On their wedding day, Ting Tzu-chu (Helen Poon Bing-Seung) explains to her husband — detective and martial artist Long Fei (Derek Yee) — the ritual that Xiao Lik (Yueh Hua) is leading the villagers in. They are making a peace offering to the Black Lizard, a centuries old demon that comes back every three years to take one life.

It’s a good thing she told him about this, because a few days later, Long Fei meets someone by the name of Visitor from Hell (Goo Goon-Chung), who tells him that if he doesn’t come home and stops taking a prisoner to jail, his wife will die. This is followed by meeting a man in red (Yuen Wah) and a woman in white (Chan Man-Na) who ends up being the dead wife of Xiao Lik. They are carrying a coffin with a woman in it that looks a lot like our hero’s wife. If that doesn’t weird you out, it turns out that Xiao Lik has already killed the Black Lizard once before and was cursed as it came back as his son Ruo Yu (Ng Yuen-Jun), who grew up to kill his mother and now isn’t waiting for three years to keep murdering.

Working with Chief Constable Tieh Hu (Hua Yueh), Long Fei must learn how to prevent the death of his wife while the world around him looks less like the Shaw Brothers sets and more like the world of Mario Bava, as colored gels make reality a comic book, cobwebs cover everything and talking wooden people are here to further screw with your brain. Imagine if Scooby-Doo had more fog than you though was possible, as well as sword fights and heroic fighters.

Chor Yuen also made Bat Without Wings and this has plenty of the mood from that film. I have a weakness for Shaw Brothers films that blend horror with their traditional wuxia elements. This movie glows in the dark.