(“One-Armed King Boxer Smashes Blood-Splasher”)
Production: Hong Kong, 1976
Director: Jimmy Wang Yu
US release title: Master Of The Flying Guillotine
Category: Martial Arts
Wang Yu’s masterpiece, a stone classic of psychedelic kung-fu. Featuring the return of his “One-Armed Boxer” character, this is another revenge- and tournament-based movie with a wild array of exotic fighters. Added to this is the crazed figure of blind, swastika-robed Manchu assassin Fung Sheng Lu Chi, who is the eponymous wielder of the flying guillotine, a fearsome killing device first introduced in Ho Menga’s patchy Shaw production Xuedizi (“Blood-Splasher”, 1974). The guillotine resembles a hat, equipped inside and out with razor-sharp blades, attached to a chain. When launched at a victim, it clamps over his head, the blades come down and with one flick, the head is severed. When One-Armed Boxer kills his two disciples, the Master sets out on a mission of revenge and recruits three exotic fighter to help him – a vicious Thai boxer, an Indian yogi (with “extensible arms” technique), and a cruel Japanese killer. The central part of the film features a martial arts tournament, in which the three foreign fighters are involved. After several bloody bouts involving such human weaponry as killer hair, flesh-puncturing fingers and iron skin, the appearance of a one-armed fighter prompts the appearance of Master Fung Sheng, who has sworn to kill all one-armed men he meets. He duly decapitates the fighter with the flying guillotine, and also kills the tournament director, bringing proceedings to a shocking halt. Next begins the hunt for the One-Armed Boxer, who first defeats the Indian yogi and then lures the Thai boxer into a house whose floor has been lined with metal plates. Once inside, fires are lit to heat the plates, burning the Thai’s bare feet as he fights with the Boxer. He is duly defeated, and his charred body carried off. One-Armed Boxer next defeats the Japanese fighter, before the Master arrives and attacks him. Managing to blunt the flying guillotine’s decapitator blades by using tough bamboo poles, the Boxer flees into town pursued by the vengeful Master. After a bizarre fight in a bird-filled aviary, they end up in a coffin-shop which the Boxer has rigged with hatchet-throwing devices. The fight continues, with the Master pierced by hatchets and the Boxer slashed by the guillotine’s outer blades; at one point the Boxer hangs from the ceiling and throws pebbles in all directions to confuse the blind Master’s super-sensitive ears, only for his head to swivel around 360 degrees, Exorcist-style, as he follows the sounds. Finally, the One-Armed Boxer prevails: he delivers a killer iron-fist blow to the wounded Master which blasts him clean through the roof of the shop, to land dead in a conveniently positioned coffin in the street. With its outrageous soundtrack of crunching krautrock, drumming and clattering, detonations and ricochets, allied to a visual orgy of zooms, surrealistic trick effects, neon pink flashbacks and bludgeoning violence – including decapitations, impalings, blindings and bone-crushings – Du Bi Quan Wang Dapo Xuedizi stands as one of most sensorially overwhelming cinematic experiences of the 70s.
Posted by Cryptomaniac