She wang zi

I like Ti Lung. He made a lot of good movies, and I own many of them.

Snake Prince is not one of the good ones. Snake Prince must almost be seen to be believed how wrong a good idea went, and how talent can be thrown away.

Imagine a typical Shaw Brothers studio shot of a wooded glade, a palace, the usual settings--now, imagine it with colors worthy of 1968 and music from 1966. Every time the story needs to get moving, mediocre rock music intrudes, along with droves of dancers all dressed alike.

Alas, this is not one of the movies that is so foul it is amusing, like Wolf Devil Woman. Snake Prince is just foul; every time it hints at getting itself organized into a story, things fall apart once more, even with Ti Lung's game portrayal of the nice-guy snake prince.

After getting the film, I had a short look on it.

As I loved so much the song in the beginning, with its kind peaceful seventies spirit... the actress was just so cute and sung so well

that I decided to stop the movie and spare it for a later viewing, on an quiet evening.

I really thought it was going to be a Peace and Love martial movie (if possible !)

So, one evening, I put it on... guessing to have a gentle movie, with villains not too bad and charming women and cool music...

Oh boys, on some way I had it... yes, music is 70th and naive, yes, first song is superb to me, and the others are OK...

The girls were pretty ! Especially Chen Chi Lin has a beautiful face and voice (unfortunately she did only few movies and mainly horror ones I don't like)

Now the dark points : the villains are really bad... as are made the snakes, cheesy, sort of chewed paper completely unreal... and the end, logical,understandable, but deceptive

So, this supposed to be peaceful movie was not that type; a kind of colourful fantasy, yes, with funny parts, yes, but finally deep dark drama! ! What makes the last sentence not definitely true, is because the snakes and Special effects are so poorly made (usually the special effects are supposed to make us believe it is for real, no?) that brings everything close to a comedy !

And the positive points, even if I really dislike the end, are :

• an adored song, others OK - nice chicks (should I say girls?) - Ti Lung and his friends are cool - a Romeo and Juliet love story

Don't expect as I did any real martial arts in this half kind movie.

Not a great achievement realized, but still pleasant for the above mentioned points, I sometimes listen to the songs, yes, I like their naive spirit !

8*** but the half of them just go only for Chen Chi Lin, Ti Lung and the songs... and 5-6*** max if we talk more seriously...

THE SNAKE PRINCE is a bizarre and unsatisfying fantasy musical from the team at Shaw Brothers, starring martial arts legend Ti Lung. Here, he's essaying a very different role indeed, that of a gigantic snake which has the power to transform itself into the form of a man. He ends up falling in love with a village girl, which is when the plot really falls into motion. There are shades of KING KONG here in the setup, but most of the running time is wasted in boringly repetitive song and dance numbers that take dated tweeness to the next level. Thankfully, things pick up for a shockingly violent climax, but sadly it's too little, too late by that point.