Old master Fung Sheng Wu Chi (Kang Chin) practices kung fu alone in a barren, volcanic mountain. When a messenger pigeon arrives, bearing the news that his two apprentices have been killed by a one-armed boxer, he literally bursts out through the ceiling of his hovel in rage. He then pulls out his signature weapon, the titular Flying Guillotine (a basket with a bladed rim, set at the end of a long chain) and beheads a few dummies arrayed outside... and an innocent rooster, clearly for real (chicken have a really low life expectancy in Hong Kong cinema). Every time he throws the guillotine it sounds like a revolver shot in a western.
Then, satisfied he's made an impression and ready to go out to avenge his followers, Wu Chi puts a bow on it by torching his former residence with a firebomb. All of this accompanied by the amazing, extremely modern strains of Neu!'s Super 16*.
And this, folks, is how you start a movie.
We then catch up with the actual protagonist of the film: Wu Chi's target, Yu Tien Lung (Jimmy Wang Yu, who also writes and directs). He's a circumspect, calm master who's lying low after being targeted by the Qing dynasty** by running a martial arts school where he teaches that with proper breath control you can walk on walls and even ceilings. Not the most discrete of occupations, but it seems to work out for him.
When the dojo receive an invitation to participate in a nearby international martial arts tournament, Tien Lung worries that it's a trap from the government. (It actually isn't, but you can bet that Wu Chi, who's shown to be gleefully killing one-armed men, is going to gatecrash it.)
Tien Lung's students convince him that the tournament would make for a great field trip despite his reservations, so off they all go to take in a few fights.
The second act of the film is mostly the tournament itself. It's a good one, with (fairly racist depictions of) multi-national fighters coming together to show off different styles; You get a brash, kick-focused Thai fighter who does a silly little song and dance number before every fight and a shinobi-hat wearing, tonfa-wielding Japanese dude who goes by the name "wins-with-no-knives-Yamata" (Lung Fei) who gets one of my favorite jokes in all of martial arts filmdom.
There's a hindi yogi who can stretch out his arms (the effect is very silly-looking, but it also kind of amazing; A great combination of goofy practical effects and clever chorography), and a Chinese fighter who uses his long, tressed pony tail as a whip and a noose.
It's a good sampling of varied styles, with many different weapons putting in an appearance. The influence of this part on videogames has been acknowledged, with the last two fighters being clear inspirations for both Street Fighter 2 and... um, Yie-ar kung fu 2.
As soon as a random one-armed fighter enters the arena, though, it's over: Wu Chi sweeps in from the wings, quickly beheads the poor guy, and then starts terrorizing everyone else. This leads to a running fight against the one-armed boxer, with several of the surviving tournament fighters going after him as well to curry favour with the government, I guess. Assholes.
An out-numbered Tien Lung must then figure out how to navigate this gauntlet of enemies, and find a way to deal with Wu Chi's deadly weapon. Cue a number of duels, along with a few over-complicated ruses to even out the odds.
The film is heightened and knowingly silly, but - as long as you can buy into its world - not in a way that works against its simple, dramatic confrontation. Jimmy Wang yu's filmmaking is unfussy but assured, and he throws in some flourishes by colour-coding a few of the fights. Meanwhile the legendary Shaw Brothers action choreographer Liu Chia-Liang (AKA Lau Kar-leung) keeps the fights propulsive, brutal, and full of neat little gimmicks. They tend to be short confrontations lacking the technical complexity of other films, but to my undiscerning eyes they seem to be a little more believable than the typical fights of this era of martial arts cinema; They look less choreographed and more realistic, for the lack of a better word. Which is ironic given the movie's many fantastic elements and silly conceits.
Blood flows fairly freely. This is not a movie for grand arterial sprays, even when justified by a beheading, but the violence is frequent and there is a small amount of gore, the most memorable of which is a puddle of... let's call it nut slurry after someone gets repeatedly kicked in the testicles.
I should also highlight the music, which follows the long, proud tradition in Asian cinema of just lifting music from other sources. Instead of stealing the theme from another movie, though, someone in the Guillotine crew was clearly a fan of krautrock - songs by Kraftwerk and Tangerine Dream pop up on the soundtrack along with that Neu! track, and give the film a very unique energy. Frankie Chan's original music is decent, but it understandably doesn't make as big an impression.
Master of the Flying Guillotine is considered a classic of the genre - and deservedly so, I think. The highest compliment I can pay it is that I clearly remembered huge chunks of it, despite last seeing it as a pre-teen... way too ago. It made an impression then, and I'm happy to report that it holds up beautifully even after all these years.
*: The regular version of Super appears over the title credits, and it makes for a very punk-rock opening. Super 16, meanwhile, accompanies Wu Chi throughout the rest of the movie - it's his own version of the imperial march.
**: This film is a sequel to The One-Armed Boxer - there's no need to watch that to understand anything here, but I'd still recommend it as it's also really good.
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