The Highly Reliable Times: 2007

Master of the Flying Guillotine
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Master of the Flying Guillotine
Directed by Jimmy Wang Yu
Produced by Cheuk Hon Wong
Written by Jimmy Wang Yu
Starring Jimmy Wang Yu
Kam Kang
Lung Chung-erh
(as Kun Yee Lung)
Liu Chia Yung
(as Kar Wing Lau)
Philip Kwok
Music by Hsun Chi Chen
Cinematography Yao Hu Chiu
Editing by Ting Hsiung Kuo
Distributed by Pathfinder Pictures
Release date(s) February, 1977
24 May 2002
(restored version)
Running time Original: 81 min.
Restored: 93 min.
Country Hong Kong/Taiwan
Language Mandarin
Preceded by One Armed Boxer
All Movie Guide profile
IMDb profile
Master of the Flying Guillotine (獨臂拳王大戦血滴子) is a 1975 Taiwanese / Hong Kong martial arts film starring Jimmy Wang Yu, who also wrote and directed the film. It is a sequel to Yu's 1971 film One Armed Boxer, and thus the film is also known as One-Armed Boxer 2 and The One Armed Boxer Vs. the Flying Guillotine.
The film concerns Yu's one-armed martial arts master being stalked by an Imperial assassin, the master of two fighters (the Tibetan Lamas) who were killed in the previous film. When the One-Armed Boxer is invited to attend a martial arts tournament, his efforts to lay low are unsuccessful when the assassin soon tracks him down with the help of his three subordinates competing in the tournament; a thai boxer, a yoga master, and a kobojutsu user.
The title refers to the assassin's unique weapon, the so-called "Flying Guillotine" which resembles a hat with a bladed rim attached to a long chain. Upon enveloping one's head, the blades cleanly decapitate the unlucky victim with a quick pull of the chain.
While Yu's film is a sequel to his own One Armed Boxer, it also serves as an unofficial sequel to the Shaw Brothers' Flying Guillotine (Xuedizi), directed by Meng-Hwa Ho in 1974. For Yu's independently produced film, the weapon was "borrowed" and improved upon. For instance, in Master, the flying guillotine can fold up like an umbrella for easier concealment. In 1978, the Shaw Brothers produced two more guillotine movies, The Flying Guillotine 2 (Can ku da ci sha) and The Vengeful Beauty (Xue fu rong).
[edit]Impact

The Master and his Flying Guillotine.
Master of the Flying Guillotine is considered a classic martial arts movie and has influenced many films of the genre that followed.

It was paid homage to in Quentin Tarantino's film Kill Bill, which briefly used the film's droning theme music, an excerpt of the song "Super 16" by Neu!, during the House of Blue Leaves sequence. Gogo Yubari's unique weapon, a meteor hammer with retractable blades, could also be considered a take-off of the Flying Guillotine.
The Street Fighter character Dhalsim's abilities also resemble those of an Indian fighter that appears in the film, with both characters using a yoga-based fighting style and having an unnatural ability to extend their limbs to attack. The Mortal Kombat: Deception character Shujinko also possesses an alternative costume that is a direct homage to the Flying Guillotine, except that the swastika symbol has been removed and replaced by the Japanese symbol for the characters name - Shujinko may mean "protagonist" in Japanese.
The band From First to Last references this movie on their album Dear Diary, My Teen Angst Has a Body Count, titling a song "The One Armed Boxer vs. The Flying Guillotine."
The album Master of the Flying Guillotine, released by Jumpsteady in 2005 features sound selections from the film.