Return Of The One-Armed Swordsman

Return of the One-Armed Swordsman (Du Bei Dao Wang) (1969)

Runtime: 106 minutes

Directed by: Cheh Chang

Starring: Jimmy Wang Yu, Lisa Chiao Chiao, Feng Tien, Essie Lin Chia, Lei Cheng

From: Shaw Brothers

I was able to find this movie for a viewing so I decided to check it out, as I really enjoyed the first one and it made sense to see the sequel. To steal the plot description from Letterboxd:

"The notorious “One-Armed Swordsman” who has spent the last two years retired from the martial world as a simple farmer with his wife. Of course this idyllic life is about to be sliced to ribbons by (director) Chang’s wicked imagination. He concocts a savory setup when he introduces, not one, but eight unique villains known as the Eight Kings of Swords and their sword-wielding entourage for Wang Yu to eventually chop his way through."

The rest of this review is from Letterboxd, but expanded upon a bit. I will return Sunday night.

While there's some pretty preposterous/ridiculous moments and sometimes I went, "Hey, wait a minute...", it doesn't really matter when this is so entertaining and you have a bunch of people in a clan trying to match the badassery of their new leader Jimmy Wang Yu as they have to wipe out the eight wacky villains who are trying to rule everything and have such unique aspects as... dudes who wield giant circular blades, people with sickles, a shotgun/sword, and the best of all, a lovely dame who is actually psychotic and wields a bunch of blades. It's like a videogame in how they progress through different levels and deal with different bad guys on each level.

This is definitely the bloodiest Shaw Brothers movie I've seen; you get to view a lot of red, and even some blood spurting out like it's a Lone Wolf and Cub film. People get run straight through with a sword often and sometimes they keep on fighting; that's what I meant by them trying to be a badass like the title character.

Besides the action and setpieces, you have the title character still trying to avoid the martial arts world and he doesn't really want to be their new leader; he would much rather be a simple farmer. I found that again to be an interesting aspect.

I am thankful this was not a typical disappointing sequel.