Murray State University’s Cinema International is closing out its slate of fall screenings this week with the 2017 comedy-horror “Vampire Cleanup Department.”
Directed by Chiu Sin-Hang and Yan Pak-Wing, the film tells the story of a street sweeper who joins a secret government agency that fights vampires in Hong Kong but finds himself falling in love with one. The film delves into romance and explores both Taoist spirituality and Chinese vampire mythology.
MSU Cinema International co-director Tamara Feinstein says the film is perfect because it is right in time for Halloween and has everything audiences would want.
“Its got a number of spooky elements to it, involving vampires and vampire hunters, but it's not that scary. So for those of you that want to be creeped out a little bit and have some Halloween fun, but are afraid of being too scared, this is the perfect movie,” she said. “So it's got comedy in it. It's like a horror comedy. It has romance in it. So it's very funny and light hearted.”
Professor of Chinese studies Jie Wu said that the vampires depicted in “Vampire Cleanup Department” are different from those of western films. Wu said the film’s original Chinese actually doesn’t include the word that translates to what westerners think of as vampires.
“The title of the film in Chinese is actually not vampire, but ‘stiff corpses,’ so their bodies are stiff and their joints cannot bend, so they can only hop with straight arms, as the film says. I think the Chinese vampire, also known as hopping corpses, is a creation of the modern Hong Kong film industry,” she said. “We know that vampire films flourished in Hong Kong in the 1980s and 90s, thanks to a very famous director who happened to be a colleague of Bruce Lee when he was younger. He passed away and then the genre just went into oblivion for a while. Recently, I learned that there have been some efforts to revive this genre.”
Wu said that the film brings together traditional elements of the genre, including romance, horror and martial arts, but she said that the film merges this with Taoist practices.
“Taoism is the only native religion of China, and as a religion, it originated around the third century, and it deals with all sorts of supernatural beings, exorcism, Alchemy and different ways to achieve immortality,” said Wu.
Murray State University Cinema International is screening “Vampire Cleanup Department” Thursday, Oct. 30 and Saturday, Nov. 1 at 7:30 p.m. in Faculty Hall room 208 on campus.
