Cheng Fu falls asleep, holding the sea snail shell
Directed by Ling Shang and starring Candice Yu, Tony Wong, Little Unicorn and Tien Ching.
Candice Yu as the snail fairy and Tony Wong as Cheng Fu
Tien Ching plays the hero’s extremely obnoxious cousin
Nice guy Cheng Fu (Wong), who his bullied by his uncle’s family, picks up a sea snail shell, takes it home, and has a dream, in which a small fairy implores him to drip some blood into the shell. Cheng Fu wakes from his dream and does, indeed, dribble some blood from his finger into the snail’s shell.
In Cheng Fu’s dream the snail fairy asks for his help
The snail fairy, now in the form of an attractive woman (Yu), falls in love with Cheng Fu, starts providing him with lovely meals, then magically tidies-up and repairs the shack-like home that his mean-spirited uncle has banished him to. The mollusc fairy and Cheng Fu eventually decide to get married. Ah, how sweet!
Hong Kong poster
But the couple must deal with Cheng Fu’s nasty relatives, especially a slimy, obnoxious cousin (Ching), who hires thugs to kidnap the fairy. The pair also come under threat from a snake demon villain (Unicorn), who can take on the form of an actual snake, a larger (puppet) serpent, a frog-eating monk or a snake-human.
When in the guise of a monk, the snake demon gobbles-up a bunch of frogs!
At one point the demon becomes a large, striped snake
The quality of the snake-human’s makeup is, ah, less than Oscar standard
The cheap budget means that the snake-human is basically actor Little Unicorn with face makeup of the standard seen at a children’s birthday party, the trick effects are achieved by such simple methods as double exposure, music is ‘borrowed’ from various movies, including KING KONG (1976) and CARRIE (1976), and the undersea world of the snail fairies is a realism-free set with lots of bubbles floating about in it.
Bubbles float around in the realm of the snail fairies
A moderately interesting moment involves Cheng Fu becoming a skilled fighter when his fairy love’s spirit enters his body, enabling him to beat his adversaries using different styles of kung fu, plus there’s a diverting sequence in a theatrical-looking cavern, where the snail fairy’s two sisters combat several supernatural demon fighters, including a gold dude, a red dude and a ‘wood’ dude, who creaks when he moves and can transform into multiple flying logs.
Red demon-dude
This golden demon-dude actually turns into a large bar of gold during the fight!
The wood demon-dude makes creaking sounds when he moves his arms and legs
Money limitations, however, mean that what ends up on-screen usually fails to do justice to the ideas, but the tale is actually quite charming in a fairy tale kind of way, ensuring that you keep watching as the put-upon hero and his snail fairy bride overcome all obstacles and live happily ever after.
A servant girl who loves Cheng Fu and is jealous of the snail fairy is eventually killed by the snake demon…
…and she transforms into this hyper-realistic skeleton
Thai poster
This cover art features imagery not featured in the movie itself
A villainous westerner steals the snake lover of a Nagin (an Indian snake deity) so that she will follow him back to the city.
The Nagin, which transforms into the shape of a beautiful woman, sets out for revenge…
Poster
The Nagin in her human form (Mallika Sherawat)
HISSS was directed by Jennifer Chambers Lynch, David Lynch’s daughter, who disowned the project when it was completed without her involvement. According to Jennifer, the film that she wanted to make was a love story, but it eventually took the shape of a horror film after the producers took creative control of it. The movie was shot simultaneously in English and Hindi.
Giant CGI snake!
So was HISSS so bad it had to be disowned by Jennifer? Hell, no – I thought this English/Hindi movie was certainly a bit cheesy, but it was also lots of fun to watch.
Poster
The transformation scenes are a real hoot, using a mixture of make-up, prosthetics, animatronics and some not too hot CGI. There’s a nice touch in one shape-changing scene where the eye slides horizontally across the creature’s face.
The serpent’s eye slips into place…
In an early transformation, set in the muddy jungle, the snake turns into a kind of cocoon, from which its female human form emerges.
From out of the cocoon…
…emerges the female snake-creature……who becomes this woman
Robert Kurtzman was the creature makeup effects designer, so the overall snake-woman creature look is good.
Hissssssss…
A transformation in the mud
There’s an exciting sequence involving a chase on foot through the city backstreets, plus there’s even a brief Bollywood-style song and dance moment!
She starts dancing when she hears a snake charmer playing his flute
A behind the scenes shot
A guy gets swallowed by Nagin in her giant snake form
After swallowing one victim whole, we see the half woman/half snake Nagin lying on her bed, digesting her meal with a distended, reptilian belly. That is certainly a memorable visual!
An arresting image
The late, always-reliable Irrfan (JURASSIC WORLD) Khan plays the cop lead and sex symbol Mallika Sherawat is the snake woman, who has a love scene towards the end of the film, in which she is in human form as she caresses her cobra love: lots of tongue action!
