A Bite of Love
Director: Stephen Shin
Year: 1990
Rating: 5.5
Damn, a Hong Kong
film and the vampires are not of the Hopping variety! How can that be? We
come for the Jiangshi and get a vampire who thinks he is a British Lord with
a foppish gray wig. Well, it is George Lam, a Hong Kong actor that I generally
avoid like bed bugs. He is as bland as a tube of generic toothpaste. The
only actor possible to have made Michelle Yeoh seem dull in Easy Money. That
film was directed by the same fellow who directed this one - Stephen Shin.
Shin directed a bunch of yuppie like films in the 1980s and 90s for Dickson
Poon (D&B) - many of them starring Lam. But to give Shin credit, he went
on to direct Jade Leung in Black Cat and then undid any good will by directing
her in Black Cat II. And for all my criticism of Lam, he is a very popular
singer and had the good luck of marrying Sally Yeh, who is wonderful. But
in films he makes me want to reach for the remote.
This film is a bit of a mess - plodding
when Lam is the center of attention but quite good when he is not. The action
choreography is by Phillip Kwok who would soon go on to choreograph Hard
Boiled. The action here is not Hard Boiled and it is not the main focus,
but whenever there is some it is solid enough. I should point out that this
is mainly a comedy and has some funny parts. And it turns into a crazy tense
narrative in the final 20-minutes. For a George Lam film, it is passable.
Along with him are Big Eyes Rosamund Kwan, Norman Tsui and Hui Siu-hung -
who all contribute to making this watchable.
Lam is a vampire living in a mansion in
London with his manservant Hui taking good care of him. But times are a little
tough - money is getting scarce and buying blood is expensive. Lam is the
good kind of vampire. The sort we would not mind living next door. He won't
suck on human blood - not even when Hui knocks out a pretty blond female
and presents her to the Duke - advertising her as "fresh, hot, tender and
chewy". Instead, he drinks a thimble of blood which reinvigorates him enough
to go out for the evening in his horse-drawn carriage, wig and cape. Where
he comes upon triad leader Norman Tsui being entertained by a bevy of beautiful
women all scantily clothed in a private club. He is dying from some blood
disease. His sister is Rosamund and Lam instantly falls for those big brown
eyes - we all have at some point in our viewing career - "I have been waiting
for you for a hundred years". Lucky girl.
But that damn, no biting humans rule gets
in the way. She witnesses him saving a boy (Cheng Pak-lam - as annoying here
as he was in Prince of the Sun with Rothrock) by a blood transfusion. She
tells her brother and the insanity begins. He wants that blood. And has a
gang of thugs to go get it. Once it moves back to Hong Kong it gets loonier
- the scene of the brother with oncoming vampirism beginning to get horny
for his sister is quite funny and is Hui in his ball and chain as they both
try and escape. Then a weird fellow (Chang Gan-wing) in a video store watching
a vampire movie who is an amateur vampire killer and peeper just adds to
the silliness. Had this for years. Good to finally get it out of the way
so it won't be starring me in the face any longer.
