Kung Fu Zombie

The Chinese zombie is an interesting genre of monster: a resurrected corpse that hops around with its feet tightly together, often with its arms stretched out in front of it. (The theory, as I understand it, is that rigor mortis has rendered them incapable of moving their limbs.) Sometimes called “zombies,” sometimes “vampires,” and sometimes simply “corpses,” a member of the “hopping dead” can be immobilized by a Daoist priest’s slapping a prayer, written on yellow paper in red ink, on his forehead. (See image on the right, from Mr. Vampire.)

The plot of Kung Fu Zombie really isn’t all that important. It’s your typical families-avenging-each-other story that primarily serves to provide a reason for the main characters to beat the crap out of each other in twenty-minute-long fight scenes. There’s ostensibly a “hero” (Billy Chong), but he’s so incredibly annoying and self-absorbed that he doesn’t really seem to count.

Really, the only notable thing about this movie is that it includes three completely different varieties of undead creatures.

Zombie 1: Silent, Hopping Corpses — In the first scene of the movie, we see a priest raising four corpses from the dead through an elaborate dance, each corpse bolting upright in its coffin as the priest clangs his cymbals together. These zombies, which do nothing more than hop around and fall on people, have the life sucked back out of them with the aforementioned prayers written on yellow paper and slapped to their foreheads. Yawn.

Zombie 2: Corpse-Squatting Ghost — One of the gangsters present at the ritual accidentally falls into a trap laid for an enemy and dies; his spirit leaves his body after it’s struck by lightening (sure, why not), and he chases down the corpse-resurrecting priest, convincing him to put him back in a body. The priest eventually manages to get the gangster back inside the body of a newly-deceased man (through a ritual that involves stabbing the corpse seven times, so that the spirit can enter the body), and we have Zombie 2: fully-functional body inhabited by a dead soul. Toward the end of the movie, this body squatter has his spirit ripped out and put back in his corpse. Not too much trouble, either.

Zombie 3: Blood-Sucking Vampire — The third species of zombie in this movie is…well, complicated. While trying to find a suitable body for the gangster’s ghost, the priest accidentally awakens one of the rival family members out for revenge. It’s not really clear whether the man was actually dead, pretending to be dead, or undead from the beginning — what’s important is that once he’s actually killed, and the priest tries out the ritual again, he comes back as a super-strong vampire (complete with fangs and cape) who can only be killed by a large helping of Buddhist magic and prayer beads (courtesy of a local monk).

Useful lessons:

• When faced with a vengeful spirit inhabiting someone else’s corpse, you’ll be safe from it in jail or in a temple.
• If neither going to jail nor joining a monastery suits your lifestyle, you can also try putting a hat made of palm fronds on your head, which makes you invisible to the zombie. Palm-frond hats are also suitable for protecting your brain from chemtrails and cell phone radiation.