It tells the story of Atheris, a young woman who has the power to transform from human to cobra, and the Scotland Yard detective sent to investigate a series of deaths, unusual because all the victims died after being bitten by snakes that are not native to the UK.

It premiered in the United States on April 26, 1961, on a double bill with Doctor Blood's Coffin, which was produced at the same time and shares much of the same crew.

In the tiny Northumbrian village of Bellingham in 1890, herpetologist Dr. Horace Adderson has successfully been keeping his wife Martha's unnamed mental illness under control by regularly injecting her with snake venom.

When Martha dies giving birth to their daughter, local midwife Addie Harker, who villagers believe is a witch, proclaims that the baby – who doesn't blink and is cold to the touch – is pure evil, the 'devil's offspring' and must be destroyed.

19 years later, Murton returns and learns that several corpses have been discovered on the moors, each containing lethal amounts of king cobra venom.

Col Clyde Wynborn, who has retired to the village, phones an old army colleague, now an Inspector at Scotland Yard, to report the strange events.

The Inspector despatches Charles Prentice, but the young detective is sceptical of the supernatural aspects of the case as he begins his investigation.

[2] Charles soon encounters a beautiful, though unblinking and cold to the touch, young woman named Atheris, She was the baby born of the Addersons and raised by the shepherd until she mysteriously disappeared.

After finding Murton's body, Charles catches up Atheris and tells her that he understands that she can't help being what she is and that he'll make sure that she comes to no harm.

[1] The Snake Woman was "intended only as the lower half of a double bill" and its "perfunctory re-write" left it looking as if it was made "with the sole intention of making the A feature look better".

[8] Also in 2013, Shout Factory distributed it as part of the Movies 4 You: Timeless Horror DVD set, which also includes The Face of Marble (1946), I Bury the Living (1958) and The Four Skulls of Jonathan Drake (1959).

[3] Video Confidential wrote that "obviously hoping to ride the wave of success that Hammer studios were enjoying, this black-and-white programmer blatantly misses all the cues that would insure even the slightest spark of box office fire.

[18] After earlier calling the film "A thoroughly routine horror drama [that] will barely get by as the lower half of an exploitation bill",[13] BoxOffice, in its 28 August 1961 issue, briefly summarised its rankings by several publications.

[10] And Hamilton points out that "Production values were rock-bottom, the black-and-white photography was functional at best, and even the revised script was barely able to sustain interest for more than a fraction of its already-truncated running time of 68 minutes".