Chin Siu-ho, star of Mr. Vampire (1985), has a problem. He just moved into a functioning slum apartment building with the intention of committing suicide (his wife left him). But while hanging from an overhead fan (he must be in one of the deluxe slum units), twin chick ghosts materialize at the opportunity and take over his soon-to-be dead body. Carpe diem.
Before this can come to fruition, Yau, a chain-smoking downstairs neighbor in his boxers and robe, busts down the door, battles the ghost gals and makes them go back in the wall from whence they came. Behold the power of boxers and robes. Yau, if you haven’t deduced, is a retired vampire hunter. And he has to un-retire to smack those ghost chick creatures.
Elsewhere in the stylish squalor, Tung, a foul-mouthed old man, tells his wife Meiyi he’s going on a saki bender for a few days. He unfortunately falls face first down the hi-rise stairs and splat dies. Fortunately, there’s a black magic expert also living in the building. Gau helps the market fresh widow preserve the body in the bathtub in voodoo dirt and puts a voodoo chain mask on him, advising her to never remove the mask. Mask comes off, Tung turns into a jiangshi. (Wikipedia: Chinese “hopping” vampire, ghost, or zombie, a type of reanimated corpse in Chinese legends and folklore.)
Not sure how this all ties together, especially when informed that glutinous rice is used to combat vampires. Yau tells Chin Siu-ho that after all the vampires are vanquished, vampire hunters become restaurant owners/cooks as they need a job and they’re pretty good making rice. You never think of these things.
All these ingredients come to a boil as Yau, never bothering to put on his pants, teams with Chin Siu-ho and has a holy throw down with the ghost chicks, who have blood tendrils coming out of every orifice. Then they have to deal with Tung, whose hopping all over the place and causing grievous bodily harm. And I thought my apartment building was bad.
Rigor Mortis (2013) is strikingly atmospheric and loaded with grim and gruesome visuals. The in-house vamps will goon you out, especially when a flashback tells you how they became ghosts, a short but vicious sequence. My only complaint to an otherwise solid horror movie is they didn’t show you how to cook glutinous rice. Whenever I make it, the dang stuff sticks to everything. And it’s pretty much useless against the vampires in my apartment building. Maybe I need to add garlic butter or something.
Drinkin' & Drive-in 