There are occasions throughout the year when Hong Kongers engage in veneration of the dead. Many of these rituals involve burning offerings, such as ‘hell money’ for the deceased to spend in the afterlife, or paper models of material goods, such as houses, cars and even Rolex watches. During the Hungry Ghost Festival (which fell on August 18 this year) and throughout the seventh lunar month, people leave food offerings to placate the ghosts believed to be roaming the streets as the gates of the underworld are flung open.
The festival serves as a reminder of Hong Kong icon Lam Ching-ying, who was granted cinematic immortality because his films were set against a backdrop of ghosts, spirits and the supernatural.
Lam was born in Hong Kong in 1952. A precocious child, he left school early, and had a similarly brief stint attempting to learn Peking opera, also known as Beijing opera. He went on to work for the Shaw Brothers film company before meeting a Chinese-American actor named Bruce Lee. They became friends, and Lam became a personal assistant to Hong Kong’s most famous son. Lam also appears in minor roles in several of Lee’s films.
After Lee’s untimely death, Lam went to work for Sammo Hung, doing action choreography and appearing in supporting roles. As part of Hung’s action team, Lam won a Hong Kong Film Award for his choreography on The Prodigal Son (1981), starring Yuen Biao, who was trained with Hung and Jacky Chan under martial artist and Peking opera master Yu Jim-yuen. He also appeared in a number of martial arts films as well as the then-new genre of ghost comedies such as Encounters of the Spooky Kind (1980), The Dead and the Deadly (1982) and Hocus Pocus (1984).
In 1985, he first played the role that would make him an icon of Hong Kong cinema’s golden age. Mr. Vampire (1985), directed by Ricky Lau Koon-wai, starred Lam Ching-ying as the one-eyebrowed, yellow-robed Taoist priest battling hopping vampires, or geung si. The film has all the tropes that would define the geung si genre: yellow paper talismans to incapacitate vampires, biting your fingers to write characters on your palm (which was then used to strike a vampire), and swords made of wood or coins held together with thread.
Mr. Vampire, like many films of its era, defies genre boundaries, offering melodrama, low-brow humour, action, romance and flashes of violence, sometimes one after the other. The Hong Kong audience wanted, and got, a well-rounded—some would say overstuffed—cinematic experience. This approach did nothing to impede the local audience’s genuine engagement with the films in the decades to come. Cinemagoers in Hong Kong are often sincerely frightened by what they see on screen, even if it is obviously fake, a response I honestly envy.
Mr. Vampire was a major box office success, raking in HK$20 million—the equivalent of more than HK$58 million today—more than three times the original expectation, and giving birth to many sequels. Mr. Vampire II (1986) saw legendary martial arts actor Yuen Biao join Lam, and Mr. Vampire III (1987) brought Richard Ng on board. Vampire vs Vampire (1989) marked Lam’s directorial debut. He then produced and starred in Magic Cop (1990), in which he exchanged his yellow robe for a uniform, but retained the unibrow.
While the popularity of the Mr. Vampire series was instrumental in Lam’s rise to fame, he attempted to avoid typecasting, appearing in films such as Her Vengeance (1988), Ringo Lam’s underappreciated School on Fire (1988), and China Dolls (1992), a Category III film starring Amy Yip, although it should be noted his role was purely dramatic. Still, he returned to variations of his best-known character for the remainder of his career. He donned the yellow robe again for one of his last films, The Chinese Ghostbuster (1994).
Having always been a very private man, Lam refused to admit he was ill even as it became physically obvious. He chose instead to withdraw from the public eye, not wanting to upset his family, friends or fans with his appearance. Although he died at age 44 in 1997, his legacy lives on. His co-star Chin Siu-ho has appeared in many vampire films, including singer-turned-filmmaker Juno Mak’s directorial debut Rigor Mortis (2013), also starring Richard Ng. That same pairing returned in 2017’s Vampire Cleanup Department, a love letter to geung si movies and, by extension, to Lam. Sifu vs Vampire (2014), starring Yuen Biao, features a homage to Lam’s iconic yellow-robed character, played by Philip Keung Ho-man. But Lam’s spirit lives on in more than movies. Sleeping Dogs, a Grand Theft Auto-style video game set in Hong Kong, features bonus content based on the legend of the hopping vampire.
Although Lam is no longer with us, his memory shows no sign of dissipating. As long as people watch his films, he is still present and will always be funny, skilled and inspiring. Don’t take my word for it. Watch his movies. You’ll be rewarded, and you’ll help preserve the memory of one of Hong Kong’s most iconic actors.
- From the Vault offers critiques, reviews and highlights of Hong Kong celluloid favourites, from the fascinating to the flawed to the flamboyant.
