The Legend of MadamWhite Snake is a very popular Chinese folklore. Lin Ching Hsia as the White Snake wishes to repay the kindness of the scholar (Charlie Chin) for saving her life so she decides to take care of him. Thus the 1000 year old White Snake and the 500 year old Green Snake came down from the mountains. White Snake marries the Scholar and they lead a blissful life until a Taoist Monk came along and decides to interfere since humans and spirits cannot be married to each other (Instead of racial discrimination here, we have species discrimination). White Snake defeated the Taoist Monk who later seeks the help of a Buddhist Abbot who has better and stronger magical powers. Meanwhile, White Snake drank a particular type of wine which cause her lose her control and revert into a snake (snakes and alcohol don't mix well). The Scholar sees the snake and falls into a deadly faint. The White Snake has to search for a magical LingZhi herb which will restore his life. After a lot of difficultly, the herb is found and the Scholar recovers. Then White Snake became pregnant. The Abbot captures the Scholar and imprisons him in a tower. The White Snake, the Green Snake and the Fish floods the monastary and its surroundings to force the Abbot to surrender the Scholar to them. The hard-hearted Abbot refuses to relent and many people drowned. When the White Snake sees the Scholar floating in the flood, she stops chanting and the flood subsides. The Abbot almost captures her but stops when he realises that she is pregnant (as the child is half-human, the abbot can kill her because monks are not allowed to kill humans even if it is half human and half spirit). She is re-united with the Scholar and soon gives birth to a boy. Their happiness is short-lived when the Abbot captures her and imprisons her in the pagoda.
The film is incomplete as it stops at the imprisonment. The other movies or TV serials about the Legend of the White Snake always show how the White Snake's son become the First Scholar and gets the Emperor's Sword which can cut the seals that imprisons the White Snake. For me, maybe too much familarity with the legend places greater expectations than normal for the storyline. Also, I expected opera singing but no one sang. Alright, I know opera singing is too much to ask (plus maybe unpopular) but every TV serial of the Madam White Snake story had a lot of singing. And Madam White Snake is a very popular Chinese opera.
The movie would be nice to watch on a slow lazy afternoon as the pace is a bit slow. The fighting scenes are nothing to boast about but it is basically a love story.
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Cast : Chun Cheung Lam (Charlie Chin/Qin Xiang-Lin), Brigitte Lin Ching Hsia, Chin Chi Min, Lee Kwan, Miu Tin, Suen Yuet, Kong Ching Ha, Miu Tak San
Director : Chan Jeung Wah (Chen Zhi-Hua)
Writer : Shut Ma Hak (Sima Ke)
Spoken : Mandarin
Subtitles : No
Film : Hong Kong