La sfida degli invincibili campioni

"The One-Armed Swordsman" is a classic and one of the best martial arts films of all time. So, it's not surprised that the movie had sequels. While not nearly as good, Yu Wang is back as the title character and it's interesting enough to merit watching if you like these sorts of pictures. If you don't, this one is unlikely to convert you.

When the film begins, a group of baddies named the 8 Kings attack the leaders and best students of the 40 martial arts schools. They then send an ultimatum to all the surviving students back home...."Cut off one of your arms or we'll kill your masters". Not surprisingly, they decide instead to seek out the One-Armed Swordsman and enlist his help. Will he come out of retirement to help? Well, considering the title of the film, it's pretty much a foregone conclusion.

Along the way, they encounter a lot of treachery and baddies. My favorite was the evil woman who smiles so convincingly...as she murders folks right and left. She is an amazingly good villain and it's a shame she's only in a small portion of the film. In addition to her, you'll see LOTS of blood and gore and tons of ridiculous fight scenes using 'wire fu'. This is the most serious problem of the movie. In the first film, there is some wire fu but mostly it's just really, really great swordsmanship and martial arts. Here, however, the quality of the fighting is much, much lower with blood substituting for quality fighting. Not a terrible fighting film but certainly not near the quality of the first one despite having the same leading man and director. Diverting but far from a must-see. After all, you DON'T expect total realism from a one-armed film...but you do expect better than this.

By the way, if you want to make this film a drinking game, I suggest everyone take a shot every time a character is mortally wounded yet miraculously, for a few seconds, begins fighting again despite losing gallons of blood or having HUGE swords thrust through them! I especially love the scene with the guy impaled with a sword and he manages to kill a dozen more guys for about the next five minutes before he ultimately expires!

Return of the One-Armed Swordsman, directed by Cheh Chang, and starring Jimmy Wang Yu as the One-Armed Swordsman, sees the return of the titular hero. Now in retirement and enjoying life as a humble farmer, vowing to never pick up the sword again, Fang is approached by two expert swordsman, inviting him to the mansion of the kings of martial arts, a group of ruthless fighters who seek to kill all rival swordsman and take over all the schools of martial arts.

This is one of the campiest martial arts films I have seen in a while, and by extension one of the most fun. Fang picks up the sword after his wife (played by Chiao Chiao) is kidnapped. He unites the students of the martial arts schools, whose teachers have been kidnapped by the kings as hostages. And this is where the fun comes in. We have a seductress with a a thousand blades, a sword-gun, a tunnel digging master, a rope-blade warrior, a strong man, shield blades, the king of kings - who's balde is unknown, and hundreds of armed adherents. The One Armed Swordsman sets out to best all of these warriors, and free his wife and the masters of the schools, while building a following of young students bent on helping.

This film is wonderful. It has some of the campiest elements of any martial arts film I have yet seen. The different styles of the kings are ridiculously enjoyable, and so strange they elevate to a higher plain. In my opinion, this is a cult masterpiece, with only a few ratings on IMDB at the time of writing. Too bad, as this film is a recognizable jem. Much fun to be had in this one, and highly recommended to anyone looking for a good martial arts flick. The first in this series is worth a watch, but does not approach the quality of this rare "sequel that's better than the first." Give this under seen jem a go, it deserves the reputation.

I guess The One-Armed Swordsman (1967) must have done pretty well, because just two years later it got a sequel. One thing I've noticed about Shaw Brothers movies is that sequels are shockingly rare. The genre/action movies made in Japan in the 1960s and 1970s often got tons of sequels greenlit straight away (the Stray Cat Rock series had all five movies released in a window of less than 18 months, from memory), but Shaw Brothers in the Hong Kong scene seemed to have a different practice. They produced movies with similar premises often featuring a rotating cast of actors, but direct sequels themselves weren't too commonplace (maybe that's a natural consequence of having like half the movies end with the main character dying in an epic blaze of glory).

So as for this sequel to The One-Armed Swordsman? It's just okay. It benefits from being able to hit the ground running, but none of the beats it ends up hitting are all that amazing. It's just a serviceable martial arts movie, and in typical (and unfortunate) sequel fashion, it more or less does what the first movie does, but just in ways that are slightly less exciting. It's consistent in that regard... just consistently less exciting and entertaining, and I say that as someone who liked but didn't love the first movie.

But then again, an average Shaw Brothers martial arts movie is still better than an average anything else movie, because their standard of quality was generally so high throughout the late 1960s and into the 1980s. That makes Return of the One-Armed Swordsman a worthwhile watch for martial arts movie fanatics, but I don't think I'd recommend it to more casual action movie fans, in all honesty.

After defeating The Long-Armed Devil and his armies, our nubbed hero has been living in retirement as a farmer, but circumstances causes him to come out of retirement and take on The Eight Kings, each warrior with their own unique fighting style. The time has come for the one armed swordsman to return.

Before Chang Cheh was making his "Five Deadly Venoms" films, he was perfecting the wuxia with the One-Armed Swordsman series. Is part two better than the first? Maybe, maybe not. But it is at least as good, with some more solid villains -- including a woman with a thousand blades! The martial arts genre, at least under the direction of Chang Cheh, is interesting in how steady and consistent it remained -- even up through the 1980s, the use of scenery, camera tricks and more remained largely unchanged. But, as they say, if it ain't broke, why fix it?

Fang Gang and XiaoMan are living peacefully as farmers. Brothers Black and White Swordsman deliver him an invitation to a gathering by the Eight Warlords. Each warlord with their own minions fight using specific weapons and techniques. The Black and White brothers kill anybody unwilling to attend. Fang Gang refuses and rebukes the brother. The various masters who submit are slaughtered with some imprisoned. The Eight Warlords order the students of these sword clans to cut off their right arm before retrieving the bodies of their masters. In desperation, some of the students come to Fang Gang for help.

This sequel has far more swordplay and action than the original. There are more stunts, bigger stunts and even rudimentary wire work. The various fighting styles are fun. The story does have a few minor problems. The story isn't quite as compelling. It's relatively straight forward. It's still plenty of fun to battle each one of the Warlords.

Fang Gang says that he suspected Hua Niangzi (the Thousand Hands King) all along but he allow her to walk around killing so many men. He could have just searched her for her swords. Even worst, he allowed her to kill his badly injured man telling him to finish her off. The guy needed immediate medical attention. There are also a lot of coincidences and too convenient moments. I'm willing overlook all of those flaws for some some pretty awesome fun fights.