Killer of Snake, Fox of Shaolin (1978)

Right from the get-go, the title of this film tells us that nature will play a role in the action, and this notion is cemented when the opening credits run over slightly vertiginous shots of cliffs, rivers, and forests, backed by weird, orchestral Chinese singing. We start with a scene of two guys walking along a forest path, one about ten feet ahead of the other. The one in front looks like a forty-year-old guy poorly disguised as an old guy: he has an absurd blonde wig secured with a headband that makes him look like Richard Simmons, a typical kung-fu goatee, and the tuftiest eyebrows ever in the history of film. The guy behind him is a real old guy with white hair, super-long old-guy beard, and normal eyebrows. Real Old Guy keeps calling out to Fake Old Guy, "Master Wong, Master Wong!" Fake Old Guy / Master Wong is like, "What is it now?" and Real Old Guy says some stuff about how Wong's daughter is growing up nicely, blossoming like a flower, etc. and so why not have her marry Real Old Guy's son. Wong is contemptuous and says his daughter would never be interested in a chump like Real Old Guy's son. Real Old Guy stops in his tracks and says that Wong has insulted his family, and the camera zooms in on his face in a way that usually means fighting is about to happen, but Real Old Guy just holds the pose while Wong walks off.

Cut to Real Old guy and some younger people standing around a fire in the woods. There are two young men and a young woman, all wearing kung fu robes, and we quickly learn that this is Real Old Guy's family. There is some discussion of how best to exact revenge for the slight. Younger brother wants to take care of it, but older brother says, "If he won't give me her hand in marriage, I'll just kidnap her!" and that appears to be that, because no one says anything else.

Cut to Wong smiling as he watches a young woman turn flips and walk on her hands and stuff. She jumps up onto a tree branch, then flips back down, and he laughs uproariously. We understand that this is his much-coveted daughter. He tells her she should keep practicing and soon she'll be able to fly like a bird and they both have a slightly uncomfortable chuckle.

Suddenly they hear weird jangly music and the older son of Real Old Guy, whose name we will learn is Choy Ching Sing, shows up with some other guys behind him carrying some kind of mini-tent, and Wong is like, "what's with the wedding procession, sucker?" Choy Ching Sing calls Wong father-in-law and says he's come to take his new bride away. Wong is like, quit playin', so they start to fight. Wong seems to match him move for move, but then he runs away, along with his daughter (who, we learn at some point, is named Wong Koo). Choy Ching Sing's henchmen take a turn at trying to beat Wong, but he quickly dispatches them, then does and awesome leap over his whole house, followed by a roll, followed by holding his hands back behind his shoulder as if holding an imaginary stick, and then - bam! there's a little I-Dream-Of-Genie sound and a stick appears in his hands. This proves little use in fighting Choy Ching Sing, who seems on the verge of beating Wong.

Wong and Wong Koo manage to flee through the woods just as a beefy stranger in light blue kung-fu robes comes strolling along the path, carrying a small blue backpack. He hears the unmistakable sounds of kung-fu fighting, and hastens to the ruckus. He confronts Choy Ching Sing, and they start to fight (does anyone in this crazy world not know kung-fu?!). Wong Koo and Wong, instead of taking the diversion as an opportunity to get the hell outta Dodge, just chill and watch the fight, which makes you wonder whether kidnapping and forced marriage are so commonplace in their world that they don't even sweat it - in fact, the mood is so light that Wong Koo comments to her father about the beefy stranger that he's good looking, and Wong chuckles and says, "Oh ho, so you like him, do you?" The beefy stranger, whose name, we will later learn, is Todd, and Choy Ching Sing fight a while, then Choy Ching Sing pulls back a bit and strikes an ill pose with a seriously dopey face, and Wong Koo says, "Father, he's using black magic!" and she's right, if your idea of black magic is blowing blue dust out of your mouth onto a guy's face. It must be magic, though, because the blue dust knocks Todd right on his ass. Wong Koo then says to Choy Ching Sing, "You promised you wouldn't use black magic. God is going to punish you!" and on cue, we see stock footage of fast-moving storm clouds, the wind picks up, and it starts to rain. Choy Ching Sing is duly startled, which gives Wong Koo time to pick up Todd over her shoulder and run off, along with Wong. Then we cut from Choy Ching Sing looking disturbed to footage of a snake slithering through mud and rain, and it's not clear if he just turned into a snake or if God is sending the snake to get him, or what, and we don't find out, because that's the end of that scene.