How romantic
Mallika cuddles a cobraMallika Sherawat and Irrfan Khan
In a recent post I wrote about Hong Kong director Godfrey Ho, who created a bunch of films for IFD Film Arts that utilised his cut-and-paste technique: splicing footage from different (already existing) movies together, then adding additional recently shot scenes to act as ‘plot glue’ for the new story. Of all these patchwork films my favourite is undoubtedly SCORPION THUNDERBOLT.
Richard Harrison wields his golden sword
As I have not watched this mad movie in many years, I felt that it was my duty to feast my eyes once more upon this unhinged, incident-filled IFD gem.
But did I still like it? Read on…
The enjoyability of Godfrey Ho’s cut-and-paste movies can depend a lot on how interesting the older source movies were that he cut into his new productions. With SCORPION THUNDERBOLT he utilised a lot of footage from the Taiwan-set Korean horror film GRUDGE OF THE SLEEPWALKING WOMAN (1983). Also known as SNAKE WOMAN, this Korean film featured lots of fun cop and monster scenes that greatly enhance the watchability of Godfrey Ho’s movie.
Poster for the original Korean movie
SCORPION THUNDERBOLT begins as it means to go on by using music from STAR WARS, then quickly cuts between shots of a spiky-fingered witch, Richard Harrison playing a character called, well, Richard, and a blind flute player.
Richard plays… Richard
We then move on to a night-time scene where a woman is pursued by a madman and we assume he is intending to attack her… but no, he leaves her alone, and a snake monster kills her instead! The local cops start to investigate the murder and a couple of them try to figure out what the creature might look like by constructing a papier-mâché model of a snake-tadpole critter wearing lipstick. Yeah, that’ll be a great help, guys!
The snake-tadpole model… with lipstick?
As the film progresses it becomes evident that the partly naked young witch (often seen slapping a drum with her spiky hands) and the blind flute player are the people who cause someone to transform into the rubbery snake-beast.
After the cops seek out the madman featured in the earlier scene, who is now shown swinging around a disembowelled dog at what is presumably the garden of the local asylum, we get shots of the always hyperactive witch, wriggling eels, and a flashing crystal ball. We now find out that the underdressed witch wants Richard’s magic ring.
Screaming victim
The witch’s first attempt to get the ring and kill off Richard involves using… a sexy hitchhiker! Richard stops and gives the hitchhiker a lift after she flashes her breasts at him. She tells him she’s an actress and invites him to a screening room where she shows him her latest film, which involves body painting and sex. Soft core posturing soon begins in the mini cinema as she tries to seduce Richard and, as Jean-Michel Jarre’s Oxygene plays on the soundtrack, Richard succumbs to temptation and has sex with her, intercut with the screening room’s projected sex footage and a red-lit shot of frogs in a bowl(!) The actress/hitchhiker tries to kill Richard with a blade hidden in her lipstick (cue music from CARRIE) and, when he overpowers her, the woman dies as orange foam appears on her lips.
Don’t pick up that hitchhiker!
Fight during the act of coitus!
We now cut back to two of the cop characters (from the GRUDGE OF THE SLEEPWALKING WOMAN footage), who are off-duty and spending time at (male cop) Jackie’s apartment. An escaped criminal wearing sunglasses, who has a grudge against Jackie, invades his home and ties-up the female cop (Lee), then rips and cuts off her clothes. After the criminal bites Lee and injects her with some kind of aphrodisiac, Jackie manages to get loose and a long fight ensues between him and the bad guy. This skirmish soon moves from inside the apartment to the street outside.
The fight is watched by three young women in a nearby apartment (that seems to be fitted out with its own home disco equipment). As one of the women goes off to have a shower and another partakes in some solo disco dancing, the snake monster enters their home and slaughters two of them!
Glistening-skinned monster hands grab a victim in the shower
Another shot from the shower scene
One of the main characters, a woman journalist called Helen (Juliet Chan), is featured in a scene where she and an admirer run in slow motion along a beach in swimwear as an easy listening tune plays. I’m not sure why this occurs, other than the fact it’s mentioned that it is Helen’s birthday!
More not-particularly-pertinent scenes ensue, including a cop-related moment where they break into the apartment of an angry, drunk guy who is potting billiard balls between his tied-up wife’s legs, plus a sequence in a nightclub with lots of tinsel decorations hanging from the ceiling.
We now switch back to Richard working out at home. His home has lots of wall mirrors. Here he is attacked by a plumber with a big wrench… who is under the control of that pesky witch!
Meanwhile, a relationship blossoms between cop Jackie and Helen the journo. They have a romantic day out in some woods… using a shotgun to try and shoot rabbits (so romantic!) They then do a bit of fishing and both accidentally fall into the lake (as so often happens when you go fishing). Later, as they drive home, loads of snakes crawl out of the car seats (as music from CARRIE plays) and the serpents are soon slithering all over the outside of the car and inside it! Jackie loses control of the car and it crashes, but he and Helen are okay, though Jackie does have one remaining snake poking its head out of his shirt.
