She yao jing (1973) User Reviews

Watch out for the coconut scene man.

[Fella_shibby · 5/10 · 10 May 2019]

A father is about to kill a newborn girl not cos of female infanticide but she is born a freak. The wife persuades the husband into sparing the girl's life. Nobody plays with the girl when she grows up. Villagers r killed due to snakes n the entire village burns up the family but the girl survives to take revenge. From the poster one can make out that the woman's head is like Medusa's, full of snakes. She can command snakes but she still takes aid from the village bandit.

Parallelly ther is a subplot of a Chinaman, (a Bruce Lee wannabe with bushy sideburns). Our Lee is a doctor as well as a kung fu expert n he is shown in a white attire in the whole film, repeatedly fighting the same goons over n over again. The fight choreography gets monotonous n the subplot drags. Coming back to our Medusa, she bathes full naked under a waterfall in broad daylight but we dont get to see anything. She doesn't hav a house, wanders around but somehow she gets to wear different designer clothes as well as boots. Our Lee has a unique style of getting coconut, he has his pockets full of small wooden weapons which doesnt seem to get over. He repeatedly kills the snakes with those weapons n somehow evades all the snakes by jus jumping here n there. The ending is a big meh. I first saw this in the late 90s on a vhs. Revisited it recently.

The snake-hag must be stopped!

[detflygandespaghettimons · 5/10 · 16 March 2016]

The movie begins with a young woman journeying homewards after visiting her parents grave. Removing her hijab, we see an instant likeness to Medusa! The tresses of her hair are actually serpents, live snakes hanging from her scalp. Accidentally she falls into a ravine - and awakens face-to-face with a snake-woman! This ancient creature has the body of an anaconda, but the face of a hag!

The snake-woman introduces herself as the girls ancestor. She is a Sorceress, a Mistress of the Dark Arts, with a horde of demonic minions at her disposal! Dwarfs, stone-men, living trees, and batmen all answer her call! Not to mention that she possesses the ability to summons venomous vipers at will! She intends to make her descendant a great Queen of Evil like herself, and so the young woman is seduced into her grasp.

Meanwhile, an impoverished yet mighty martial artists arrives in town, looking for a work. He hears that a rich man has issued an hefty reward for anyone who can rescue his kidnapped daughter. Ominously, the kidnapper turns out to be a snake-haired woman. It seems that the Queen of Evil has been gathering nubile virgins from across the land in preparation for the next full-moon!

This fantastical, outlandish setting is what gives Bruka: Queen of Evil a leg-up. It is fun seeing a Kung Fu Hero battling the minions of evil. It's that special kind of idiosyncratic fantasy that you only really see in SoutEast Asian B-flicks from the 70's and 80's.

That said, the movie definitely suffers from its low-budget, B-movie roots. The interesting parts are backloaded towards the ending third of the plot. Also the narrative feels scattered and disjointed, events occurring for no real discernible rime or reason. Everything about it is shoddily made, but if you want to see a Kung Fu Hero battling an army of snake-worshipping dwarfs, then "Bruka: Queen of Evil" delivers on the fun!

Insane

[BandSAboutMovies · 6/10 · 8 May 2021]

When Hong Kong and the Philippines team up, things will not be normal.

In Devi Woman, a young orphan returns from her parents' grave and, oh yeah, she just so happens to have hair like Medusa, long flowing snake locks. She falls down a hillside, which is kind of a good thing for her, as she soon meets a sorceress with the body of a snake and the face of an old woman. She reveals that she is the girl's ancestor and pledges to make Manda into a Queen of Evil.

Well, at the end of that movie, she was set on fire and died, but in this movie - a sequel that many felt was just a remix of the original for a long time - her witch grandmother brings her back from the dead. But more than that, she also gives her the power to call snakes to her side, an empress with power over bat people, demons, stone men, living trees and so much more.

To keep on being the Queen of Evil, Manda must destroy virgin women, which brings martial artist Shu Wen to the rescue.

Both of these films were inspired by the Filipino comic Darna, which was written by Mars Ravelo and drawn by Nestor Redondo. One of Darna's villains is her former friend Valentina, who becomes the snake-haired Serpina.

Yeah, this movie is absolutely wonderful.

Snakes alive!

[BA_Harrison · 5/10 · 28 December 2017]

Forgive me if I am a little vague with my review: the picture quality was lousy, the sound out of synch, and the subtitles virtually incomprehensible, making this bonkers martial arts fantasy horror really hard to follow.

As far as I could make out, the plot goes something like this...

A snake-haired woman and her evil grandmother-a snake with a woman's head-take revenge on some people for some reason or other (I said I would be vague), killing the men and abducting the women. The rich father of one of the missing women hires a martial artist to rescue his girl, leading to battles with the snake-women's minions, a bunch of dwarves, rock-men, a bat-man, a wolfman and living trees, before a final showdown with the scaly sorceresses.

If really cheap bizarro kung fu films are your thing, Bruka: Queen of Evil should prove to be reasonable fun no matter how little sense it makes, or how crap it all really is. There is just so much craziness packed into this Hong Kong/Philippines co-production's 97 minutes that its hard not to enjoy just a bit. The snake-haired woman is actually pretty convincing (I'm guessing they attached real snakes to the actress's hair), and the effects for her slithering grandmother aren't too shabby either, but the rock-men, the bat-man and the living trees are terrible, providing quite a few unintentional chuckles.

Also making me laugh was the hero's rope belt that turns into a giant cotton bud when he waves it in the air: he finishes off quite a few of his enemies with this oversized Q-tip, eventually using it to impale the two snake women.

5/10.

