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Nhi (Om Portevy) is living somewhere in the forest and married to
alcoholic travelling salesman Manop - but one night when Manop is out she
is visited by the Snake King (Tep Rindaro), a snake that sometimes can transform into a
human, and she promptly falls in love with him and the two start an
affair, and the Snake King even impregnates Nhi - much to the dismay of
her daughter Ed, who eventually tells Manop everything, upon which Manop
tracks down the Snake King, kills him and feeds him to Nhi. Then he takes
her to the river and rips her belly open - to witness snakes falling out
of his wife's womb. Eager to kill all the snakes, Manop trips and falls
into his own blade.
Of all the snakes only one has survived, and she turns into a human
baby and is taken in by a sympathetic monk. Growing up though, the kid,
now called Soraya, is growing snakes on her head instead of hair ...
Fast forward approximately 20 years: Veha (Winai Kraibutr) is engaged
to Ranee, but in a fight, Ranee's hotheaded brother Kiri pushes him down a
waterfall, presumably to his death ... only Veha didn't die but was saved
by Soraya (Pich Chanbormey), who promptly falls in love with him - and
wouldn't you know it, because of this, the snakes on her head turn into
actual hair.
Veha falls in love with Soraya as well, and he takes her home with him much to the dismay of
his fiancee Ranee and her scheming mother - who
promptly enlist the help of a local witch, but Soraya is protected by some special magic, which
she will only lose once she loses her virginity - so Ranee and her mother send
Ranee's brother Kiri
over to rape Soraya, but somehow, her hair turns back into snakes just in
time to scare him off, and making his escape, Kiri is bitten to death by a
snake.
Finally, Soraya and Veha have sex, but immediately thereafter, Soraya starts
turning into a snake, so in her desperation she heads straight back to the monk who brought her up to
save her, but the witch is close behind, and she challenges the monk to a magic duel ... which kills them both.
But from the heavens, the spirit of the Snake King arrives, and with
the help of the spirit of the monk, he can give Soraya her human form for
good, and she is of course reunited with Veha ...
Snaker is allegedly the first full length feature film to be
produced in Cambodia since before the bloody reign of the Khmer Rouge (who ruled from 1975 to 1979), and being based popular Cambodian myth,
this was to have been an ambitious venture indeed - thing is, it being the first feature
in quite some decades, Snaker looks quite crude (as was to be
expected), and the film's budget and special effects are not necessarily
up to the film's requirements (even if in some scenes, like Pich
Chanbormey carrying actual live snakes on her head, the limitations work
for the film's advantage). That said, the film is by no means all bad,
a honest piece of basic cinema in which the love for moviemaking makes up
for many of the movie's shortcomings. Admittedly not a great film, and
admittedly even trashy at times, Snaker is nevertheless an
entertaining piece of exotic cinema.
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