This film begins with the studied seriousness of a social-conscience drama, and indeed, one can almost read the shunned little snake-haired girl as a stand-in for Muslims, given that she is initially introduced simply with a black scarf wrapped around her head. Though initially sweet and innocent, the child trades in her sweetness for slithering revenge once the locals tragically turn upon her and her family, murdering her parents. And so it goes that, as she grows older, she learns to cultivate the power to command hordes of ugly ass snakes (and equally ugly locals) to do her horrible bidding.
Peculiarly, this plot-line gets mostly set aside for awhile as the film turns into a kung-fu flick. And while the heroic martial artist is quite good, his choreography is pretty much the same in fight after fight after fight. And man-o-man is the progress of the story ever slow. Sadly, by the time the film returns to the anticipated face-off between the kung-fu master and the – now grown-up snake goddess - one can be forgiven for having largely ceased to care.
