Ricky Lau Koon-Wai 劉觀偉
In Mr. Vampire, Ricky Lau's Taoist priest battles the undead with sticky rice and paper talismans, while his disciples manage to botch things even when all they have to do is stand still and hold their breath. After this film, hopping corpse movies became all the rage in Hong Kong and Taiwan for several years, and Lam Ching-Ying became the most recognizable ghost hunter in Hong Kong cinema. By that time, Lau had spent many years as a cinematographer for Sammo Hung and knew the mechanics of kung fu comedy inside out. He returned to tales of the supernatural thirty years later, by then making films for Chinese streaming platforms.
Lau Koon-Wai was born on December 20, 1949 in Hong Kong, into a family of emigrants from Zhongshan in Guangdong Province. His father was a film art director, and from childhood Lau was always hanging around the soundstages of the Grandview studio in Diamond Hill, where the Shaw Brothers company was then making its films. In the third year of secondary school he dropped out and took a job as a technician at a film equipment shop. In 1967 he became a camera assistant and for a time studied under the Japanese Nishimoto Tadashi. The Hong Kong Film Archive names the Taiwanese melodrama Seventeen Years Searching for Mother (尋母十七年, 1971) as his first solo cinematography credit. After returning from Taiwan to Hong Kong, Lau once again worked as an assistant for a while.
He was introduced to Sammo Hung by Billy Chan. In 1978 Lau shot the comedy Enter the Fat Dragon for Hung, and Warriors Two, in which the wing chun training itself becomes a spectacle. Then came Knockabout with Yuen Biao, where a giant skipping rope comes into play in the final fight, and The Prodigal Son, in which it is especially clear how fast and precise Lam Ching-Ying is in close combat. When Hung moved the kung fu comedy onto the streets of modern Hong Kong, Lau was once again behind the camera on Winners and Sinners (1983). For Hung's company Bo Ho he shot the supernatural comedy Hocus Pocus (1984), in which Lam already plays a mentor who has to protect his charges from a ghost.
Lau caught the directing bug listening to Hung and his colleagues discuss scripts. His first two pictures, Crazy Couple (1979) and Two Toothless Tigers (1980), were kung fu comedies of the kind turned out by the dozen at the time. Lau himself recalled that on the first of them he was mainly concerned with making sure the shots flowed smoothly into one another. The second film, in which Hung appeared alongside Yuen Shun-Yi, was no great success either, and Lau decided to go back to cinematography for the time being.
He started on a new script while still shooting Carry On Pickpocket (1982). By then Hung had already released Encounter of the Spooky Kind, and Lau too wanted to make a supernatural comedy, only about the walking dead. As a child he had heard plenty of stories about Maoshan sorcery from an uncle who himself performed such rites. In the film that Hung eventually agreed to produce, the undead had rules of their own. If a person held his breath, the corpse would stop noticing him. Chin Siu-Ho recalled in an interview with HK01 that this device was invented by the filmmakers themselves, and that in time audiences came to take such inventions for genuine folk beliefs.
By Lau's own reckoning, Mr. Vampire (1985) was shot over 120 days, with interruptions. The budget grew from 4.5 to 8.5 million Hong Kong dollars, and when Hung and the Golden Harvest management estimated that the film would take in six million at most, Lau again thought about going back behind the camera. Lau first saw how audiences responded to the film in Taiwan. In Taipei's Ximending there was a queue outside the cinema, and inside the auditorium the audience alternately screamed and roared with laughter. Lau said he secretly recorded their reactions on a tape recorder and, on his return, played it for Hung. In Hong Kong the film grossed more than twenty million. In 1986 Lau was nominated for the Hong Kong Film Awards for directing, and the music award went to Melody Bank. An HKCinema reviewer noted how neatly horror, comedy and kung fu coexist in the film. It also has some very quiet scenes. As the Taoist priest's disciple rides through the night forest, the ghost played by Pauline Wong slowly settles onto his bicycle to the strains of a song about a ghost bride.
Lau made one sequel a year, each time changing something significant. In Mr. Vampire Part 2 (1986), he moved the action to a modern city and paired the little vampire with ordinary children. It was precisely this tilt toward children's cinema that drew the most criticism from the HKCinema reviewer. In Mr. Vampire Part 3 (1987), he returned to old villages and incantations and added more creepiness, while Richard Ng Yiu-Hon played a charlatan who himself sends ghosts after his clients so that he can later exorcise them for a fee. In Mr. Vampire Saga Four (1988), Lau did without Lam Ching-Ying and devoted the first half of the picture to the bickering of two neighbors – a Taoist and a Buddhist monk played by Anthony Chan Yau and Wu Ma. Between sequels he also worked on the police comedy Where's Officer Tuba? (1986), taking over the shoot after Phillip Chan Yan-Kin departed.
When Hung left Golden Harvest, Lau directed for his new company Bojon Films Encounter of the Spooky Kind II, which opened in Hong Kong cinemas in 1990. Hung again took the lead role, and Lam Ching-Ying played a Taoist who this time found himself in trouble as well. That same year saw the release of The Nocturnal Demon with Moon Lee Choi-Fung. Lau put his own money into it and, by his account, broke even despite modest box office. This time he blended horror, comedy and kung fu in a story about a maniac. He gave Moon Lee free rein to fight, and her final duel turned out to be one of the film's most successful scenes.
Lau and Moon Lee dated for several years. A gossip column on Sina in August 2021 claimed their romance began right after the first Mr. Vampire. Lau himself said back in 2008 in an interview with Sohu that they got together after the second installment, when Lee left Golden Harvest, and broke up over disagreements after The Nocturnal Demon. He recalled how in 2007 journalists started calling him again because of the fuss over the actress's divorce, even though more than ten years had passed since their split by then.
For Mr. Vampire 1992, Lau once again brought together Lam Ching-Ying, Chin Siu-Ho and Ricky Hui Koon-Ying. The trio still took obvious delight in tangling with the supernatural, though, as the HKCinema reviewer noted, many of this picture's ideas had already appeared in the previous installments. In the 1990s Lau worked increasingly in other genres. In 1994 he released The Romance of the Vampires, in which a vampire became the hero of a love story, and the costume comedy Now You See Me Now You Don't, while in Life in Last Hour (1999) he tied several dramatic stories together through a single radio broadcast. In Hong Kong, Lau returned to the walking dead once more in Vampire Super (2007), where familiar gags from his old comedies sat alongside horror in the Japanese style.
After 2007 Lau worked mainly on the mainland. He directed the war drama I Am Chinese (2012), and with the arrival of commissions from online platforms he returned to supernatural comedies. In Celestial Return (2017) and Mr. Zombie 2, released online in January 2018, he worked with Chin Siu-Ho again. In the second of these films, Lam Ching-Ying's former disciple now plays the mentor himself. According to Lau, polishing the script took almost a year. He wrote the script for his next picture, Mad Dragon Subdues the Demon (2018), at home at night, when his daughter had fallen asleep. After the film's release, Lau read viewers' comments himself and concluded that with more convincing special effects audiences would have found it easier to believe in his monsters. He reunited with Chin Siu-Ho on the shoot of Taoist Priest (2021), and in 2024 his adventure actioner Shanghai Bund: Dragon at the Golden Pass came out on iQIYI.