Snakes on the windscreen!
French VHS cover
Whilst staying at a hotel, Helen and Jackie have their TV switched on in their room – and we see the blind flute player being interviewed (why?!) by a reporter, who informs his audience that this guy is a night-watchman (but he’s blind!) who has overcome gout and arthritis and can play the flute. (Oh, the madness of it all!) Helen, who is actually the snake monster, transforms into the beast when the flute player performs his music on TV, resulting in the deaths of a clumsy waiter and two hotel guests in a bath.
We cut back to Richard and witness his fight with a blade-wielding assailant who wants his special ring. Richard uses a yellow towel and his fists to beat the guy.
Richard finally decides to find out why various people are trying to kill him, so he heads up into the hills to chat with a fortune-teller. After fighting and breaking the neck of another attacker as he ascends some steps, Richard eventually reaches the fortune-teller. Here Richard is informed that there is a witch who lives in a red castle: she is thoroughly evil and only Richard’s magic ring can destroy her powers. Richard is given a golden sword and a mystical mirror and is told that, on the 15th day of this month, he must go to the gates of the castle, place the ring on the mystic mirror, chop it with the sword, then throw it into a fire. As he is given this information some EXORCIST 2 music is played briefly.
Underdressed witch!
Back with the serpent-beast story, Helen confesses to Jackie that she’s the killer: she’s not human, she’s a snake demon! Cue a backstory flashback (utilising music from CARRIE) that reveals how a family of snake-killers living in a forest are visited by the ‘Prince of Snakes’. After some slo-mo romantic running through the trees, the daughter of the snake-killer makes love with the Prince, who turns into a big snake coiled around her. The daughter becomes pregnant and has a baby, that turns into a mini snake-monster as it suckles on her breast! This baby, of course, is revealed to be Helen.
After this confession in Jackie’s home, Helen starts her transformation, so she leaps through a window and becomes the rubbery snake monster as she runs down a street. The monster attacks Jackie’s female cop partner Lee, who has to dive into a parked car. The creature tries to get into the vehicle to kill Lee, but she improvises a home-made flamethrower with an aerosol can, forcing the creature to retreat. This is an effective, gripping scene!
Monster outside the car
Home-made flamethrower!
Straight after this we get a homage to the Harry Dean Stanton scene in ALIEN, where a guy is pulled up out of shot by the monster whilst a dog (rather than Jones the cat) looks on.
Over at the witch’s castle we see her perform an expressive, modern dance routine with a couple of minion guys wearing face paint. She spikes them with her metal nails, as you do.
We now get a showdown between the cops and the monster in a forest. To save Lee, who has been captured by the snake-beast (which can fly about the place now), Jackie cuts his own chest, attracting the monster, which starts licking his blood. The creature becomes Helen once more, but that flute player (he gets everywhere!) is in the area and his music turns Helen back into the serpent-beast. After gliding about on wires, it is shot by the police team and the main theme tune from ALIEN plays as the critter dies, transforming back into Helen. Jackie, utterly distraught, carries her body away.
Okay, let’s zip back to Richard for a final time!
He heads for the red castle and fights a face-paint dude, shouting: “Get out of my fucking way!” He battles a staff-wielding assailant next and finally reaches the gates of the castle. He breaks the ring on the mirror with the golden sword and the witch’s home bursts into flames, she dies, and music from RAIDERS OF THE LOST ARK starts to play!
Richard in action
The film ends with a freeze-frame of Richard Harrison smiling at us, victoriously holding up the golden sword. Classic!
SCORPION THUNDERBOLT’s bizarre amalgamation of intercut scenes somehow, at times, transcends its cut-and-paste origins to become a thing of jaw-dropping wonder. As an example: the screening room sequence (shots of a manic, spike-fingered witch, Richard Harrison performing some soft core sex, a red-lit shot of frogs in a bowl, projected body-painting footage) comes across more like an avant-garde art short featuring unrelated imagery, rather than what it is: Godfrey Ho splicing together footage to concoct yet another one of his patchwork flicks!
What can I say? You’ve just read about all the insane stuff that occurs in this madcap gem of a movie. You will either end up being someone who thinks this is a film that must be loved and cherished, or you will be someone who is wrong!
Another poster
German VHS cover
French VHS cover
A bit about the snake monster… The creature attack scenes certainly work better when we see only its wet-looking, black, rubbery tail or clawed hands assault the victims. When we see the full monster suit it initially looks effective due to the way it is shot, with it either being backlit, slightly out of focus or seen in quick cuts. During its final showdown with the police in the forest, where we get to clearly see rather too much of the monster, as it is swings about on wires, the suit is not shown to its best advantage. Still, I like this beast!
The original Korean movie was sometimes called Snake Woman (the monster never looks like a half-snake, half-woman creature, by the way)
Another Snake Woman poster
Devoted to every kind of movie and TV monster, from King Kong to Godzilla, from the Blob to Alien.
Monster Zone 