A wuxia classic that pushed the genre to more brutal and grittier ends, as a martial artist must master a new fighting style after inexplicably losing an arm.
Review #2,750
Dir. Chang Cheh
1967 | Hong Kong | Action, Drama | 111 min | 2.35:1 | Mandarin
Not rated – likely to be NC16 for some violence and gore
Cast: Jimmy Wang Yu, Lisa Chiao Chiao, Tien Feng, Violet Pan Ying-Zi, Yang Chi-Chinghiyan
Plot: A noble swordsman, whose arm had been chopped off, returns to his former teacher to defend him from a villainous gang of rival swordsmen.
Awards: –
Distributor: Celestial Pictures
Accessibility Index
Subject Matter: Moderate – Martial Arts; Loyalty & Honour; Disability
Narrative Style: Straightforward
Pace: Normal
Audience Type: Slightly Mainstream
Viewed: MUBI
Spoilers: No
Dismemberment and disability became firmly part of the Chinese martial arts genre with The One-Armed Swordsman as this mainstream Shaw Brothers actioner with cultish sensibilities ushered in movies like One-Armed Boxer (1972) and Crippled Avengers (1978).
However, one should note that physically disabled swordsmen weren’t a ‘Chinese’ thing; for instance, over in Japan, Zatoichi the blind swordsman became incredibly popular in the early 1960s, sparking more than two dozen entries, including one in 1971 that pitted him against, well, who else but the one-armed hero in a cheeky attempt at an Asian Swordsmen Universe crossover.
In The One-Armed Swordsman, prolific studio director Chang Cheh’s take on wuxia benefited from an injection of more violence and gore as he refreshed the genre by pushing it to more brutal and grittier ends.
At the same time, the film was also a more grounded work with fewer instances of folks leaping over walls and more strategic swordplay that would determine between life and death. Jimmy Wang Yu plays the iconic guy with one arm after inexplicably losing it in the most unceremonious circumstance possible.
“I’m useless.”
Gutted and ashamed, he is tended to by a farm girl, who falls in love with him, albeit under one condition: he must not enter into the martial world again.
It’s difficult, of course, for a martial artist to abandon his master, and so he must navigate between both worlds when trouble inevitably comes calling again. More importantly, he must learn a new way to fight with a single arm, in hopes of turning his disability into something lethal.
Cheh’s film works as an origin story, and Wang remains charismatic as an actor; hence, despite some rather glaring flaws of logic in plotting and the sometimes way-too-artificial production sets, The One-Armed Swordsman is still an influential classic, one that my Dad has always listed as a core memory of his youth as he sat in the biting cold of the cinema. As he watched swords clang, his teeth chattered.
Grade: B+
Trailer:
Eternality Tan 
[…] months, I have seen catching up on several ‘70s and ‘80s Shaw Brothers martial arts films like The One-Armed Swordsman (1967), The 36th Chamber of Shaolin (1978) and The 8 Diagram Pole Fighter (1984) and enjoyed them […]
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