So then Todd is convalescing at Casa Wong, and you can see that Wong Koo is feeling him a lot. It sort of reminded me of the scene near the beginning of Hard to Kill where Steven Seagal is in a coma at a hospital and Kelly LeBrock is improbably the nurse charged with tending to him, and she wishes he would come out of his coma because he has "so much to live for," and as she's saying that she's looking into his drawers, implying that he is well hung and also making me wonder whether it's ethical for healthcare professionals to take that kind of interest in comatose patients. Except that Wong Koo doesn't check out Todd's package, she just looks at him longingly, and when her dad prepares a medicinal tea to revive him, she takes it in her mouth and does a weird French kiss-CPR thing to get it down his throat (in front of her dad, no less!). Todd comes to and tries to get up, and Wong laughs his loud, kung-fu laugh and tells Wong he needs rest.

Wong Koo goes out to wash laundry in a stream by hitting the clothes with a stick against a rock (which makes you wonder, if Wong can make a stick appear in his hands and make tea that counteracts black magic, can't he devise a better way to wash clothes?). Choy Ching Sing shows up on a bridge overlooking the stream and tells Wong Koo he's mad sorry about how he acted before, and can she please forgive him? He's suprisingly nonchalant about the whole thing, and she is too, saying, "That's in the past now," and you kind of ask yourself, Isn't this the same guy who just attacked her dad with a gang of fighters so that he could carry her off and rape her? But whatever, I guess. She finishes up her clothes-hitting and is heading home and Choy Ching Sing gets all up in her grill as she crosses the bridge over the stream and she tells him to get lost, and he actually asks if they can just be friends (cue Biz Markie), but she's not having it (cue Positive K and MC Lyte), and then he quickly abandons his conciliatory tone and says how he could come get her whenever and how he's the greatest fighter in the world so why won't she roll with him? She says, "You're an evil snake," and he parries, "I'm the greatest snake and you are a lovely fox, so we're a perfect couple!" which doesn't make sense but is sort of a cool line, and then he purposely trips her as she walks away, but in a quick, kung-fu way so that you think maybe she doesn't realize it was him, and when she falls he comes over and asks if she's OK. She makes like her ankle is really hurt and when he leans down to look at it, she pitches him off the bridge into the stream and skips merrily off. For reasons unknown, he just swims around and does not give chase. Did I mention that he wears a super-tough-looking, Karate Kid-style headband? He does.

Back at Casa Wong, Todd has recuperated and his saying his farewells to Master Wong. You can get a good idea of what a serious dude Todd is because he keeps a straight face while interacting with Wong, notwithstanding Wong's absurdly tufty eyebrows. They keep doing that salute where you put one fist inside the other palm, and Wong Koo shows up and acts pouty that Todd was going to bounce without saying bye. She asks when he'll back and he gives this line about being a wandering man who never knows where he'll end up, then heads off. Wong Koo watches him ruefully and Wong says she shouldn't sweat it because he has a foolproof plan to get Todd to fall for her. Without asking what the plan is, Wong Koo thanks her father with a big hug, and as they're embracing he notices that she has a bushy reddish fox tail coming from the back of her dress, and instead of being like, WTF?!, he just says, "careful, my dear, your claws are showing," leaving me to be like, huh?

We quickly learn that Wong's foolproof plan involves having Todd stumble upon Wong Koo as she is about to commit suicide by hanging herself from a tree in the forest. How do we learn this? We watch it unfold in the next scene, that is how. Todd gets Wong Koo down from the noose before she is harmed and asks her what's up. She says Choy Ching Sing will keep coming after her and she can't bear the thought of being married to him, so she might as well, you know, end it. Todd valiantly asks what he can do to help, and then Wong is suddenly there with his crazy laughter, and tries to oblige Todd to marry Wong Koo. Todd is like, "easy there, old man," and insists that he will help but never said he'd marry her. For a minute, it seems like Wong and Todd might fight, but Todd just walks off with his stupid backpack, leaving Wong Koo more frustrated than ever. Wong, predictably, laughs.

