Vampire Buster

Did You Know?

• The film grossed HK$6,080,335 at the Hong Kong box office during its theatrical run from 8 June to 12 September 1989.
• Hong Kong Film Net gave the film a score of 6/10 stars and describes it as a 'semi-coherent ramblings of a borderline lunatic.'
• The exorcist Cheung Sap-yat uses a bell from Micky's stuffed Garfield cat to nearly subdue the demon.

Plot

In 1989, a Hong Kong action comedy horror film titled Vampire Buster, also known in the United Kingdom as Ninja Vampire Busters, was released. Directed by Stanley Siu and Norman Law, the film stars Jacky Cheung, Kent Cheng, Stanley Fung, and Natalis Chan. Despite its title, the movie contains no vampires; instead, it centers on a demon ghost that is a thousand years old.

The story begins with Cheung Sap-yat, an exorcist living in Jiangxi, China. He owns a Ming dynasty vase that imprisons a demon spirit. This demon was once a renegade disciple of Cheung’s ancestor. Cheung’s son, Siu-bo, leads a group of Cultural Revolution supporters who try to confiscate the vase. To prevent this, Cheung throws the vase into the sea. It drifts to Hong Kong and eventually appears at a charity auction.

At the auction, the vase is purchased for HK$1.8 million by Councilor Stephen Kei and his son Jacky, who has recently dropped out of school abroad. When they bring the vase home, Stephen’s religious mother senses something unclean about it. Stephen’s girlfriend, Mable, suggests he take the vase to a fortune teller named Chan Pak-tung. Chan is actually a fraud and Mable’s secret lover; together, they scheme to scam money from Stephen.

Stephen brings the vase to Chan, who pretends to perform a Taoist ritual. During this fake ritual, Chan dumps cigar ashes into the vase. This causes the demon’s hand to pop out. When Chan tries to inspect the vase, the demon’s hand pushes him away. Chan then returns the vase to Stephen.

Back at the Kei mansion, the vase begins to smoke, and the demon emerges. It knocks Stephen unconscious. Meanwhile, Jacky is playfully scaring his girlfriend, Cat (played by Elsie Chan), by wearing monster masks in the dark. Jacky’s younger sister Micky and his grandmother join the game. The fun is interrupted when Jacky accidentally kicks his grandmother, and they encounter the demon. They believe it is Stephen wearing a mask. The demon tries to attack them but is blocked by a shrine that shines light on it. The demon then possesses Stephen.

Cheung, having learned that the Keis bought the vase, illegally enters Hong Kong. He evades the police with his agility and uses supernatural abilities to make a traffic cop hallucinate, tricking the officer into giving him a ride to the Kei mansion. When Cheung arrives, he realizes the demon has escaped the vase. He attempts an exorcism, but the demon-possessed Stephen drives him away by shooting at him with a sniper rifle.

Later, Jacky accidentally runs over Cheung while driving at night with Cat. Cheung refuses to go to the hospital, so Jacky brings him to the mansion. While Jacky and Cat fetch a doctor, the demon-possessed Stephen attacks Cheung again. Cheung, who left his tools in Jacky’s car, nearly subdues the demon using a bell from Micky’s stuffed Garfield cat. However, Micky interrupts, taking the cat and bell away, and Cheung flees just before Jacky and Cat return with the doctor.

The next day, Cheung finds Jacky and Cat in a church and warns them that Stephen is possessed. They dismiss him. One night, the demon-possessed Stephen meets with a fellow councilor named Lee. Lee notices Stephen’s changed behavior and comments that he might be going insane. The demon manipulates Lee into hallucinating that his belt turns into a snake, causing Lee to be run over and killed by a car.

During a thunderstorm, the demon temporarily reveals its true form. Mable sees this and later tells Chan while they are cheating together at her house. Chan deduces that Stephen has a fetish for scaring her. The demon-possessed Stephen then arrives. Chan hides and watches in horror as the demon kills Mable. The demon-possessed Stephen finds Chan and chases him outside, attempting to kill him. Cheung arrives just in time, striking the demon in the chest and stopping it.

The demon-possessed Stephen returns home to treat his wound. Micky notices him, so the demon leaves Stephen’s body and possesses Cat instead. Cheung and Chan arrive at the Kei mansion and explain what is happening, but they cannot prove it because Stephen is no longer possessed. The family kicks them out. Cheung and Chan then realize the demon has possessed Micky.

The next morning, Cheung and Chan kidnap the demon-possessed Micky. However, the demon causes their car to crash, and they end up hospitalized. At the hospital, the doctor tells Stephen and Jacky that Micky’s brainwave is unusually strong. During the night, the demon-possessed Micky kills a nurse watching her and two police officers interrogating Cheung. She then attacks Cheung, causing havoc in the hospital. Jacky, Stephen, and Cat arrive and see what has happened to Micky.

Cheung explains that the only way to exorcise the demon is to use a spiritual pole, which he left in the crashed car, and a Taoist mirror inside the vase. Since Cheung is under custody for illegally entering Hong Kong, he tells them how to summon his spirit when they need help. Jacky and Cat find the pole in the car at the vehicle pound. Stephen and Chan return to the mansion to find the mirror in the vase. But the demon leaves Micky’s body and possesses Stephen again, bringing the vase to an abandoned part of the mansion where Stephen’s deceased father used to live. Jacky, Cat, and Chan follow him there. The demon-possessed Stephen attacks them. During the fight, they summon Cheung to possess Cat, but Cheung cannot unleash his full power in a female body.