Old School Kung Fu Movie Review: Master of the Flying Guillotine

I went on a bit of an old school Kung Fu binge this weekend, checking out both Shaw Brothers and non-Shaw Brothers clips over on YouTube out of nostalgia. I ended up stumbling across Master of the Flying Guillotine, which I never up until now had seen in its entirety. I knew about it from my childhood during the 80’s when they used to run these kung fu marathons during the weekends. This movie was a pretty memorable sight among the others and certainly the weapon of a flying guillotine cannot be forgotten.

Of course, there have been a few other famous flying guillotine movies, including one from the Shaw Brothers starring Chen Kuan Thai as well as another one with Carter Wong. However, I always felt that the villain in this movie made it far more memorable. Perhaps, it was the infamous rotating head scene which creeped me out as a kid, not to mention the fearfulness of having yet another old monk bearing such a deadly weapon. It wasn’t until years later that I found out that one of the most famous martial arts actors of all time, Jimmy Wang Yu, was the main actor (as well as director and writer).

This movie in a way continues the famous character of the One Armed Boxer that Jimmy Wang Yu has come to fame. The plot is fairly simple where Yu’s character must defend himself against the monk assassin after he had thwarted the monk’s two students. The vast majority of the movie in the middle is nothing more than a Robin Hood-like martial arts contests in the middle that pit various fighters from around the world against each other. Apparently, part of it was to draw out the famous One Armed Boxer in order to kill him. If you’re into very simplistic, heavy action type of stories, this is a good one.

That said, I had quite a few issues with it as I watched it. The first and foremost issue is that there’s a hint at prejudice in the way Yu’s opponents in the movie are treated. They hailed from Thailand, India, Japan and Tibet but were treated with a great deal of flatness. The actors were all Chinese and it reminded me of how older American films would use heavy make up and some sort of stereotype clothing to portray a certain ethnic group. Obviously, since the film was conceived in the mid 70’s, you can’t argue for a lot of ethnic diversity in the world by that point.

The other major issue I had in the film was how Yu’s character for the most part vaguely felt endangered at almost any point. In fact, I kind of thought of Yu’s character as an asshole. He’s pretty cocky for the most part and practically outsmarts his opponents the entire time. In some ways, I felt more sympathetic towards the villains, knowing that the One Armed Boxer was pretty much like John Cena vs their Reno Riggins. You knew once they started battling against him that they stood no chance. And just like John Cena, Yu hardly sold his injuries (e.g. injured leg, pierced shoulder even burnt feet). He practically murdered in cold blood the Thai kickboxer in a very cruel and punishing method.

Of course, the main thing we all were waiting for was the showdown between the flying guillotine monk and the One Armed Boxer. Once the inner teeth of the flying guillotine was destroyed and Yu split the guillotine in half, pretty much the fight was over. From there it pretty much was a boring extra three minutes of painfully watching Yu struggle with his lack of martial arts skills in overpowering and decimating the monk. Up until that point, the fight between Yu and the monk was simply Yu deceiving the monk by thwarting his ability to detect Yu with his hearing. In short, what ought to have been an epic encounter between the two ended up being nothing more than a squash match with Yu using his nuke hand punch to send the monk skyrocketing straight into a coffin.

Certainly, numerous other kung fu action stars and movies have far better and satisfying endings. Part of this movie felt like a way to glorify Yu’s ego. In my case, I thought that the villain had a real air of ferocity about him, something that truly made him seem evil and engendering trepidation. There were a few moments of ruthless on the monk’s part but the movie did a poor job of building on that aspect. If it were a Chang Cheh movie, Jimmy Wang Yu’s students would all be dead (including the girl), which would have greatly magnified the malevolent nature of the monk.

The thing is that for me I actually started to see the One Armed Boxer towards the end as the villain. When you look at the circumstances surrounding the monk’s rational, he was more or less out for revenge for his students. The aspect of his involvement with the government vaguely was touched upon. But at least he had a reason to chase Yu. Then you had the Japanese fellow, who incidentally rescued the girl. Although he was apparently in cahoots with the monk, he offered to walk away. Instead, Yu dismisses the offer and goes straight into a killing mode.

Probably, the thing about the movie is that it wasn’t written by Chang Cheh nor some of his main writers, instead being done almost exclusively by Jimmy Wang Yu. That lends a certain biased in the portrayal of himself (kinda like Sylvester Stallone in Rocky), where he pretty much won’t even sell for his opponents. So to me it lacks a lot of pathos towards the heroes for me and ironically transforms the monk into someone who looks pretty cool comparatively.

Beyond that there are a few little neat things in the movie. You can see a few cameo spots like a very young Phillip Kwok, Lau Kar-wing, Shan Mao and Wong Lik among others that I recognized. Also, it has that 70’s retro feel with some of the retrospective shots using a psychedelic coloring effect. Unfortunately, I do think that the movie even by that year looks outdated compared to other kung fu movies around that time.

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