We go back to the campfire in the forest, where Real Old Man and his family chill out and plot against Wong and Wong Koo. They've realized somehow that Todd has captured Wong Koo's elusive affections and decide that he needs to be dealt with. Real Old Man's daughter, who is very bejeweled and has the sidelocks of her hair plastered to her head in a cool pattern, thinks they should just drop the matter, and points out that it was a bad play for Choy Ching Sing to use black magic on a human being, because that's the sort of thing that angers God. Choy Ching Sing smacks his sister to the ground and calls her a bitch, leaving absolutely no doubt that he is a really not-nice guy. His younger brother then volunteers to take care of Todd, despite repeated protests by the sister. We then see the younger brother, Choy Chang Long, walking in a field somewhere, carrying a garden snake. He comes across a cobra on the ground and walks around it, then uses the garden snake to smack it. He smiles wanly throughout, and jaunty, disco-influence Chinese flute music plays in the background. This happens at a beach. We are starting to realize that the Choy family's relationship with snakes goes beyond simply likening themselves to snakes when boasting about their fighting skills.

Happily for the advancement of the movie's plot, Todd comes loping along and suddenly sees a cobra, which seems to be the same cobra that was recently smacked by a garden snake. He proceeds carefully, then notices another one. He then executes a cool flying flip, presumably to get away, but lands right in front of Choy Chang Long, to whom he says, "Who the hell are you?" (People say this a lot in kung-fu movies. Todd himself will say it again later.) "I'm Choy Chang Long, and you're trespassing on Snake Mountain. My family kills trespassers, so what are you going to do about it?" Naturally, they start to fight, except suddenly, instead of being on the beach, as before, they are on a hilltop above the ocean. From out of nowhere, Choy Chang Long produces a rope and starts to go all Indiana Jones on Todd, requiring Todd to do many awesome flips. Eventually, Todd grabs the rope, making you think that he might turn the tables on Choy, but OH. MY. GOD. The rope turns into a cobra! Todd jumps back, and he and Choy exchange meaningful close-up tough-guy looks. Here is what the looks say: Todd: "Holy fuck! I am dealing with a guy who has some crazy magic." Choy: "This sucker has now seen that I have more than one trick up my sleeve that is reminiscent of Indiana Jones (first the whip, then the pit of snakes). He is probably afraid that I will, at any moment, have him running away from a huge boulder, or better yet, that I will rip his still-beating heart from his chest (sure, it's from one of the sequels, but it was still a cool scene). He is totally going to lose to me." But what neither of them has thought of is that Choy's sister, she of the crazy sidelocks, will show up. She does, of course, and kicks Choy Chang Long's ass - not a lot, but enough to let Todd get away ("Hurry, run away," she tells him. "or he'll kill you."). Choy Chang Long is peeved, but he doesn't give chase.

Wong, meanwhile, ever laughing, has not given up on getting Todd to fall for Wong Koo, even though at this point in the movie, I was beginning to suspect that Todd was, ahem, a Tiger who Preferred the Company of Other Tigers, as they say euphemistically in the Shaolin temple. But Wong is clearly an optimist, so he uses magic to create a sumptuous house in the countryside, and when he shows it to Wong Koo, she somehow understands immediately what his plan is, because she says, "Don't forget to turn into your younger self!" which makes absolutely no sense when you hear it, but then Wong starts spinning around like Wonder Woman and when he stops spinning, his goofy blond hair and tufty facial hair are gone, and he is a dark-haired, clean-shaven version of himself. This allows him to pose as a homeowner who offers Todd shelter after a long day of walking. (At this point, I began to wonder, how do any of these people make a living? Wong and his daughter just hang out practicing flips and doing laundry, the Snake Family Robinson does nothing but make campfires and kick ass, and Todd just roams around. But anyway.) Young Wong, who looks and sounds exactly like his older self, is not recognized by Todd, even when he prepares him a medicinal tea to help him feel better. Then there's a knock on the door and, surprise surprise, it's Wong Koo, who needs shelter for the evening. Todd is like, "Wong Koo?! What are you doing here?" and she plays it totally straight and gives away nothing. And then they snuggle up, which I didn't quite understand, and Young Wong laughs his crazy laugh (because he's still right there in the room), and still Todd doesn't realize the scam (which makes us wonder, or it should, why a young woman who can turn crazy flips and grow a fox tail at will is so into him when he's such a maroon).

