Master of the Flying Guillotine
dir. Wang Yu
Opens Fri July 12
Clinton Street Theater
Though lately it’s been oh-so-popular to create films starring unlikely heroes (Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Powerpuff Girls, the upcoming Daredevil), Hong Kong martial arts director Jimmy Wang Yu was doing it while you were still a gleam in the milkman’s eye. His most famous series, debuting back in 1968, starred the “one armed boxer”; an amputee famous for keeping his cool unless you happened to refry his beans. Then it’s Haaai-YAH! Whoo-POW! Chop-SOCKY! Suddenly you’re on the receiving end of a one-armed ass-beatin’.
In Master of the Flying Guillotine (1974), the One Armed Boxer (OAB) returns to battle an opponent who refuses to have his beans refried. While Flying Guillotine may look like just another old blind coot, in actuality, he’s a high-kickin’ get-up-and-go grampa who has a flying hat he uses to chop off his enemy’s heads! So after receiving news that two of his disciples have been done in by OAB, he gets madder than a poodle in a pigpen and storms off to get revenge.
Meanwhile, OAB is invited to a fighting tournament for badasses–which gives the filmmaker an excuse to line up at least ten Mortal Kombat-style fights in a row. These hilarious bouts are populated by scrappers referred to as Monkey Boxer (who fights like a monkey), Yoga Expert (whose arms can stretch an extra three feet–wow! I should take his class!), and Iron Skin (who can withstand multiple kicks to the testicles). After the tourney, some fighters join forces with Flying Guillotine, which means OAB must use his one good hand to scratch his noggin and figure out how to beat the shit out of these Special Olympic no-goodniks.
As you probably know, a lot of these martial arts films from the ’70s are crapariffic–fun in theory, but boring in practice. Master of the Flying Guillotine, however, is pretty much fun all the way through. Wang Yu uses steak and potatoes cinematic structure, supplemented with humor (both intentional and “un”) to pull the viewer along and keep interest from waning. And it provides a moral lesson as well: Never make fun of blind people (especially those who have hats with big metal teeth).
