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...