The next scene is one that has been repeated in kung-fu films since time immemorial: A young waitress is waiting on rowdy hooligans. One of them cops a feel, she resists, and her brother steps up to defend her honor. The hooligans kick his ass and start to carry her off (this brother and sister seem to be the only people in this movie who don't know some kung-fu) when a stranger intercedes. Of course, here the stranger is Todd, and Wong Koo is with him (how did that happen? was snuggling at the house of Young Wong the kung-fu movie equivalent of exchanging letterman jackets and name bracelets?). He fights the thugs and beats them, of course. The best part of the fight is when he challenges them, because he actually tells them to come at him all at once, not one at a time. Why is this cool? Because it explains to me that for some reason, one-at-a-time fighting is the accepted norm in the kung-fu world so I shouldn't think it so odd when huge gangs of fighters take on one guy serially instead of en masse. Anyway, after Todd dispatches the thugs, the waitress and her brother explain that the thugs were the employees of Kim Tai Fong, "a local gangster who is responsible for many crimes." They then offer Todd and Wong Koo dinner and a room, which partially explains how wandering fighters make ends meet. (It occurs to me that the business of being an itinerant fighter is sort of like being an academic - you study for a long time to get this very specialized skill, then you go out in the world and there are very few practical applications for the skill, so maybe you scrape by and make it work, or maybe you end up just finding a gig where you can teach other people the skill, and the cycle repeats itself. Also, you travel around with a backpack.) Todd tells the waitress that Wong Koo is his cousin so they will need separate rooms, and Wong Koo looks crestfallen, and you want to tell her, Give up! He's gayer than Ikea on Super Bowl Sunday! but she's blinded by her love.

That night, a thin lady in a whitish dress with a greenish pallor to her face appears in the corner of Todd's room. She looks kind of like Shelley Long. Todd looks mildly alarmed and asks, "Are you a human or a ghost?" (I don't know if I'd have the presence of mind to ask the same thing if Chinese Shelley Long suddenly appeared in my hotel room.) The lady says she's a ghost, which doesn't seem to surprise Todd that much, and tells him she was raped and murdered by Kim Tai Fong (that same local gangster! what are the chances?) and she needs Todd to help take revenge. Todd does not commit to helping her, and she leaves.

The next day Todd tells Wong Koo he needs to go to Tien Shin to see his master, a buddhist Abbot with the hip-hop-ready name G. Kwan. Wong Koo starts to bug out about being left alone, but Todd says he'll be back for dinner. We see him walk purposefully along a path and there's another guy walking in the opposite direction, and they don't acknowledge each other or anything until they are about to bump into one another, and then the other guy, who has very dark hair that looks like a wig (but also looks kind of awesome) suddenly starts to do kung-fu moves on Todd. Todd, by the way, is still wearing his light-blue kung-fu robes, which look sort of like kung-fu scrubs, and they remain immaculate. He has ditched the backpack, though. Anyhow, he and Wig Guy have a ferocious fight, although it seems like Todd draws it out a little - there are a couple moments where he has Wig Guy on the ground and could easily give him some good kicks to the kidneys, and instead swings his foot up in the air, intending to bring his heel down on the guy's gut. That's a fine move if your opponent is truly prostrate, but Wig Guy always takes advantage of that moment when Todd's foot is in the air to, you know, get away. At one point, Wig Guy sends Todd tumbling down a hill, and Todd stands up, brushes himself off, and says, "Who the hell are you?" (I told you it was coming!) Wig Guy says, "It doesn't matter," which is surprisingly selfless in a world where everyone swears that their kung-fu is the hottest. Eventually, of course, Todd has Wig Guy on the ground and he punches his gut over and over and asks who sent him. Wig Guy says, "Kim Tai Fong" (who, if you're keeping score at home, is the local gangster who employs the thugs at the restaurant and raped and murdered the ghost lady). Between Wong's crazy magic tricks, the animosity of the snake-charming Choy family, and the ghost visit, it is becoming clear that poor Todd is one of those guys who is snatched up by fate and put to use for greater purposes.

