Jimmy Wang Yu! Yoga! Grenades! Blades! It's time to talk about...
Master of the Flying Guillotine (1976)Plot: A blind kung-fu master gets news of his disciples dying at the hands of a one-armed kung-fu master. From then on he walks the country killing every one-armed person he sees for revenge. Meanwhile, a martial arts tournament gathers fighters from around China and beyond, many of them joining the rebel side against the unpopular Mongol dinasty.
Comments: With this sequel to
One-armed boxer Jimmy Wang Yu takes his kung-fu films further away from the Shaw brothers style, not exactly sure if into his own territory or into Golden Harvest style. Anyway, there's little here that reminds me of the Chang Cheh kung-fu epics with their deliberate pacing and tidy scope shots. Everything in this film feels pulpy, bloody and rushed, but also estrangely energetic. From the very beginning the kung-fu fighting is over the top, with guys flying through the air, walking on walls and using all kinds of gizmos. The editing is also faster than in the previous instalment, and not only during the fights. My copy of the film ran around 80 minutes! And most of those are fights, either involving Wang Yu against a variety of assassins (loved the yoga master with extended arms: I bet Dhalsim was born here) or inside the martial arts contest.
My complains with the film are mostly with the editing as well. Not with the fast cutting during the fights, but with the loose plot (why bringing the Mongols here, other than being popular villains in Chinese cinema?) and the fantasy touches I thought what I was watching had absolutely nothing to do with the previous
One-armed boxer, until Wang Yu threw in a flashback to the original to clarify things a little bit.
Oh, and there's also a moment in the final act when things get a little dull because Wang Yu decides to suddenly get rid of the martial arts contest subplot. It's a good thing that the final duel between Wang Yu and the blind master of guillotines is that good.
So, to sum up, not as good as the first
One-armed boxer, but one of the wackiest kung-fu films I've ever seen.
