Pluskylang
Great Film overall
MamaGravity
good back-story, and good acting
TrueHello
Fun premise, good actors, bad writing. This film seemed to have potential at the beginning but it quickly devolves into a trite action film. Ultimately it's very boring.
Jim
Vampire Cleanup Department (2017)The term 'vampire' is incorrect in this Chinese genre (dating from literature of the 19th Century). The living corpses are more like zombies (the animated dead). They hop around (hahaha!) and attack humans. In the 1980s, this genre was briefly popular in Hong Kong movies, Since this genre predated the craze for zombies in the West, the term vampire was applied in the English translation. And sure enough, some zombies went for the neck.In the context of a feudal rural context, the old movies were atmospheric and spooky. This movie is set in modern Hong Kong, and the old-style zombies look silly where there are motorcars and SWAT.The special effects are minimal. So, the actors have to ham it up. With the small budget, the film makers have to target micro audiences.Richard Ng represents nostalgia. The film starts with a bloody flourish in slasher style. Then, we are introduced to the small team of 'ghostbusters' known as Vampire Cleanup Department (VCD). The VCD hang out in a Batcave-style secret HQ. Then, there is the romance angle. The VCD has a young recruit who falls for a teen zombie. Interestingly, the teen zombie looks like a doll (Japanese fetish for life-like girl dolls).The bottom line is that this is a commercial production with little originality. Possibly entertaining if you are looking for a little entertainment. But, its not the next-big-thing as the producers might hope.
Helio
This cockamany story has the "hero" bitten by a vampire but he turns out to be immune (explained in the first twenty minutes) and joins a Ghostbusters like anti-Vampire crew only to be assigned to sweeping the floors, where he develops kung fu like moves akin to the Karate Kid. On a search for vampires he encounters a drowned ugly one [aren't they all?] that swallows his cell phone. He falls into the water trying to retrieve it and they lock lips making the vampire iurn into a beautiful twenty year old woman who died (was buried alive) in the 1800's. She hops around, as apparently Chinese vampires do (which helps me better understand "Crazy Safari" where a Ctinese vampire falls out of a plane over Botswana {The Gods Must Be Crazy #3 of 5}). She is able to communicate account the cell phone she shallowed (using Siri like exchanges). She takes a fancy to old Chinese Operas on the television so he leaves her watching while he attends his other duties - what could go wrong?
shiyosunderland
This hopping-Chinese-vampire-comedy felt very shallow. It tries to be hip and modern but feels as hip as Babyjohns granny in her hibbedy-hob-garments - it's a joke. Babyjohn himself made me want to grab the TV and shake it, although cruelty against minors is not my thing at all. The romance was completely artificial and the story itself tries to be too many things at once while failing to deliver any of the real goods like horror, comedy or action. "Vampire Cleanup Department" feels more like a failed TV-Show and tries to update the Jiang-Shi-Lore with elements from Blade and Buffy without providing any original life energy for us to suck up.+ classic ("Mr. Vampire") veterans on board! It's great to see Richard Ng and Chin Siu-Ho again and there's even a cameo from Eric Tsang. That's nice! - Lead actors are not at all interesting - script is all over the place - Makup effects are not very frightening - Digital fx are very bad. The vampire kills are very much doing the same as "Blade" did, but that movie is 20 years old soon and looks a million times better. - romance: Maybe this works for Youtube junkies. I don't know. I hope not otherwise mankind might be doomed. What happens at the end?Does it make sense at all? - Babyjohn? Is he a kid, is he an adult? Watch this movie and see for yourselves!verdict: hop along, hop along, there's nothing to see here.
Red-Barracuda
After a sinister late-night encounter, a geeky young guy discovers that he is immune to vampire toxins. He is, therefore, summoned by the Vampire Cleanup Department who are a small group of specialists dedicated to combatting and dispelling vampires.This Hong Kong feature is a genre mash-up of comedy, horror and action (with even a little bit of romance thrown in for good measure). The comedy wasn't especially funny, the horror was peripheral and the action was fairly unremarkable, resulting in a middling movie. The most interesting character was the female vampire that our geeky hero develops a love affair with. She is played like a fish-out-of-water innocent and displays some of the very unusual vampire traits associated with China, i.e. the hopping vampire! This type of detail specific to China is good fun to see and the character of the girl vampire was pretty good value. But the film as a whole was a bit ho hum otherwise with nothing much else sanding out very much. It is quite a cute film though and is hard to dislike but I personally only found it sporadically entertaining.
