Mr Vampire was a classic, destined to reincarnate again and again, but this atrocious sequel nearly cast the series into the abyss forever. Set in the 80’s, the film lacks the fantasy elements of the original, and changes so many key elements that it barely even feels like a Mr Vampire movie.

Lam Ching Ying is the star, naturally, but neither his actual physical abilities nor his character’s usual magic bag of tricks are used to good effect. The absence of Ricky Hui and Chin Siu Ho is a dissapointment, so the decision to compensate with Yuen Biao is baffling considering that Yuen is capable of so much, yet here he does so little. Even his main action scene turns out to be an initially funny spoof of slow motion fight scenes, which overstays it’s welcome for far too long. Moon Lee returns from the original, but as usual, she does nothing but look cute.

The most obvious problem here is the budget, which is too small to compete with the original movie. The 80’s backdrop is blatantly a money saving exercise to begin with, but then other problems begin to show. The make-up is poor, swapping decomposing vampire flesh for white face paint, and there are barely any special effects. There are none of the imaginative ghouls, ghosts and goblins present in the other Mr Vampire movies, just vampires. The usual juggling of chickens, dog’s blood and magic string is missing from this movie, and a lot of the action often takes place in what looks like a house owned by one of the production crew.

With a cinematic culture as wildly imaginative as Hong Kong’s, even the worst films often still contain a number of great ideas that could have been so much more, and Mr Vampire 2 is no different. The introduction of a child vampire could have been extremely creepy, but instead we are forced to sit through an embarrassing subplot ripped straight out of ET, as a bunch of fat Chinese kids befriend the ‘cute’ undead ankle-biter. They take him out to play in the park, and name him ‘OK Boy’ when they should have named him ‘plot padding’ and burned the little bastard at the stake. Later in the film, two vampires go on the rampage in a busy Hong Kong street, but again, a good idea is not explored in an entertaining way.

The vampires here just fail to scare. In the other films, they present a real danger, and the comedy being played out by the living as they avoid the growling, snarling decomposers is what makes it work so well. What we get instead are female vampires that blow kisses, montages of ‘OK Boy’ dressed up in shades and a headscarf, and the realisation that vampires love their families as much as you and I. Truly horrific.

So, the story sucks, the vampires are misunderstood rather than scary, and this film should never have been made. It’s a good job that by the third installment in the series, everything turned out just fine.