The Good People
Book
Shortlisted for the Walter Scott Prize 2017 County Kerry, Ireland, 1825. NORA, bereft after the...
The Venetian: This Haunted World: Book 1
Book
From the author of the bestselling Psychic Surveys series, comes a brand new series of STANDALONE...
Jesters_folly (230 KP) rated Mr. Vampire (1985) in Movies
Jul 24, 2020
Mr vampire is a Chinese horror/comedy and a breakthrough 'Jiangshi' (Rotting Copse) movie due it's mixing of slapstick comedy, kung-fu, Chinese folklore and western vampire myth and has a number of sequels.
The humour is very slapstick, with people getting hit with furniture or getting their head stuck in prison cell bars and the horror level is quite low and most of the effects are quite cheesy.
The Kung-Fu aspect makes the fight scenes entertaining and both the vampire and the ghost have to be dealt with slightly differently..
The image of the living corpse, be it vampire or zombie, being controlled by a yellow paper talisman stuck to it's head is though to have come from Mr Vampire and has been used in many subsequent Jiangshi film as well as many other shows, including the recent Netflix show 'Kingdom' where we see a scene of villagers selling the talismans when the zombies are threatening their village.
Mr Vampire manages to pull off Horror comedy in a way that is watchable by almost anyone. The film has a 15 (UK) rating and does contain vampires and ghosts but neither are overly frighting, partly due to the effects of the time.
Mouse
Book
Despite its minuscule size, the mouse has a large presence in earth's animal kingdom and the human...
The Conscience of the Folk Revival: The Writings of Israel 'Izzy' Young
Book
Israel G. “Izzy” Young was the proprietor of the Folklore Center in Greenwich Village from the...
K: A History of Baseball in Ten Pitches
Book
From the New York Times baseball columnist, an enchanting, enthralling history of the national...
Spirit Of The Fox
Book
SHES LOST HER MOTHER AND HER MEMORY. AND IF SHE FAILS TO ESCAPE... SHE’LL LOSE HERSELF. Meiji...
The Wolf in the Whale
Book
'IMAGINATIVE AND COMPELLING' Juliet Marillier, author of the Sevenwaters Series THERE IS A VERY OLD...
Historical Fiction Mythology
The Ghost Bride
Book
Publisher's Summary A startlingly original voice makes her literary debut with this wondrous...
LoganCrews (2861 KP) rated Lesson of the Evil (2012) in Movies
Nov 15, 2021
Takashi Miike's 𝘛𝘩𝘦 𝘎𝘶𝘦𝘴𝘵 - which, yes, is every bit as messy and overstuffed as that sounds; though I fear that if this were leaner you could miss out on the finer details like the weird German folklore stuff or the fleshy gun with the talking eyeball. The third act here is better than anything in even 𝘈𝘮𝘦𝘳𝘪𝘤𝘢𝘯 𝘗𝘴𝘺𝘤𝘩𝘰, probably the greatest thing Miike has ever done - just as demented, tasteless, and perfectly staged as reported plus it lasts around a solid, uninterrupted 45 minutes. Simultaneously fun and hard to watch in the sense that you can't believe that not only are they actually going for this, but they're going for it *hard* (given the director, I'd expect no less). I'm confident in saying this has the most straight-up brutal use of the shotgun in film history that I've seen. Hideaki Ito is flawless as this fucked-up closet psychopath who just bleeds raw antihero charisma, this kind of character can tire so easily but him and Miike sell it in full - partly because (and this is one of the things I love most about Miike) there's zero pretension to be found here. The precise type of ethically repugnantly, formally playful, feverish trashy thrills you'd expect out of this are exactly what you get - no clichéd moral handwringing or bullshit pulled punches you see in a lot of Western cinema for this genre. This is the real shit, another bonafide cult classic from one of the masters. Plus it's generally bizarre as hell, too.


