Қансору жәндіктерінің мыстық әңгімесі

Mr. Vampire (Chinese: 殭屍先生) is a 1985 Hong Kong comedy horror film directed by Ricky Lau and produced by Sammo Hung. The film's box office success led to the creation of a Mr. Vampire franchise, with the release of four sequels directed by Ricky Lau from 1986 to 1992, and subsequent similarly themed films with different directors released between 1987 and 1992, with Lam Ching ying as the lead for the majority of them. The vampire of the film is based on the jiangshi, the hopping corpses of Chinese folklore (similar to both zombies and vampires). The film was released under the Chinese title 暫時停止呼吸 (literally: Hold Your Breath for a Moment) in Taiwan. The film was the breakthrough success of the jiangshi genre, a trend popular in Hong Kong during the 1980s, and established many of the genre's recognisable tropes.

In Republican era China, Master Kau makes a living as a Taoist priest who performs magic that maintains control over spirits and irrepressible vampires. Together with his inept students, Man choi and Chau sang, he resides in a large house protected from the spiritual world with talismans and amulets. One day, he accepts an assignment from a wealthy businessman, Yam, to remove Yam's deceased father from his grave and rebury him, with the hopes that doing so will bring more prosperity to the Yam family. However, during the raising of the coffin, Kau notices the body, instead of in a decomposed state, is still intact. Knowing it has become a vampire, he has it moved to his house for further study. Once in the house, Choi and Sang line the coffin with enchanted ink to safeguard the body, but forget to line the bottom of the coffin, causing the vampire to break out. It heads straight for Yam's home and savagely kills his son before going into hiding by dawn. Wai, an incompetent police inspector who is smitten with Yam's daughter Ting, blames Kau for murdering Yam and arrests him. Kau is imprisoned and Yam's body is placed in a makeshift morgue near the jailhouse. Choi stays at Yam's house to protect Ting while Sang frees his master, only to witness Yam reawakening as a vampire. Kau and Sang manage to kill it after engaging it in battle. Wai realizes his mistake in framing Kau earlier and accepts the fact that another vampire is on the loose. The vampire again invades Yam's house. Kau and Sang arrive in time to wound it and forcing it to flee, but not before it critically wounds Choi. Kau invites Ting to stay at his house for safety. The next morning, after examining Choi's wounds, Kau claims he too may become a vampire. He orders Sang to feed Choi glutinous rice, claiming it may decrease the vampire's venom in Choi's body and bring him back to his normal state. While purchasing the rice, however, the shady merchant deliberately mixes different kinds of rice in the bag, and an unwitting Sang accepts it. Before Sang can get home, he is lured by a mysterious woman into her house. He soon deduces she is a spirit, but she uses her supernatural power to seduce him. They sleep together for the night. When Sang returns to Kau's house, the priest is quick to notice his student's predicament. That night, he silently follows Sang to the spirit's house. The spirit transforms into a hideous ghoul and attempts to kill Kau, but fails at the hands of his talismans. She bewitches Sang to turn on his master, but after a brief fight, Kau breaks the spell and she escapes. The next night, Kau ties Sang to a chair and prepares to capture and eliminate the spirit. Sure enough, she arrives at their house and Kau chases her throughout. As Sang tries to free himself, Choi turns into a vampire and attacks him. Amidst the chaos, Kau restrains Choi and almost terminates the spirit, but stops when Sang begs him to let her go. Saddened she can no longer be with Sang, the spirit flies away. Over the next few days, Kau restores Choi's health and turns him back to human. Wai brings in news that the vampire is now active again. When Kau leaves to investigate, the vampire, now in an almost demonic form, invades Kau's place. After pushing Choi off a balcony, it turns its attention to Ting and Wai, but Kau and Sang again divert its attention. Finally, Kau's fellow Taoist priest, Four Eyes, shows up by coincidence, and they manage to destroy the vampire by burning it alive.

Mr. Vampire was well received in Taiwan, southeast Asia, and especially in Japan, where it inspired a vampire craze with toys and a lot of other merchandise that had a vampire on them. In a DVD commentary of Mr. Vampire, Bey Logan said "Mr. Vampire is very basic visual effects and was only really the start of visual effects in Hong Kong filmmaking." The English language soundtrack made for Mr vampire is low quality, redubbing the characters with bland mid American accents. The sound effects are inadequate, clomping footsteps are added as a distracting effect. This version of the film is not widely circulated.

