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6 Degrees Entertainment

One-Armed Boxer: Special Edition
(Jimmy Wang Yu, Yeh Tien, Hsin Tang, et al / Blu-ray / NR / (1972) 2022 / Arrow Films)

Overview: Yu Tian Long (Wang) is the best fighter to come out of his local martial arts school, but when he crosses the ruthless leader of a local crime syndicate, the big boss’ brutal bevy of deadly killers make mincemeat out of the school and everyone inside.

Now the only survivor of the massacre, and short of one appendage, Yu is gifted a powerful elixir that promises to give him the strength to take swift revenge on the army of assassins, each representing the most lethal forms of fighting from across the Eastern hemisphere.

Proving once and for all that you only need five fingers of death to get the job done, Wang would later reprise his role in the infamous sequel Master of the Flying Guillotine, but it’s the dementedly inventive original where he’s arguably at the height of his powers.

Blu-ray Verdict: When former Shaw Brothers executive Raymond Chow founded rival studio Golden Harvest in 1970, he quickly teamed up with “Jimmy” Wang Yu – Hong Kong’s first kung fu superstar and formerly Shaw’s biggest box office draw.

Bringing over his peerless talent for taking on all foes with one hand tied behind his back, Wang wrote, directed and played the title role in one of his most unmissable kickass classics!

Telling it like it is, for some bizarre reason, Wang Yu remains virtually unknown outside of his native country, yet his string of films reached new heights of excellence in the kung fu genre, playing with genre staples and adding in fantastic elements to make them more exciting.

Although I’m both a newcomer to the martial arts genre and to Wang Yu himself, it seems that he may be the most under-appreciated actor and director out there!

As a director, Wang Yu seems to be an early equivalent of Castellari or Woo, filling his movie with lots of stylish touches such as some impactful slow-motion in the action sequences, suspenseful tracking shots, and even displaying enough skill to trick and tease the viewer.

This gives the One-Armed Boxer an edge over its contemporary rivals. Okay, so the story is kept simple like lots of others, but this gives Wang Yu a chance to develop some interesting and varied caricatures and some fantastic action set-pieces which fully make use of the scenery in which they are set.

For example, in a breathtaking brick factory fight, beaten men invariably fall into bubbling vats or have their limbs crushed in huge, rotating cogwheels!

As an actor, Wang Yu once again essays the role of the innocent man caught up in all kinds of havoc, delivering snappy one-liners to the bad guys before he kills them and always ready with a smirk and a smile to keep his character light and likable.

His heroes are also very human and fragile, invariably taking a beating during the film’s course, and how could it get any worse than in this film? Wang Yu has his arm chopped off, his eye gouged out and his head smashed into a rock as well as getting beaten up loads of times before the end is in sight.

Sure, the supporting cast don’t figure much but at least the good guys are likable and the bad guys very imposing.

And what a bunch of bad guys - possibly the craziest you’re likely to ever see on film! We have two Korean fighters who dance to a bizarre tune before they can fight, a pair of Tibetan Lamas, karate experts, boxers, even an Indian mystic (a Chinese guy in black face!), all presided over by an unforgettably evil dark long-haired guy complete with vampire fangs!

Of course, the good guys don’t stand a chance, at least not until Jimmy Wang Yu has burnt his remaining arm in a kiln and crushed it under a rock, thus destroying all the nerves in his limb and turning it into a rock-like weapon.

Yes, you heard me right! The above two scenes are the most painful the film has to offer! Then again, it’s a film full of pain and brutality, violence occurring literally every two minutes. Eyes are gouged, bodies scarred with the iron fist technique, blood sprays, faces break, people are impaled and broken.

It truly is an odyssey in screen violence!

Personally, I enjoyed this film most for the offbeat and totally insane plot elements it has to offer. Take, for instance, the mystic guy who stops and does a stop-motion style dance on his hands to confuse his opponent, and the finale in which Wang Yu beats him by doing it with one finger!

Or the Lamas who have the ability to literally inflate their bodies before fighting to make them invincible, or Wang Yu learning the art of standing straight up like Nosferatu and flying through the air to strike his opponents.

The inevitably arm-chopping is a long time in coming and a little cheesy, but hey, it still hits the mark. The finale, set in a rocky canyon, is insane stuff with the bad guys lobbing dynamite at Wang Yu, and the hero retaliating by kicking men into geysers, over the edge of cliffs, into rivers and generally causing lots of violent mayhem to make up for the damage done to him and his friends earlier in the film.

In closing, the One-Armed Boxer is a light, breezy, unusual and unforgettable martial arts epic, followed by the equally - if not more so - bizarre MASTER OF THE FLYING GUILLOTINE. A trash classic, sure, but one not to be missed by any genre fan! This is a Widescreen Presentation (2.35:1) enhanced for 16x9 TVs and comes with the Special Features of:

2K restoration from the original elements by Fortune Star
High Definition (1080p) Blu-ray presentation
Original lossless Mandarin mono audio, alternate Mandarin soundtrack and original English dubbed audio
Optional English subtitles, plus hard-of-hearing subtitles for the English dub
Commentary by Frank Djeng from the NY Asian Film Festival
Career retrospective interview with Wang Yu, filmed in Nantes in 2001 and never released before, courtesy of the Frédéric Ambroisine Video Archive
Trailer gallery, featuring the original Hong Kong theatrical trailer, a US TV spot (as The Chinese Professionals) and over half an hour of trailers for other Wang Yu classics including One-Armed Swordsman and Master of the Flying Guillotine
Image gallery
Reversible sleeve featuring original and newly commissioned artwork by Ilan Sheady

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