Anyway, back at the hotel-restaurant, Kim Tai Fong and some of his thugs show up and confront the waitress and her brother to find out the whereabouts of "that fighter who is staying at your hotel" (why is everyone hating on Todd?). The brother says Todd left early that morning, and Kim says a'ight, then takes the waitress, presumably for later raping, because that seems to be how he rolls. As the henchmen carry off the waitress, they are confronted in the road by Wong Koo. Kim is like, "Who the hell are you?" and before she can even answer, he orders one of his thugs (but only one, because that is the kung-fu rule) to seize her. She says, "stop!" and thrusts her hand forward, and it's as though she's physically restrained the henchman. Then she puts her hands together, prayer-style, and closes her eyes for a sec while the camera zooms in on her and funny music plays. Then she opens her eyes and says the the still-frozen henchman, "You will do exactly as I say." He's like, "OK." So she tells him to attack his men, and he pulls out a ginormous chain and wilds out on them till they all run off in fear. Then she tells him, "Now it's your turn," so he wraps the chain around his own neck and strangles himself to death. The waitress and her brother ask Wong Koo, "what the fuck was that?" and she's like, "He must have been driven crazy by your pretty face! See ya later!" and they apparently accept this explanation.

Meanwhile, Todd sees G. Kwan at the temple. G. Kwan is a real life old guy who sits under a big gold Buddha statue. He tells Todd that he can tell from Todd's aura that evil is close to him. He gives Todd a book of Buddhist mantras and tells him to read those to keep the evil away. As he walks away from the temple, Todd has a flashback of G. Kwan mentioning evil (which is weird, because that happened for the first time about a minute earlier), then of all the other ill stuff that's happened to him (the ghost lady, the waitress saying the name Kim Tai Fong, the black magic/blue dust attack by Choy "Jake the Snake" Ching Sing) and then a flashback of Wong Koo saying, "I'm not going to eat you!" which I didn't notice the first time around. This makes you think that somehow Todd is putting it all together (the Choy family are snakes, the Wong family are foxes, etc.), but it's hard to know, because he is kind of a meathead.

When he gets back to the hotel room, Todd tells Wong Koo about the Buddhist mantras and sort of thrusts the book in her face, as one might accusingly present 8" x 10" black and white photographs of one's spouse engaged in an extramarital affair to said spouse, said photos having been taken by the private eye one hired after getting suspicious after one too many late night hang-up phone calls. Wong Koo practically wilts in the presence of the book, and you think that right there, Todd would be like, "Oh, of course you're bugging out about these mantras, because they're like garlic and holy water to your vampire ass!" But instead he blithely accepts her explanation that her father is an atheist and thinks religion is bullshit. (Note: My father is an atheist and thinks religion is bullshit, but when people show me a bible, I don't shield my face from it. Why? Because I am not secretly a magical fox!) Wong Koo then deftly changes the topic to the whole where-is-this-relationship-going conversation, which sounds so much like something that would go on between Sarah Jessica Parker and Chris Noth in Sex and the City that I almost can't bear it, but then it is OK because Wong Koo and Todd get to sexin'. It is the least explicit sex scene ever, with nothing but five minutes (seriously! five minutes!) of an out-of-focus close-up of them kissing. You can kinda see that they don't have shirts on, though, so you know it's going down. What you don't know is that Wong, now back in his old-guy-with-tufty-eyebrows form, IS RIGHT THERE WATCHING! How do you find out? Well, the next scene shows Wong Koo looking triumphant the next morning. She is standing outside, gazing at the new day with a face that says, "I totally bagged that guy and it was worth all the shennanigans!" Then, I-dream-of-Genie sound!, Wong is there all of a sudden! (The special effects in this movie all amount to telling actors to freeze while the camera is paused and some other person or item is inserted into the scene. It looks super-ghetto.) He says, in essence, that the F. went down and he was there to see it, but he didn't say anything because he "didn't want to disturb you two!" [loud kung-fu laughter, which seems oddly perverse in this context].
Wong Koo doesn't seem to mind this intrusion on her privacy. (If it were my dad watching me, well, I would mind. But I guess my dad and I aren't magical foxes. Also, there's no way my dad could watch me without my noticing, because he's a noisy breather, which made it super-embarrassing to go to movies with him when I was in high school.) Then Wong tells Wong Koo they have to leave because it will never work with her and Todd, owing to the whole interspecies thing, and you're kinda like, Jeez, Wong, all this time you were trying to hook them up and now that it finally goes down, you're nixing it? Not a good look.

