Return of the One Armed Swordsman 1969 Chang Cheh

When we last saw Fang Gang, he had defended his master's honor and defeated the Long Armed Devil.  He walked off with his true love Hsaio Man and began a career as a one armed farmer.  At the beginning of this sequel, he is still one armed farming with Hsaio Man and there is still tons of drama in the martail arts world he left behind.  Apparently, a group of bandits have joined together and appointed themselves the 8 Sword Kings.  They've sent out invitations to all the martial arts guys to have a contest and see who is the strongest in the land.  Fang Gang is too busy one armed farming to attend.

It's a good thing, too, as the 8 Sword Kings kidnap all the martial arts masters and send word to all their disciples that they have a week to cut off their arms and come back to the Sword King Fortress or else.  The young disciples decide that they should hire Fang Gang to kill the Sword Kings, thereby saving their arms and hopefully their necks.

That's the setup for this movie, which is basically a cross between The One Armed Swordsman and Sanjuro, with ridiculous amounts of gimmicky weapon fighting and fountains of blood.  It's pretty awesome.  There are a few of the Sword Kings who get short shrift - Muscles King and Poison Sword King, we hardly knew ye - but overall, every bad guy gets his moment in the blood red sun.  The amount of disciples following Fang Gang fluctuates depending on the amount of dead bodies needed for each showdown, but who's counting.  Give me One Armed Swordsing every 10 minutes or so, and it's all fine.

The original seemed to be trying to present it's story in the real world, so there wasn't too much wire work and just a few 2 story standing jumps.  In this movie, nobody stays connected to the ground for too long.  One Armed Helicopter?  Yes, please!  But my favorite thing about this movie is that a lot of people who had minor roles in the first movie are recast as different characters in this one.  The main bad guy, Stealth King, is played by the same actor who was Fang Gang's master in the first movie.

I know that there are at least 3 other One Armed Swordsman movies after this one, but I can't see them surpassing this one.  This is a definite must see.  It's a good thing the movie is this entertaining, because you get absolutely nothing in the way of extras on the dvd.  But even without extras, this is a great movie.