La sfida degli invincibili campioni

A great sequel to the original film 1967 with the two main characters husband and wife reprise their role but went straight to the plot a against the eight dagger clan more action less drama more blood shedding and fight scene... it's already built up all the storyline in the first one... the second one is just smooth sailing onwards

Smooth transition from the original to the sequel... great antagonist and protagonist.

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.

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.

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?

After watching the original One-Armed Swordsman, directed by Chang Cheh and starring Wang Yu in the title role, I knew I had to watch this direct sequel, as the others had David Chiang replacing Wang Yu as Fang Gang.

Continuing where the first movie left off, we see Fang Gang leading a life of a farmer, without a care of JiangHu politics. But as the saying goes, and in martial arts movie, so long as you're a reputable swordsman, trouble will always be looking for you. The emergence of the evil Eight Demon Swordsmen clan brought about chaos, with their issuing of forced challenges and a grand meeting amongst the swordsman clans. The senior members of various clans get annihilated or captured, and its down to the junior members to try and convince Fang Gang to come out of "retirement" to assist them in their quest of rescue, and getting rid of the Eight Demon Swordsmen.

It's also pretty cool to see the main villains being crafted with various deadly weapons and different personalities. Like the one with the deadly chain-attached sickle, or the mean looking knife-shield. How about a weapon which seemed to fire pellets of poison, and a sword with extensible blade? Perhaps the more interesting villain was the lady assassin, with her demure looks, and deadly hidden knives, giving a new meaning to back-stabbing! However, being villains, our hero and his gang of merry men, while on the way to the villains' fortress, get to dispatch them one by one in deadly, bloody fashion. Although by today's standards the blood is pretty fake looking, it's still quite a bloody affair with slashing, stabbings - knives through body, and squirting blood. But I must add that it did give a sense of cheesy nostalgia to how blood was created for the screen in those days.

Classic martial arts movie scenes like the bamboo forest also get featured in this movie, though the forest did look a bit sparse, since it was filmed in a sound stage. Added to the fight scenes was a demonstration of superb "qing-gong" (light-skill, fleet-footedness) by Fang Gang, though the wire work used was extremely elementary, and came across quite laughably. Back in those days, this sequence would have been da bomb though.

The story's nothing to shout about - it has almost every thematic element that you'd expect from a martial arts movie, and classic scene settings like forests and inns. But it sure is one heck of a fun ride - bigger, bolder, badder than the original, with a lot more disposable characters for the body count.

Code 3 DVD extras contains a pretty weak lineup of only the trailer (and trailers for other movies), colour stills, the poster, selected cast and crew biography and filmography, and a one screen production notes. The DVD for the original seemed better and more thorough.