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Once again, here I am warning you about martial arts movies that you shouldn't watch. This month's feature is... "Master of the Flying Guillotine!" This movie was apparently originally released as "Master of the Flying Guillotine vs The One-Armed Boxer," because that's what the title screen said. However, that title is almost as long as the movie itself, so they shortened it. MFG, as I will call it from now on, should not be confused with just plain "The Flying Guillotine" which is a movie about the same weapon, but different people being beheaded by it. You'd think that TWO movies about the Flying Guillotine would be enough, but I actually saw another one this month (which I'm too lazy to review) in which that weapon played an important role, without actually getting star billing.
Before I get on with the review, I suppose I should attempt to explain the Flying Guillotine. Basically it's like an upside down bowl, with blades on the edge to help it spin, attached to a long chain which I think has a handle at the end. The user of this weapon throws it at the target. Because of mad 1337 skillz or something, it always lands on someone's head, those dropping a net with blades on the bottom, or something, which reaches down to the neck. The poor victim has long enough to get a shocked look on their face, then the wielder yanks off the chain and ta da! Off with their head! It even works on chickens, as the Master demonstrates at the beginning of the movie, thus cementing himself as The Bad Guy.
Yes, that's right, the title character here is actually the villain. He lives in a hut in the mountains where he practices with his bizarre weapon. He is also blind. And when he discovers that his two disciples were killed by the One Armed Boxer, he vows revenge! After chopping the head off of a chicken and lighting his house on fire, he heads out, disguised as a Buddhist monk.
This is seriously the best disguise EVER! At one point, the Master is sitting in the upper level of one of those ubiquitous Chinese restaurants (the kind where the upper floor looks down on the lower floor) when some guy down below is caught trying to sneak out without paying. The guy (who only has one arm) loudly proclaims "Do you know who I am? I'm the One Armed Boxer!" The Master does one of those "blind guy ear twitch" things, which he will do often throughout the movie, and then poof! Off with his head!
He then jumps down to the lower level and asks the stunned innkeeper "Was he really the One Armed Boxer?" to which the innkeeper replies "No, he was just a bum." Then the Master ominously proclaims "No matter, I will kill EVERY ONE ARMED MAN IN CHINA UNTIL I GET MY REVENGE!!!!" or something like that. There are, by the way, at least three one armed men in China. Anyway, no one freaks out and yells "OMG! He just murdered that guy! Call the guards!" Nope, obviously he's a Buddhist priest, so they let him go. Or something.
Anyway, like all the most entertaining martial arts movies, MFG contains a martial arts tournament with fighters from many countries. This is, in my opinion, the best part of the movie. Since it happens early in the movie, the rest of the film is kind of disappointing. In the tournament part of the movie, we're treated to all kinds of martial arts forms and weapons, including one of my personal favorites, the three-part-staff. Among the foreign challengers are a Thai kick boxer (not nearly as cool as Tony Jaa from Ong Bak, but you take what you can get), a Japanese guy who fights with tonfas, and some Indian Yoga guy.
Mr. One Armed Boxer has decided not to participate in the tournament, even though he was invited, because the government is looking for him. But he and his students decide to observe, to see if they can learn anything. Yeah, because government agents aren't going to notice the guy with one arm sitting in the front row of the meager audience!
The Master wisely realizes that Mr. One Armed Boxer will probably be there, so he's hiding out behind the tournament or something. When he hears them announce some one armed snake fist guy (there's your third guy with one arm), he assumes that this is Mr. One Armed Boxer himself and again it's "off with his head!" This time, however, people freak out. So The Master kills the guy running the tournament and then starts throwing around his ninja bombs and makes his escape in the smoke.
The tournament-running-guy's daughter gets injured in this, but she gets rescued by the cool Japanese guy, Wins With No Knife (who has a knife disguised in his tonfa...). After nursing her back to health, Winnie (as I will call him from now on) asks the girl to come back to him with Japan, where he will teach her his kung fu (cue porn music, methinks). He tries to convince her that she is too weak to get revenge on the Master, but she still doesn't want to go to Japan with him. She wants her revenge, and apparently she has some sort of crush on Mr. One Armed Boxer, too.
Oh, and by the way, because All Foreigners Are Evil, Winnie, the Thai guy and the Yoga guy are all in league with The Master. Of course, they never all go attacking him at once, because then they'd beat him and the movie would be over! Obviously, we can't have that happening.
Oddly enough, everyone thinks that Mr. One Armed Boxer is so great, but he really isn't. He can walk up walls and onto the ceiling, something which he rarely to never uses in his fights, and he's smart, but his kung fu kinda sucks. Maybe it's because he only has one arm. Of course, because this is a bad 1970s movie, his arm is inside his shirt. You can see it. It's so obvious that you keep expecting him to whip it out as a secret weapon "Ha ha! You thought I only had ONE arm!" Maybe it could even be like the Fire Beast Arm from Stormriders. Or even better, Shira's shaved-to-the-bone spikey arm of doom in Blade of the Immortal.
But, as usual, I digress.
One by one, Mr. One Armed Boxer takes out his enemies. My main complaint with the movie (besides the bad effects, annoying sound, and stupid plot) is how he defeats the Thai guy. Since he knows he can't beat him with kung fu alone, he lures him into a shack. A shack with a metal floor. Which his students light a fire under. Did I mention that the Thai guy has spent the entire movie running around barefooted? As the floor heats up, and Mr. One Armed Boxer is beating the crap out of him and taunting him, the Thai guy tries to jump out the window... but wait! The students are out there armed with spears. Do they stab him to death? No, they just don't let him jump out.
So basically, the poor guy (who never did anything more heinous than lead The Master to Mr. One Armed Boxer's school) gets burned/tortured/beat to death. When he finally drops, we get to see a gruesome shot of his blistered feet... and we're supposed to think of Mr. One Armed Boxer as the movie's HERO? Even as he comes up with clever ways to defeat his other foes, I couldn't appreciate his wits. He'd shown his true colors as a sadistic bastard.
Obviously, the movie comes down to a final fight between the Boxer and the Master, and I'm sure you can guess the outcome. The final fight involves some clever tricks, and part of it even takes place in an aviary full of song birds, and of course, there's plenty of Flying Guillotine ack-shun, but at this point I was pretty much cheering the villain on. By the way, even blind and with the crap beaten out of him, the Master still kicks ass. And did I mention that he must be about 80 years old?
As I mentioned before, this is a 1970s movie, and probably a low-budget one. The effects are laughable at best, and the costumes are pretty crappy, too. At one point, even though this is a "historical" movie, we can clearly see the zipper down the back of the Thai fighter's shirt. And don't even get me started on the Mongol's costume.
One incredibly amusing aspect of MFG is that a couple of characters have theme music that follows them everywhere. The Master has this 1970s heavy metal guitar riff - so there's this 80 year old Buddhist monk walking down the street to the tune of death metal. And the Thai guy has this Thai music that he dances to before every fight, causing me to wonder if he had an iPod stuffed into some orifice.
This is a really campy, kitschy movie. If you're looking for a few great weapon fight scenes and an otherwise silly movie (did I mention the bright pink flashback-o-vision? Now I did...), you'll probably enjoy this film.
Master of the Flying Guillotine is Not Rated. It contains lots of scenes of people beating the crap out of each other, and prolonged cruelty to cool Thai kickboxers, not to mention random violence against chickens.
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