"The One-Armed Swordsman" is a classic and one of the best martial arts films of all time. So, it's not surprised that the movie had sequels. While not nearly as good, Yu Wang is back as the title character and it's interesting enough to merit watching if you like these sorts of pictures. If you don't, this one is unlikely to convert you.When the film begins, a group of baddies named the 8 Kings attack the leaders and best students of the 40 martial arts schools. They then send an ultimatum to all the surviving students back home...."Cut off one of your arms or we'll kill your masters". Not surprisingly, they decide instead to seek out the One-Armed Swordsman and enlist his help. Will he come out of retirement to help? Well, considering the title of the film, it's pretty much a foregone conclusion. Along the way, they encounter a lot of treachery and baddies. My favorite was the evil woman who smiles so convincingly...as she murders folks right and left. She is an amazingly good villain and it's a shame she's only in a small portion of the film. In addition to her, you'll see LOTS of blood and gore and tons of ridiculous fight scenes using 'wire fu'. This is the most serious problem of the movie. In the first film, there is some wire fu but mostly it's just really, really great swordsmanship and martial arts. Here, however, the quality of the fighting is much, much lower with blood substituting for quality fighting. Not a terrible fighting film but certainly not near the quality of the first one despite having the same leading man and director. Diverting but far from a must-see. After all, you DON'T expect total realism from a one-armed film...but you do expect better than this.By the way, if you want to make this film a drinking game, I suggest everyone take a shot every time a character is mortally wounded yet miraculously, for a few seconds, begins fighting again despite losing gallons of blood or having HUGE swords thrust through them! I especially love the scene with the guy impaled with a sword and he manages to kill a dozen more guys for about the next five minutes before he ultimately expires!

I had seen the first film in this series, as well as the David Chiang movie "The New One-Armed Swordsman", and I wasn't particularly thrilled by either one, to be honest. I left this on the shelf, and that was a big mistake.After finally viewing it, I was stunned. It's far better than the other two films, in every possible way.Return Of The One-Armed Swordsman is everything a Chang Cheh Kung-fu movie should be, colorful, exciting, and full of fighting, fighting, fighting.They use all kinds of weapons in this one, from bamboo sticks to daggers, from swords to bladed disks....and there's even one bad guy who has a magic sword that shoots bullets (or something like them) out of the end of the blade. So cool! If all that weren't enough, this film has an evil femme fatale, who loves men's guts...or stabbing them, anyway.Unfortunately, my copy of the DVD is in Chinese, with Cantonese subtitles that won't change to English, so I guess that it's defective, however I'm keeping it anyway. Even if I don't know who is who and what is what, the action sequences are worth it.If you love Kung-fu movies, you'll love this one.

After my somewhat lackluster experience with the first One Armed Swordsman movie, I was very happy to find that the sequel far out shined the original movie.The movie begins with our hero Fang Gang awkwardly practicing his left handed farming technique, when a pair of visitors ask him to attend a sword fighting competition. He demurs, only to be visited later by an old man who fills him in on the whole situation. Apparently an octet of evil villains have set up shop and are attempting to crown themselves kings of swordsmen in the local area. Faithfully keeping his promise to his wife to stay out of the martial arts world Fang Gang says he will not go. The old man sets out to the competition but not before instructing his sons that should this be a trap, and they will need to seek revenge, to unite with other schools in their plot, and most importantly to seek out Fang Gang's help. The competition, as predicted, is really a trap, and as the invited martial artists attempt to leave the contest, they are hunted down by the evil octet, each employing unique martial arts styles and weapons.The remaining students are then sent letters by the villains instructing them to cut off their right arm so that their fathers and teachers may be released. The students instead seek Fang Gang for advice, and after some soul searching, our hero takes on the mantle that will later be carried by the likes of Louis Gosset Jr. in the Iron Eagle series, and helps the youngsters in their quest.From this point on the movie becomes virtually a non stop cavalcade of action full of fights, ambushes, betrayals, and much butt kicking.This is a really fun movie to watch, full of interesting characters and original fighting styles and weapons. A very good Shaw Brothers production that is highly recommended for fans of the genre.

After watching the original One-Armed Swordsman, directed by Chang Cheh and starring Wang Yu in the title role, I knew I had to watch this direct sequel, as the others had David Chiang replacing Wang Yu as Fang Gang.Continuing where the first movie left off, we see Fang Gang leading a life of a farmer, without a care of JiangHu politics. But as the saying goes, and in martial arts movie, so long as you're a reputable swordsman, trouble will always be looking for you. The emergence of the evil Eight Demon Swordsmen clan brought about chaos, with their issuing of forced challenges and a grand meeting amongst the swordsman clans. The senior members of various clans get annihilated or captured, and its down to the junior members to try and convince Fang Gang to come out of "retirement" to assist them in their quest of rescue, and getting rid of the Eight Demon Swordsmen.It's also pretty cool to see the main villains being crafted with various deadly weapons and different personalities. Like the one with the deadly chain-attached sickle, or the mean looking knife-shield. How about a weapon which seemed to fire pellets of poison, and a sword with extensible blade? Perhaps the more interesting villain was the lady assassin, with her demure looks, and deadly hidden knives, giving a new meaning to back-stabbing! However, being villains, our hero and his gang of merry men, while on the way to the villains' fortress, get to dispatch them one by one in deadly, bloody fashion. Although by today's standards the blood is pretty fake looking, it's still quite a bloody affair with slashing, stabbings - knives through body, and squirting blood. But I must add that it did give a sense of cheesy nostalgia to how blood was created for the screen in those days.Classic martial arts movie scenes like the bamboo forest also get featured in this movie, though the forest did look a bit sparse, since it was filmed in a sound stage. Added to the fight scenes was a demonstration of superb "qing-gong" (light-skill, fleet-footedness) by Fang Gang, though the wire work used was extremely elementary, and came across quite laughably. Back in those days, this sequence would have been da bomb though.The story's nothing to shout about - it has almost every thematic element that you'd expect from a martial arts movie, and classic scene settings like forests and inns. But it sure is one heck of a fun ride - bigger, bolder, badder than the original, with a lot more disposable characters for the body count.Code 3 DVD extras contains a pretty weak lineup of only the trailer (and trailers for other movies), colour stills, the poster, selected cast and crew biography and filmography, and a one screen production notes. The DVD for the original seemed better and more thorough.