The Smart Little Kang-si (똘똘이 소강시, TTOL-TTOL-I SO-GANGSI, 1988)

"The Smart Little Kang-si" is 1988 Korean child movie. And this is one of the most hilarious spoof of "Chinese hopping zombie" films. O.K. What is this "Chinese hopping zombie" ? It is a frozen corpse, and it is also a zombie. But it is frozen, so they can not walk in normal form. They are hopping. This is the main idea of this Chinese hopping zombie.

(The Smart Little Zombie)

In 80s, there were Hong Kong film series called "Mr. Vampire".
"Mr. Vampire" was produced by famous Sammo Hung. In 70s, this Chinese hopping zombie was translated to "Chinese Vampire" in English. This was because of the popularity of Hammer Horror film. This made the English title of this Chinese hopping zombie movie to be "Mr. Vampire".

"Mr. Vampire" series was really popular among the kids in all around East Asia. This was because they had a lot of comedic value. Of course, there was huge sensation among children in Korea. Those days, you could see hopping kids all round Korea, doing Chinese hopping zombie scenes from the movies.

So some Korean film makers decided to make their own Chinese hopping zombie movie. They hired some of Hong Kong actors and Taiwanese film makers, and made a cheap movie which was filled with its legendary quality of hilariously cheap comedy scenes. That was the movie called, "The Smart Little Kang-si". This "Kang-si" means the Korean word for Chinese hopping zombie.

This film contains a lot of Chinese hopping zombies and many childish jokes without any honor, without any small quantity of decency.
You can see a few of disgusting scenes filled with the worst quality of gross out comedy. I think you know that children like these rude and dirty things. And this movie gives what some children like to make jokes in very cheesy sense.
And in this movie, you can also see a cute boy zombie and some of martial arts scenes. Because they are following some sort of tradition from the original Chinese hopping zombie films of Hong Kong.

Despite of all the bad things, this movie has O.K. story. The problem is it is told in very cheap way, with many senseless hilarious scenes.

The first time you can see is an old hunchback, who takes care of a lots of zombie coffins. And these Chinese hopping zombies live (or just stay dead) in their own peaceful community, which is away from human being.
And you can see a young little smart zombie, and he is the main character. Then, you can see two male zombies. These two zombies are saying "I love you most" to the little smart zombie. And it sounds like: they are some sort of criminals. It is scary, but not in a way that movie really planned to be.
Actually it turns out to be the fact that these two zombies love the mother of the little smart zombie, and they wanted to be friendly to their love interest. Furthermore, there is a birthday party for this mother zombie.

After that you can see the title sequence, which is massive zombie dancing scene. It is inspired by some Michale Jackson dance of that time. Dosens of zombies dancing all around is hilarious idea. But the scene in this movie is without any detailed well-trained quality. It is so cheap and simple. After this dancing, there is the mother zombie who is introduced as Miss Korea when she was alive.
They just ignore all the other guys and herself are all dressed as Chinese. Anyway, now two male zombies fight each other to get the mother zombie. But the little smart zombie misunderstands. He thinks they are fighting for himself. So, he decides to leave and disappears from the community, to end this zombie fighting.

And suddenly the other scene is introduced. What you can see is there is a Dracula-like vampire.
You can not understand what this is. Then suddelny, a Taoist zombie fighter appears. He is Chinese version of Van Helsing.
And he says this Dracula-like vampire is his brother and his brother was attacked by Western vampire. In his theory, this can be cured by blood of Chinese hopping zombie. Because only thing that can cure undead is another undead. And he begins to hunt some Chinese hopping zombies.

Now you can realize the whole system of the story in this movie.
Number one: There is the little smart zombie lost in human town, away from his Chinese hopping zombie community.
Number two: But there is a bad guy who wants to hunt the little smart zombie.
Number three: On the other hand, a bunch of Chinese hopping zombies are trying to search the little smart zombie.

O.K. The situation sounds exciting enough. Then, who can solve this situation? The answer is random kids in town. Because this is senseless children's movie.
The kids take the little smart zombie to his side of zombies, and kick the bad guy's ass.

From the view of the kids in this movie, this film is a bad quality exploitation of another type of a movie, called "E.T."(!). In this movie, this little smart zombie is like E.T. This is very not understandable, but somehow, in this movie the zombie is treated as E.T.-like-creature. The result is cheap, but funny. The little smart zombie looks cute and lovely.
The little smart zombie has his own occult supernatural power and very fantastic out-look, just like E.T.
In this movie, you can see a little sister of a kid is doing a Drew Barrymore's scene, and the little smart zombie is using his magical power to make the kids flying. You can hear one kid is shouting "I am superman."

The final conclusion of the story is the bad guy suddenly using his "grenade launcher". But Chinese hopping zombies take him into some untold explosion, so he dies. And his brother, I mean Dracula-like vampire, is attacked by the kids holding cross simply made by two wooden sticks. Then, zombies take him to the big cross and - BAMM! - crucified him. This unholy scene is the end of all the main fighting.

The very last scene of the movie is wedding scene of the mother zombie. The husband is... both of the two male zombies. So it is one wife vs. two husbands marriage. Some old zombie is saying to the little smart zombie, like "Two daddies are better than one daddy." What a positive wisdom that you can only find in hilarious children's movie!

(Kids)

This film is in bad shape and with endless cheap dialogs, but at the same time, this film also has some of fun factors. Of course, it has mind-blowing hilarious idea. And it is also good at utilizing the known rules of Chinese hopping zombie, such as Chinese hopping zombies are frozen corpses, so they can use magical blizzard, or Chinese hopping zombie can be attacked by Taoism painting and Taoism spells. These things are well attached to the main stream of the story.

One more thing. The actor played the little smart zombie is Taewoo Jeong. He became a famous child actor in early 90s, especially in serious history themed TV shows. Now he is still a good actor with good acting skill.