"My Date with a Vampire" Tidbits

Chan Sap Sam, the scriptwriter of the first and second installments of "My Date with a Vampire" (also Joey Meng's husband), posted some interesting tidbits about the two series on his Weibo earlier.

- When filming the last shot of Yamamoto Ichifu turning into a skeleton in the scene where he was killed by Yamamoto Mirai on the balcony in "My Date with a Vampire", it was discovered that the prop skull was nowhere to be found. With the loss of time searching for the prop, the director came up with a solution and quickly finished filming the shot. The director used the femur in place of the skull, and said, "The skull of the vampire is obviously different from the human!"

- The Ma family's 'No Tear Curse' was originally the 'Kiss Curse'. The female Ma member would lose her supernatural powers if she were kissed; however, in order to make the storyline more romantic and more exceptional, it was changed so that they could not cry.

- The name Wong Chun Chun was derived from a Thailand restaurant. The name was picked for its ordinariness and its earthiness. Also, it was fairly easy for people to remember.

- The idea of Ma Siu Ling's quote, "Don't talk to me about interest. Just talk to me about money!", came from the Japanese TV series "Homeless Girl". The female lead's quote was "Don't pity me. Just give me money!"

- The eye colour of vampires to distinguish the different levels of the vampire was actually forced upon. Before the filming began, it was decided that the eye colour of the vampires were to be red; however, coloured eye contacts were not in trend during that time in Hong Kong, and the sponsor had limited stock. It was only by using other colours that they had enough coloured eye contacts, so Chan Sap Sam came up with using different eye colours to distinguish the different levels of the vampires.

- When "Vampire I" went to Japan to do location filming, due to inadequate resources, the producer, director, assistant director, stunt choreographer, makeup artist, etc. had to play chauffeur, police officer, tourist, corpse, etc. In order to save a thousand plus dollars on the production fee, Chan Sap Sam also made a cameo, dubbing for one line of dialogue, which can only be heard in the Cantonese version.

- The origin of Wong Chun Chun's line, "Don't love me. Don't bite me!", is slightly R-rated. It came from Chan Sap Sam's male friend's real life experience. His friend met a new girlfriend, and in the heat of the night, the girl said something similar to this line in his ear...nothing happened that night. His friend and the new girlfriend broke up peacefully shortly after that. Love's promise is never easy, even for never-aging and never-dying vampires.

- In "Vampire II", Saeki Hinako was invited to play Fujihara Sadako. During the watching of playbacks, it was discovered that there were some problems with a majority of the scenes and that they needed to be re-filmed, but the production costs have already reached their limit, so they could not pay any additional fees. When Saeki Hinako knew about this, she flew to Hong Kong to re-film the problematic scenes at no extra cost.

Personal Note: Have always been a fan of ATV's early '90s series, such as "Who Is the Winner?", "Mythical Crane and Magical Needle", "Gun and Glory", "Heroic Legends of the Yang's Family", "Vampire Expert", "I Have a Date with Spring", etc. However, "My Date with a Vampire" is my absolute all-time favourite!

"Vampire" was the first of its kind in Hong Kong television, and ATV was the first to do it! ;)

*Credits to Weibo