A gender flipped adaption of The Legend Of The White Snake, this Lo Chen-directed film starts with a village running out of water and praying to various animal deities. Only the snakes answer, in the person of Snake Prince (Ti Lung) and his two snake friends, Yellow and Black Snake (Wong Yu and Ng Hong-Sang). They spy on the villagers as they sing and dance — get ready, this movie is filled with musical numbers — and become enamored of several of the ladies, including Hei Qin (Lin Chen-Chi). They’re run off by the men of the village, but when the people come to Snake Mountain and ask for water, he only wants Hei Qin to join his kingdom. He grants them access to all that water, even after they threatened to burn down the entire hillside, which would end up killing everyone.

Unfortunately, Hei Qin has a jealous sister who wants the riches of the snake kingdom and the humans left behind in the village hate the idea that a snake god is making sweet love to the most beautiful woman they’ve ever seen. So they do what they threatened, which is set the hillside on fire, and then use sulphur to smoke out the snakes, who transform into their true gigantic snake form. A ton of snakes and humans die — the snakes die for real, because this is a Hong Kong movie — and then the snakes are all killed by the humans, who set them on fire and stab them repeated times. To remind you this is a Shaw Brothers movie, Hei Qin takes the sharpened stick that killed Snake Prince and stabs herself with it, which cuts to a statue of the lovers on Snake Mountain and their ghostly giant forms staring toward the afterlife.

I told you the story but in no way will that prepare you for this film. Imagine a rock musical with funked out guitars, dance numbers with cute girls that seem like they’re in a Shaw Brothers cover version of an AIP beach drive-in movie, all with effects from Daiei (the same people who brought you Daimajin and Gamera) starring bad ass Ti Ling, who usually is fighting yet here he’s a singing snake god. Then imagine every color in the Bava rainbow being unleashed. That gives you just part of what this is about to share with you. Yet for as innocent and magical that this movie is, it ends with gore and sadness. Such is the world of Shaw Brothers.