At CTY several years ago (good times!) I remember watching a Chinese movie with English subtitles. It involved a Buddhist and Taoist monk who, along with their respective alcolytes, have to fight off a horde of hopping zombies with wooden swords and sticky rice. I remember several scenes:
-The monks torturing each other with voodoo dolls
-One monk charging into the final battle with wooden swords of ever-increasing size
-A love subplot between the two apprentices
-The head bad guy (I assume) hitching a ride on the shoulders of the hopping zombies
Can anyone identify the movie for me? Pretty please?
You definitely saw one of the Mr. Vampire series of horror/comedy movies.
Do you remember if there was a flaming gay vampire? If so, then I’m putting my bets on Mr. Vampire Part 4. I just saw it recently, and it has all the elements you specify except maybe the shoulder riding thing.
Chinese vampires/zombies are pretty fascinating. As it was explained to me, the “hopping ghosts” were created as a low-cost method of transportation for dead bodies. Most people couldn’t afford to have a coffin shipped back to the deceased’s home town for burial, so they hired these vampire masters who would reanimate the dead bodies using Taoist spells (the yellow Post-It notes with red characters stuck on the foreheads of the vampires), then lead the dead bodies back home by foot, ringing a bell to make them follow. The characteristic hopping motion comes from the fact that the vampires all have rigor mortis and can’t bend their knees. Sometimes the living dead go bad/get away/get possessed by evil spirits and wind up as real, vicious vampires with an infectious bite. They find people by smelling the carbon dioxide on their breath. They are repelled by 1) spells 2) snakes 3) sticky rice 4) chicken blood.