Bizarre witchcraft horror in a Filipino vein

[Leofwine_draca · 5/10 · 2 December 2017]

BRUKA: QUEEN OF EVIL is another bizarre Hong Kong/Filipino witchcraft horror flick from the team who brought you DEVIL WOMAN and a sequel to that movie. The plot is slapdash, the budget extremely low, and the acting - well, wooden doesn't begin to describe it. Nonetheless this is an entertaining little movie for trash lovers and those who enjoy watching something in the vein of THE KILLING OF Satan.

The hero of the hour is a kung fu expert who becomes involves when a witch uses snakes to bump off a number of villagers in a dark and dingily-shot scenes. Around the halfway mark, the plot disappears entirely and out goes any kind of realism; it's replaced with one mildly insane fight scene after the next. Our hero battles tree men, rock men, evil dwarfs, a winged man, and even a guy in an ape mask. The witch herself looks like she belongs in a nursing home and isn't remotely menacing, but you'll have a fun time watching this anyway.

Weird mix of kung fu and snake horror

[Leofwine_draca · 5/10 · 10 April 2014]

DEVIL WOMAN is a film that seeks to combine two popular genres of the period - the kung fu flick and the black magic horror film. Hong Kong producers were fond of jetting off to "exotic", slightly backward locales to film such horror outings, which is why we get films set in Taiwan and Thailand. This one utilises the Philippines as its setting for a horrific tale of rural revenge.

Like CALAMITY OF SNAKES, this seeks to instill fear in the viewer by featuring the slithering reptiles as the main instigators of the occult. The antagonist is a Filipino Gorgon, complete with a head of snakes for hair, who sets off on an odyssey of revenge when god-fearing villagers burn her home to the ground with her family inside it.

Unfortunately, DEVIL WOMAN never quite lives up to its promise. Instead, it's a kung fu movie for much of the running time, as the titular character employs a couple of gangs of thugs to do her bidding and a white-suited kung fu-fighting doctor is forced to face off against them over and over again. Sadly, the choreography is adequate but not up to much, meaning the fights are repetitive, with the same character beating the same henchmen over and over again in the same surroundings; it soon becomes pretty dull.

Scenes of snakes attacks are obviously kept to minimum and there are none of those memorable black magic rituals that enliven other Chinese horror films. Instead, the viewer is asked to empathise with the titular character, who after all is only seeking revenge for a horrendous crime. This and the limitations of the budget and script make it all rather humdrum, and far from the exciting, gruesome movie you'd expect from the blurb. Pity...

Yay. Snakes. So Scary.

[DavyDissonance · 5/10 · 16 November 2019]

A medusa broad seeks revenge against a village that fricasseed her parents. Devil Woman is a snake horror kung fu hybrid. For those expecting something very weird in the vein of crap like Indonesia movies, then you might be disappointed. Though the snake woman is relatively cool looking and it has snakes and $#!+, they aren't really effective in a horrific manner. The snake death scenes were more so goofy looking than scary. But I guess you can say it works better as a unintentional comedy movie. It does have funny moments like this guy doing all sorts of flips while flinging blades at snakes heads and one of the most dumbest f···ing endings I have ever seen in a kung fu movie. It's so bad it made me cough blood with laughter. If you want something silly and stupid, this might suffice but if you're looking for something more left-field, kooky or on crack, Devil Woman does not fit the bill.

Snake horror? Kung-fu flick? Or social-conscience drama?

[PKazee · 7/10 · 4 October 2013]

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.

Snakes! Kung-Fu! A Witch With Snakes for Hair! Big Sideburns!

[Scott_Mercer · 8/10 · 24 May 2006]

Wow. Due to the largess of Quentin Tarantino, who loaned his personal print, I was able to view this ultra-rare psychotronic movie at the Monthly Grindhouse Film Festival here in Los Angeles at the New Beverly Theatre (do a Google search to join in the fun).

How to describe this journey into the insane world of Filipino cinema? I'll give it a try. Freakish snake-haired witch woman with telekinetic powers grows up and tries to get revenge on the scum that killed her parents for daring to birth a monstrous freak such as her. Of course, since she has SNAKES FOR HAIR, she goes around for most of the movie with a turban (scarf?) over her head. You will soon become tired of the endlessly replayed scene (flashback) of her childhood friend (her only friend!) calling for her (Manda! Manda! I want to play with you. Your father is poor, and mine is too! So we can play together!)

Meanwhile, back in the present (okay, 1970) a suave kung-fu kicking Chinese doctor arrives in town to look after a local plantation owner and his hot (for the area) daughter. The white Nehru-collar suit he has is really styling and all, but didn't he bring a change of clothes with him? Unless he had a whole suitcase full of the same suit.

Anyway, using her freaky snake powers, Manda the snake woman gets dozens of local "bandits" to fall in line as her army of badly-attired, sideburned, questionable-facial-hair-sporting 70's bad guys. Thus equipped, she goes on a killing spree. But not if Nehru jacket guy has anything to say about it! Anyway, the hot daughter then gets kidnapped, our hero has to go rescue her, and the whole thing goes on about 15 minutes too long. While you're waiting for the movie to end, you'll see a whole bunch of awesome kung fu action, including SNAKE FU! Yes, our hero chops and kicks flying snakes in mid-air! He also kills people with little wooden arrows that he throws. I should also mention the boxing exhibition where our hero kicks the butt of the scrawny dude (about 140 pounds soaking wet) with the boxing gloves. Hard to do karate with boxing gloves on.

All in all, it's a big mess, but an exciting mess, with lots of kung fu, many many snakes including telekinetic flying snakes, and bad Seventies fashions. If this kind of mess sounds appealing to you, you MUST endeavor to find a copy of this ultra-rare, lost nugget of insanity. Manda! Manda!