Vampire Controller (2001)

Tedious attempt to revive the gyonsi genre for the 21st century. Again suffers from casting a completely charisma free man in the lead role (Gallen Lo), which makes it rather difficult to enjoy the jealous rivalry for his affections that goes on between the very lovely Kathy Chow and the not-quite-as-lovely-but-still-pretty-lovely Joey Man. Not that the script was exactly inspired to begin with.

Wayne Lai is little more watchable as Gallen's master, but Yuen King-Tan is wonderful as always as Kathy's master. Quite a large role by her normal standards, and not playing a brothel mamasan for once! She still has dull script lines to deliver though, and the chemistry between her and Wayne Lai is non-existent.

Despite the soundtracks best efforts to convince you that the interplay between these characters is amusing, it clearly isn't. The soundtrack might not have seemed so annoying if it were, so I'm reluctant to call it "a hideous abuse of the ears" in its own right, though it clearly is in the context of this movie.

Yuen Wah crops up as a black magician bad-guy, looking really old these days. He's not in it for long. The vampire action is pretty minimal in the movie, and the attempts at action sequences really show how much ground Hong Kong has lost in that field in less than 10 years.

Is there anything to recommend the movie for? Kathy Chow, basically. Apart from that, nada.