Anyhow, Kim Tai Fong and his crew, recently defeated by Wong Koo, are out walking somewhere when they come across Choy Ching Sing, who challenges them to a fight to prove that he should be a fighter in Kim's gang. Guess what? He wins! The first of the three henchmen to challenge him ends up head down in a hole in the ground with his feet sticking up, and Kim Tai Fong goes over to pull the guy out while Choy Ching Sing fights the other guys, but then Choy's style is so dope that Kim gets distracted and leaves his employee upside down to go and watch his other employees get whupped. These guys need to form a union. Naturally, Choy joins up with Kim, presumably to have another go at beating up Todd and marrying/raping Wong Koo. That night, Choy Ching Sing is visited by Shelley Long the ghost, who tells him not to work for Kim Tai Fong because Kim raped and murdered her. Choy is completely unmoved, being a rapist and murderer himself, and tries to fight the ghost lady, but she just laughs at him and drifts out of there.

The next day, while Todd and Wong Koo are out somewhere doing something, Kim Tai Fong's crew finally succeeds in kidnapping the waitress. Kim has just given her to one of his henchmen for raping (really - the henchman asks, Kim assents, and the henchman says, "OK, I'll take her now," and tosses her over his shoulder) when Todd shows up and saves her and starts to kick some ass. But then everyone runs into Kim's courtyard and, surprise! Choy Ching Sing is there ready to finally get Todd. (See, that's the only reason that Kim Tai Fong was willing to outsource the raping - he didn't want the waitress for himself, she was just bait to get Todd into the place.) Todd and Ching "Cold-hearted Snake" Ching Sing fight a little, then Ching busts out a nasty-looking dagger, which he throws at Todd, impaling his right shoulder. Todd then says some sort of sore loser line about how fighting with magic is a dick move, and runs out of there, clutching his shoulder. (It is a dick move to fight with black magic, but when you say that after a guy just threw a dagger through your shoulder, you come off like a whiny punk.) As he runs off, Choy tells him he has till midnight, when Choy will come to kill him and take Wong Koo.

Back at the hotel, Wong Koo again ministers to Todd, this time by having a red marble in her mouth and passing it to his mouth with a kiss. (We will later learn that this is her "Fox Pill.") Just as Todd is getting up, he asks Wong Koo what time it is and she says it's about midnight, and then BAM! Choy Ching Sing bursts through the door, except he doesn't so much burst through as he is standing well beyond the door in a tough fighting pose, and the door just flies open. Wong Koo starts to scream at Todd to get his Buddhist mantra book, and Todd is looking for it everywhere, and Choy is running through his "I am the baddest" spiel, and right as he's about to start landing some choice blows on Todd, Todd finds the book (it was tucked inside his fucking robe the whole time) and holds it up to Choy, who falls back. Todd starts reading mantras, causing Choy to keep falling backward and hollering, and his hair gets all messed up like he touched an electric socket. Meanwhile, Todd doesn't notice, but Wong Koo's hair turns from well-coiffed black to dirty blond with a Karate Kid-style red headband, and her complexion gets much darker, and when Choy is finally driven away (swearing revenge at a later date), Todd looks up and sees that his mantras have revealed Wong Koo to be a fox (when he looks at her, the shot flashes between her face and a fox's face over and over again). He asks what happened and she starts by saying, "I am a one-thousand-year-old fox," which is what nowadays is called a cougar (ha!), and then she explains everything. Todd proves to be the first man ever to be angry when he wakes up to discover he has bedded a fox, and he then crosses his eyes comically and passes out. He wakes up later and Wong Koo tells him (a) that he should go take refuge in G. Kwan's temple because it's the only place he'll be safe from Choy, and (b) that now that she is revealed as a fox (or an olive-skinned blonde, at least), it will take her another 300 years to get her light skin and dark hair back.

