Sunday, January 13, 2013

Hello, Dracula!

That say's HELLO DRACULA

Hello, Dracula! (Vampire Kid) Directed By Chao Chung-Hsing (1985)

        It starts in a haunted forest with a lot of information on the folklore of the Jiangshi or Hopping Chinese Vampire! There are all kinds of reanimated Asian dead in Hello Dracula, even adorable baby hopping vampires! When they appear they smile a lot and some wacky music shows up, they are just as troublesome as a baby Gremlin and proceed to free their forefathers from that dangling yellow talisman (that keeps the undead at bay). This is a super rare flick that Skunkape graciously found for me and I don't mind that the subtitles are a little off and out of frame, as long as I get to see this extremely bizarre treat! 
        Coffins fly around and burst into red smoke as the forest ranger, who dresses like the famous unibrowed Taoist priest (Lam Ching Ying) uses his magic spells to keep the unholy creatures hidden within the trees and away from kids on field trips. This film warns you not to underestimate the power of adrenaline pulsing through the elderly or their grandkids because they can fight! 
        Razor teeth pop out as the old dodge them accordingly and throw some flames at the vampires. If you hold your breath a vampire cannot see you, all this was taken from Mr. Vampire but this director takes it to extreme levels and does a decent job. I sincerely hope that they've stuck to the mythos from these great films and not adapted Chinese Vampires into a bullshit Twilight version for the tween market!   
        King Grampa  brings all the kids together and conducts a ritual over a corpse bitten by a vampire consisting of the urine of a child, chicken blood, skin of a watermelon and he accidentally drinks the pee! 
        There are some crazy fight scenes involving kids and old people, its pretty incredible (but hopefully no kids were hurt)!
        Think of this as Donkey Kong Jr. to Mr. Vampire being Donkey Kong! Some American Catholics show up and are not welcome in a village haunted by Chinese Vampires! The Hammer film remedies of garlic and holy water don't work (or do they)? King Grampa knows how to handle this situation and is already equipped with his best child fighters!
        The Catholics intruding where they are not wanted reminds me of a grainy vampire invaded version of Annie or Home Alone. There's even a strange musical number with lots of quacking and video game music (Everybody Do The Quack!), complete with hopping choreographed vampire dancing! Hello, Dracula is out of its fucking gourd! 
        The Catholics hide a nun in a coffin and she accidentally kisses the vampire, this causes a chubby reanimated corpse to mimic all her movements! He takes a bath, combs his hair and jumps around. The slapstick comedy starts to grate on your nerves a little and there's lots of Three Stooges or Benny Hill type wackiness.
       The vampire kid plays a morbid baseball game with skulls and bones. Then they try to shoot him and pour holy water on his human skull baseball in order to defeat them. 
        King Grampa assembles all his kid minions and they do crazy flips and conduct rituals with psychic swords and fire! A kid with a bowl haircut and glasses ends up getting bitten and tries to attack the team, he does a kamikaze act with a bomb strapped to his chest!             Hello Dracula has no problems with kid violence and lots of them are either punched in the face, shot or bitten by vampires! For a silly comedy geared toward kids, they sure have no problem using them as little punching bags, For shame Hello, Dracula! This film is very rare, hopefully somebody will share it on Youtube, it will most likely blow your mind!
HIGHLY RECOMMENDED! 






 
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