Love of the White Snake (1978)

Love of the White Snake (1978) Chinese Title: 真白蛇傳 Translation: True White Snake Legend

Starring: Charlie Chin Chiang-Lin, Brigitte Lin Ching-Hsia, Chin Chi-Min, Lee Kwan, Miao Tian, Sun Yueh, Chiang Ching-Hsia, Wu Te-Shan, Lin Chao-Hsiung

Director: Choe Dong-hoon, Si-Ma Ke

Sadly, the only versions of Madam White Snake—both the 1956 Shaw-Toho and 1962 Shaw productions—that I could find on the Internets were unsubbed. To bad, I would have liked to see both of those, assuming that their production values were a lot higher than the Korean version I viewed last. I guess I’ll have to wait for Green Snake for a more lavish take. This time around, we have a low-budget Hong Kong production, starring Taiwanese beauty Brigitte Lin. The “executive director” was Chen Chi-Hwa, best known for his collaborations with Jackie Chan, like Snake and Crane Arts of Shaolin and Shaolin Wooden Men. When Jackie hit stardom, he kept Chen around for a number of years, usually doing second-unit directing on his movies.

This adaptation is taken directly from the popular Chinese Opera interpretation of the fairy tale. We open with White Snake, aka Pai Suzhen (Brigitte Lin, of Ashes of Time and Swordsman II), and her younger sister, Green Snake (Chin Chi-Min, of The Best of Shaolin Kung Fu and Return of the Chinese Boxer), walking about the town. Pai Suzhen is looking for a young man named Hsu Hsien (Charlie Chin, of Winners and Sinners and My Lucky Stars). Hsu had rescued her years ago when she was in her snake form and now she wants to return the favor by marrying him and bearing his children. She gets permission from her master, presumably the bodhisattva Avalokitesvara, to remain in human form and marry Hsu. 

She arranges for a meeting during a storm while Hsu is crossing the river—like the South Korean Madam White Snake—and convinces him to take him and her sister, playing the role of the maidservant Hsiao Ching, to their home (since only he has an umbrella). Hsiao Ching uses her magic powers to transform an abandoned manor into a beautiful mansion and creates servants from stones and plants—I assume there is a form of animism in which they have spirits, but are simply given human bodies. Anyway, Lady Pai wastes no time in requesting marriage to Hsu Hsien, who is initially taken aback (since he’s a poor pharmacist), but ultimately agrees.

Shortly after their marriage, Lady Pai uses her magical powers to help him establish his own medicine shop. Hsiao Ching even spreads an influenza-like disease in order to give the residents stomach flus, which she helps prepare the medicine for (thus strengthening his reputation in town). The only person who can see through all of this is a wandering Taoist priest (Lee Kwan, of The Big Boss and Seaman No. 7). He tells Hsu Hsien the truth and gives him some talismans to place in the house in order to sus out the spirits (which are called “demons” and “devils” in the subtitles).  Hsu Hsien is pretty close to casting them when he makes a mistake and ends up repenting for doubting his wife and Hsiao Ching, who, by the way, is ready to kill him for his “unfaithfulness”. 

After that, Hsu starts ignoring the Taoist priest, who tries to face the snake sisters outright. They defeat him with their magic powers, and a little hope from their brother, who appears to be a Catfish spirit (Miao Tian, of Snake and Crane Arts of Shaolin and The Invincible Swordswoman). The Taoist priest runs back to his master, the Buddhist(?) monk Fahai (Sun Yueh, of The Pedicab Driver and Wu Tang Magic Kick). Fahai confronts Hsu Hsien and tells him to open his eyes to the truth, but Hsu ignores him (following his wife’s counsel to avoid monks and priests). Fahai warns that he’ll be sorry when the May Festival comes.

The May Festival arrives and one of the customs is for families to drink “Huang wine.” Apparently this wine has the side effect of revealing spirit forms. The smell of it is enough to send Hsiao Hsing into convulsions, which Lady Pai dismisses as “sunstroke” and has her shut into her room until she can regain her form. Unfortunately, an ignorant Hsu Hsien insists that his wife drink at least one cup, which causes her to revert back to her snake form, scaring Hsu Hsien to death. Lady Pai travels to Kunlun mountain to get a plant from the Fairy King that will revive her husband. She is successful and uses some BS story about white snakes called “store dragons” to explain the snake he saw.

At this point, things like “respect other peoples’ moral agency” is no longer even a mere suggestion and both the Taoist Priest and the monk Fahai resort to drastic measures. The Taoist pays a palm reader (Wu Te-Shan, of Spiritual Kung Fu and A Massacre Survivor) to write the word “Temptation” on Hsu Hsien’s palm. That allows the Taoist to hypnotize Hsu somehow, leading him out of the city and into the pagoda at Fahai’s temple. There, Hsu Hsien is locked up against his will while Fahai tells his wife some BS story about Hsu Hsien deciding to become a monk. They have a magic battle involving dragons, which culminates in the snake sisters and their brother causing a flood (presumably stock footage from the 1956 Madam White Snake). But the battle isn’t over yet…

In my review of the 1960 adaptation of Madam White Snake that as “romantic” the story is and as devoted the White Snake is to her husband, it is a fundamentally wrong relationship so long as she withholds the truth from him about what she really is. Yes, he eventually finds out and accepts her as she is, but it reminds me of the time I was spitballing ideas for stories years ago and I shared an idea about a guy who marries a Dr. Moreau panther-girl to a friend. She pointed out that if she doesn’t tell him right off the bat, then it is an unhealthy relationship. The same goes for here.

The difference between this and the previous version is that both religious characters—Fahai and the Taoist Priest—are portrayed as being just as bad, if not worse than Lady Pai is. After all, she may be ultimately dishonest at first, but she still loves her husband and wants him to succeed (even if she has to make the townpeople throw up a bit in order to secure business). The two antagonists, for all of their religiosity, are willing to lie, outright control, and break up families for their version of “justice,” which is simply not allowing spirits and human beings to intermingle. Lady Pai may stack the deck in her favor for her husband’s sake, but robbing him of all his moral agency is a few rungs lower on the moral ladder. Fahai at one point declares that he doesn’t care about families and familial relationships, which may apply to some extent to a Buddhist monk, but I’m sure that most religious types place great emphasis on tight-knit and happy families, even if they themselves don’t have one in order to serve a Higher Purpose. So when Lady Pai denounces these two as hypocrites, she is not wrong.

The character of Hsiao Ching also differs from both Madam White Snake and Panda and the Magic Serpent. She is portrayed as being more of a hothead and potentially violent woman, frequently threatening Hsu Hsien’s life whenever he has any sort of encounter with the priests. There are some throwaway lines early on that suggest she might too be sleeping with Hsu Hsien—something about a “7-3 split”—without him knowing it. Apparently, a sequel to this legend was written for the Peking Opera in which Hsiao Ching spends 20 years honing her magic skills, at which point she defeats Fahai and rescues her sister, allowing her to be reunited with Hsu Hsien and her son. I do not know if that part of the story has ever been adapted to film.

The film is filled with special effects, most of which are the primitive type you would see in a George Méliès short from the early 20th century. The snake sisters’ brother shows up as a large rubber catfish that spits water in a few scenes. The dragon duel between White Snake and Fahai uses scale puppets for the monsters. There are some primitive optical effects to represent the snake sisters’ energy, or the White Snake traveling at dizzying speeds. And there is the aforementioned stock footage. Yeah, so not a great fantasy, but it has its moments, plus Brigitte Lin looking beautiful for 90 minutes. Take that as you will.