Chang Cheh’s One-Armed Swordsman (1967)

Editor's note: Once the Shaw Brothers and Chang Cheh introduced us to the one-armed swordsman hero in the late 1960s, a trend was born. One-armed heroes cropped up all over the martial arts film world, teaming up with each other, fighting each other, going it alone. Some of the more popular one-armed titles were even remade or rebooted within the mere space of a decade. The following essay refers to one of the one-armed swordsman works, but not the one we ended up watching. We apologize for any confusion.

“So the other day I was walking through the country side minding my own business when some dude (I later found out he was an emperor) comes out of nowhere and lops my arm off. WHAT THE HELL, MAN?!?!?

“At this point I’m pissed. Who goes around chopping people’s arms off at their leisure? I really couldn’t do anything at the time so I just ran away. I wasn’t going to beat some dude in a fight with just one arm. So, you know, I bided my time making money as a mystical one-armed waiter until I could gain enough money to teach this guy some manners about cutting people’s limbs off. Little did I know he has like a million followers who would throw down their lives for him.

“And throw down their lives they did. Jeez, I must have murdered at least 100 people on my way to this emperor dude. When I finally got to him I had to use three swords—YES THREE SWORDS—to end his sorry life; it was super raw. An arm for a … life. That’s how the saying goes right? Actually including all of his followers it was more like an arm for 101 lives. Either way, I taught him a lesson about walking around cutting limbs off. He will be able to use it plenty of times in the after life at the bottom of some hell pit."

One-Armed Swordsman has to be one of the best kung fu movies of all time. It’s a story, like most kung-fu movies, of revenge. If you like Quentin Tarentino this is where he stole a lot of his stuff from. Cheap dialogue, ridiculous plot, awesome action: that’s what kung-fu is all about. If you don’t like this awesome form of entertainment, that’s fine (but you are insane) – even so I would give this movie a try because it is one of the pinnacles of the genre.

Just the scene where the one-armed swordsman is trying to get to the emperor and cutting down a bunch of people to get there is supermegaawesome. And then after that it shows all of the dead that he left in his wake from an overhead camera shot which just blows me away. If you are looking for lots of passion and emotion, One-Armed Swordsman won’t have any of it. In fact it may even remove some emotion from your body and make you a harder, tougher person. If the goal of the movie industry is to entertain, this movie does the job quite well.

So what kind of actor could be a big enough badass to star in such an awesome kung fu movie? Move over Bruce Lee and enter Jimmy Wang Yu. This guy was not only insanely awesome on screen (often playing one armed characters for some reason) but he was even cooler off screen. He got in plenty of bar brawls and had a love affair with a famous actress whose husband ended up hanging himself rather than go through a divorce. Most people think of Bruce Lee as the first well known kung-fu hero but Jimmy Wang Yu was well known before Bruce Lee (One-Armed Swordsman made one million dollars at the box office). He paved the way for Bruce Lee and Jackie Chan. For the longest time I thought he only had one arm in real life because all of the movies (3) I had seen with him he only had one arm. But he has the normal amount of limbs which raises the question why does he play so many one-armed characters? Maybe you can find out!

When you get home after watching this move you should tie your arm behind your back and try some kung-fu tricks. I bet it’s far harder than it looked on screen. That’s probably why Jimmy was one-armed in so many movies. He just wanted to prove to the world that disabled people could do just as much killing as any normal person. What a valiant statement, Mr. Yu. In fact, more directors should make disabled people action movies. Ray would have been so much better if Ray Charles went on a murder rampage.

Alec Nordin
Film Club co-President