One Armed Swordsman Against Nine Killers (1976)

Touches You

Great Film overall

Let me be very fair here, this is not the best movie in my opinion. But, this movie is fun, it has purpose and is very enjoyable to watch.

It is an exhilarating, distressing, funny and profound film, with one of the more memorable film scores in years,

Another year, another Jimmy Wang Yu film in which the kung fu star plays a one-armed fighter touring the countryside and looking for revenge against villains unknown. ONE ARMED SWORDSMAN AGAINST NINE KILLERS is a kind of does-what-it-says-on-the-tin type film, a series of straightforward fight set-pieces in which Wang Yu battles against various assassins and fighters who get tougher and tougher as the running time progresses.The film was made in Taiwan on the cheap, but makes good use of arresting locations like hillsides, old caverns and temples, and cliff tops in or on which to set the action. The fight scenes are a little slow but staged well in the usual Wang Yu style, not much complexity in them but they prove entertaining nonetheless. Lo Lieh has a welcome one-scene role as a villain but is killed far too quickly, unfortunately. There's a little blood spray and gore spread here and here and in the end this is reasonably entertaining viewing.

You've gotta hand it to Wang Yu: he starred in some of the most ENTERTAINING martial arts movies ever made- very often, with one arm literally tied behind his back. ONE-ARMED SWORDSMAN VS. 9 KILLERS is a quintessential Wanger. As noted everywhere this one's been reviewed, this one has absolutely nothing to do with any of Yu's One-Armed Boxer movies, nor any of his One-Armed Swordsman movies. As also noted, Yu has more than a few tricks up his sleeve in this one. One of the funnier moments comes when he confronts a man whose falsetto suggests he may just be a tad light in the loafers- only he's not, because he's... a hermaphrodite! S/He proves no match for Wang Yu, of course. Another opponent, Mr. Lu, boasts a most impressive weapon (...): a six-foot long, twelve-inch wide broadsword... "The size of your sword doesn't matter," Yu deadpans. Before long, Lu is impaled on his own sword... ("I didn't come here to toot my own horn," Yu should've said: "My neck isn't long enough...") But that's not all: when Yu is betrayed by "9 Finger Chu," Yu, wounded, says: "But you have ten fingers..." "That's right," counters Chu: "But I've only got 9 TOES..." It's also revealed that the one-armed swordsman has two arms, and he never actually uses a sword in the movie. In fact, when he's asked at one point if he's a swordsman, he says no... ONE-ARMED SWORDSMAN VS. 9 KILLERS has all the earmarks of a Wang Yu movie and, as such, deserves a look.

I am only rating this 2 because there is a home made DVD going around under the title Der Foltergarten Der Gelben Schlange. While the other reviews here don't like this film too much, I didn't have as much problem with the movie itself but just this copy of it. This reminded me of when I used to watch movies on TV when they'd show them on a Saturday afternoon and everything was cut out. Every time Wang Yu goes to kill a guy there's a cut and suddenly we're somewhere else. Even the big "secret" when he is caught with two arms is so cut it's hard to tell what happened. The copy I watched was 77 minutes long and while there are rare copies on Ebay none of them gives a time so it's hard to tell if the ones being sold are heavily cut like this is. Hopefully a full version will come out on DVD. But beware! This cannot be the entire film but what I would call a cut TV copy dubbed in hilarious English. OK over a year later I rented the DVD of this movie. Sadly it is even worse than the homemade DVD I already reviewed. The DVD for rent looks like a bootleg of a really beat up VHS tape complete with tracking lines flashing scenes and drop outs. It's as if someone had an old tape they had used for years with no credits and put it on a DVD washed out bad color flaws and all. The home made DVD I reviewed (with Dutch subs) is a far better print and looks good as a DVD but it's missing all the stabbing, blood and some key scenes. Both of the DVDs have hilarious English dubbing. I think it's better to have the 83 minute DVD that is up for rent but here's hoping a DVD company will do Wang Yu justice and put out a remastered complete version hopefully in Chinese with English subs. All Wang Yu movies are worth getting this treatment. He is as important as Bruce Lee, Jackie Chan and Jet Li as a martial arts star.

What a 'confuzzling', bizarre piece of martial arts madness. The plot has so many flaws, nothing made any sense, the acting is terrible (even for a very low budget Chinese movie) and to top it off the fighting scenes are unimaginative to say the least. But... for some twisted reason I think this film is worth the watch. It is like no other martial arts film I've ever seen, the only film I can liken it to is "nine deadly venoms" that only because of the craziness. You can pick up this movie on 'Vengeance Video' label, for around £6, so its a must buy really.7/10(Confuzzling = Confusing + Crazy + Bizarre)