
Hong Kong. The usual type of naivety that often found in China’s
films is once again present here and it demonstrate that they
still were unable to grasp the underlying reason for the popularity
of the 80’s Hong Kong’s vampire films.
Who said I am overreacting?
It’s
also not hard to tell the Hong Kong actors and China actors
apart with their contrasting style of acting. Perhaps culturally,
the different demographic had different preference in actor’s
performance but the Chinese’s overreacting or stoic
performance is just a bit hard to swallow compared to the
more natural and fun performance of the Hong Kong counterparts
which most Singaporean are probably more accustom to.
You mean we got to be morally correct??
China
Vampire actually took the fun of the good old supernatural
adventures of the Hong Kong vampire movies by spouting morally
correct messages at the end of this movie and even went on
to dispel the mythos of the supernatural (and bloodless if
one cares to take notice). By the end of this movie, it just
makes this reviewer crave for some good old Hong Kong B grades
vampire movies instead (which are incidentally available in
Scorpioeast ‘s library). They were could be just as
bad in story telling wise and characterization but at least
they are pack with some sharp and genuine humor.
MOVIE RATING:
Review
by Richard Lim Jr
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