That night, Shelley Long the ghost goes over to Todd's joint and visits him again. He asks (sensibly) why she can't just take revenge on Kim Tai Fong herself, and she explains that he wears a jade amulet that protects him from spirits (we get a flashback to him tossing her on the floor, presumably to rape/murder her, and the camera zooms in on his amulet), so if Todd will just rip that off, Shelley Long can come in and kill him (or whatever), but also, she was given three years to take her revenge and this is the last night, so it has to be right now. Also, Kim Tai Fong was her brother-in-law, so he's not just a rapist, murderer, and gangster, he's also so out of control that he can't even draw the line at family.

Todd jumps up and goes to Kim's pad, where he calls out to him, "Kim Tai Fong, did you rape and murder a woman?" And Kim first says, casually, "Why yes!" then quickly makes a full denial: "No, not me, you've got the wrong guy!" (Apparently, under Chinese law at the time, admissions of guilt freely made were not considered competent evidence if they were followed in the same breath by lengthy denials. Evidence law is weird.) That's good enough for Todd, who jumps in, rips off the amulet, and gets the hell out of there so Shelley Long can get her revenge. She does this with a lot of screaming and cackling and floating around, and ultimately, Kim Tai Fong screams a lot and just dies - it's not really clear how. After that, Todd holes up with G. Kwan at the temple, and tells him all the crazy stuff that happened, which G. Kwan completely gets and explains further (it is at this point that we learn about the Fox Pill). He also says lots of stuff about how awesome Buddha is.

Meanwhile, the Snake Family Robinson is plotting what to do. Choy Ching Sing has apparently already set off for the temple, and his brother and sister are debating whether to help him. Brother says yes, sister (wisely, we'll see) says no, pointing out that for snakes to go into Buddha's house is totally not wise. Choy Chang Long ignores sister (typical!) and heads off. He is intercepted in an open field overlooking the ocean by Buddha himself, a fat-faced, fortyish guy in a cool gold helmet. Buddha tells him that as a cobra, he can't go in the temple. Amazingly, Snake Boy then elects to ENGAGE BUDDHA IN KUNG-FU COMBAT. Stupid, right? Yes, very stupid. Buddha doesn't fight, he just summons some crazy-looking guys, one of whom has dyed-white dreads, and they fight little brother Snake. Despite a few moments where Choy Chang Long's kung-fu moves are deemed so sweet that they are shown in slow-motion with Chariots of Fire-type music, he is ultimately killed. Then Choy Ching Sing arrives at the temple and, not to be anti-climactic or anything, but Todd beats him. They fight a lot and then G. Kwan comes to the temple balcony and tosses Todd a huge-ass Buddha sword, and Todd throws it at Choy and impales him against a tree, at which point he turns into a snake impaled against a tree. So even though the movie is called Killer of Snake, Fox of Shaolin, the real Killer of Snake is Todd, or possibly Buddha. (Maybe the title is just a catalog of separate attractions offered by the film (Killer of Snake and Fox of Shaolin)? Or maybe the whole thing was a complicated ruse on the Snake family, carried out by the Fox family, with Todd as the unwitting tool (and what a tool) of their supernatural feud? I don't know. The movie was a little too long. (That said, at least I took the trouble to watch it and make a decent pass at summarizing the plot (although I now realize that I forgot to mention that when the Snake family daughter first intercedes to save Todd, there's a scene where she and her brother are wrestling, and they show two snakes fighting, which is cool, and then a random old dude comes up and tries to mediate between the snake siblings, to little effect). I looked on the New York Times website where they summarize the plot of every movie ever, and they say, "Killer of Snake, Fox of Shaolin stars Carter Wong as a man whose father and daughter are threatened by a snake god well-versed in martial arts." Um, hello? He has neither father nor daughter in the movie! About the only parts they got right are "stars Carter Wong" and "well-versed in martial arts." Come on, Times!))