Golden Harvest attempted to make an English language version of Mr. Vampire under the title Demon Hunters. The film was produced by David Chan. However, the team could not get Lam Ching ying to reprise his role because the latter was busy with another film overseas. Yuen Wah, who worked on the original Mr. Vampire, replaced Lam and handled the action sequences as well. American actor Jack Scalia, who acted in the 1978 television series Dallas, was also recruited into the cast.

Highly successful at the time, both in Hong Kong and as a cult film favourite with overseas enthusiasts of Hong Kong cinema, It inspired numerous parodies and homage films. The film launched Lam Ching ying's character, the unibrowed Taoist exorcist, whom he would portray not only in the Mr. Vampire sequels, but also in many other films, including unrelated ones. Mr. Vampire sequels included Mr. Vampire II, Mr. Vampire III and Mr. Vampire IV. However, most do not relate to the first film, instead simply being set on the same themes. There is in fact only one canonical sequel, Ricky Lau's own Mr. Vampire 1992. Confusion regarding the sequels has been compounded not only by the names of the films but also by the fact that the films share some cast members, though often recast in different roles. There are also other films of the Chinese vampire genre starring Lam Ching ying, such as Encounters of the Spooky Kind II (1990) and Magic Cop (1990), or directed by Lam himself, such as Vampire vs Vampire (1989), which are all separate from the Mr. Vampire franchise. In addition, Lam uses his real name for his character in some of the films he acted in. A related television series titled Vampire Expert (殭屍道長) starring Lam Ching ying was broadcast from 1996 to 1997. However, during the filming of the third season, Lam developed liver cancer and died before the project was completed. The first season of My Date with a Vampire, a television series produced by ATV, was specially dedicated to Lam, and the story was based on future events in Vampire Expert.

Mr. Vampire was adapted into a theatrical play and was performed at the Cultural Centre's Studio Theatre in Hong Kong from 29 to 31 October 2010 as part of a Halloween theme and New Vision Arts Festival. Tang Lok yin is the music director/composer for this play with Pun Siu fai as the choreographer.

A number Japanese board games that relate to Mr. Vampire were released in Japan.

Release date Country Classifaction Publisher Format Region Language Sound Subtitles Notes REF Unknown Hong Kong N/A Deltamac (HK) NTSC ALL Cantonese, Mandarin (Dubbed) Dolby Digital 2.0 English, Traditional Chinese, Simplified Chinese 2001 Hong Kong N/A Mega Star NTSC ALL Cantonese, Mandarin (Dubbed) Dolby Digital 5.1 Cantonese, English, Thai, Vietnamese, Spanish 22 April 2002 United Kingdom 15 Hong Kong Legends PAL 2 Cantonese, English (Dubbed) Dolby Digital 5.1 English Digitally Re mastered 19 February 2004 France N/A HK Video PAL 2 Cantonese Dolby Digital French Box set 7 September 2004 United States PG 13 20th Century Fox NTSC 1 Cantonese, English (Dubbed) Dolby Digital 5.1 English Digitally Re mastered 26 June 2005 Hong Kong N/A Joy Sales (HK) NTSC ALL Cantonese, Mandarin (Dubbed) Dolby Digital 5.1, DTS Digital Surround English, Traditional Chinese, Simplified Chinese Digitally Re mastered 5 December 2007 Australia/ New Zealand M Magna Pacific PAL 4 Cantonese, English (Dubbed) Dolby Digital 5.1 English Digitally Re mastered 11 October 2007 Japan N/A Universal Pictures Japan NTSC 2 Cantonese, Japanese (Dubbed) Dolby Digital Mono Japanese Digitally Re mastered Box set 8 July 2011 Japan N/A Paramount Home Entertainment Japan NTSC 2 Cantonese Dolby Digital Japanese Digitally Re mastered 23 November 2011 United States PG 13 20th Century Fox NTSC 1 Cantonese, English (Dubbed) Dolby Digital 5.1, DTS Digital Surround English Digitally Re mastered 15 October 2012 United Kingdom 15 Cine Asia PAL 2 Cantonese, English (Dubbed) Dolby Digital 5.1 English Digitally Re mastered 21 December 2012 Japan N/A Paramount Home Entertainment Japan NTSC 2 Cantonese, Japanese Dolby Digital Japanese Digitally Re mastered

Release dateCountryClassificationPublisher Format Region LanguageSound Subtitles NotesREF 21 December 2012 Japan N/A Paramount Home Entertainment, Japan NTSC A Cantonese, Japanese Japanese Digitally Re mastered 20 July 2020 UK BBFC 15 Eureka Entertainment 1080p B Cantonese, English (European dub), English (U. S. dub) LPCM English Brand new 2K restoration

Mr. Vampire was previously available on Netflix and Sky Player (now Sky Go).