Vampire Cleanup Department (2017)

Love with a hopping vampire!

When hopping vampires come to town, who are you going to call? Vampire Cleanup Department! This Hong Kong production starred several older actors from the golden era of fists and kicks kung fu movies as well as two younger actors. The film had a few gruesome scenes but overall was a more lighthearted romance and coming of age vampire wrangler story.

Tim witnesses a vampire attack and after being bitten by a vampire and not transforming is recruited by the Vampire Cleanup Department. On a mission outside of town he accidentally transforms a gruesome water vampire back into her original form. Summer, the young vampire woman looks normal but is unable to talk except with the help of his phone which she had swallowed and hops like the rest of the vampires. He’s tasked with cremating her back at headquarters but instead hides her nearby. From there the story becomes about him training her to be more human. At the VCD, faster than you can say “wax on, wax off!”, Tim has learned kung fu from repeatedly sweeping the floors. He runs afoul of his trainers when he wants to help the vampires instead of killing them. A competing agency causes problems for the cleanup department when they steal Summer and attempt to lure her maker, a devilishly dangerous landlord vampire, so that they can capture him for research.

I was thrilled to see Toad Venom Lo Meng as one of the fight trainers who also loved plants. Yuen Chueng Yan played the priest who provided the amulets. Aside from acting Yuen spent much of his career as a martial arts director for numerous films. Chin Siu Ho as the trainer who was toughest on Tim, started his martial arts training at the age of 10. These three alone made my geeky martial arts loving heart tremble. Richard Ng played the director in charge of tech support and cremation. Babyjohn did a good job as the naïve, bumbling, vampire cleanup trainee who falls in love with a partially transformed hopping vampire. Lin Min Chen gave Summer a kind quality as she hopped about and learned more human traits, but wasn’t asked to stretch much acting-wise.

The quality of the CGI, vampires, and fights weren’t bad for this genre of film. Thankfully, the humor wasn’t overly slapstick. Though at 90 minutes the movie tried to do too many things leaving many issues resolved thinly or not at all. Vampire Cleanup Department wasn’t a blockbuster type movie, just a nice little Hong Kong hopping vampire story with a surprisingly heartfelt center to it.

10/12/23

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