Every now and then you’re able to find that one magnificently low budget masterpiece! With Master of the Flying Guillotine, Jimmy Wang Yu (who was never a stranger to writing, directing, and starring in his own kung fu passion projects) takes his gimmicky character from One-Armed Boxer and drastically soups up the world around him, as if the film were a high-kicking episode of Pimp My Ride. Taking/plagiarizing cues from Enter the Dragon, where cavalcades of colorful fighters are brought together via a gladiator-style kung fu tournament, Jimmy now treats us to wondrous treasures that include: people fighting while balancing on sword tips, a man with elongated Mr. Fantastic arms, a guy choking another dude out with his hair braid, a chick cat-clawing someone to shreds, a giant human Goliath who gets taken down by the classic eyes-balls 1-2 combo, the act of punching someone though a roof and into his own coffin, an overly specific plot that requires there exist an abnormally prevalent number of capable one-armed kung-fu masters, and, best of all, the titular MotFG, a blind Gandalf-looking monk assassin who jumps 30 ft. in the air and wields a 100 ft. chain with a bright red beekeeper’s mask that can cleanly decapitate people. What’s most astonishing about this movie though is the fact that it somehow seems to have an even lower budget than its predecessor. However, Jimmy clearly listened to and learned from every negative critique he had received prior; the fights feel absolutely brutal, where instead of arms being hilarious severed by laser-like karate chops there are now people’s hands and feet being graphically burnt to a crisp while battling in a burning building (don’t worry, there’s still plenty of the campy shit, too), the hand-to-hand combat is more up-tempo and less lazily choreographed, and the situational creativity is no longer at the point of “uhhh let’s just have them meet in an outdoor open area and go at it”. And yet, the film is also grainy as hell, and occasionally the English dub will unintentionally drop out altogether and suddenly you realize you’re just listening to straight Cantonese during a scene with pivotal plot points. Low budget B-movie perfection is the best way I can describe it; like, yeah, it’ll draw you in and get your heart pumping during a tense showdown, but then one guy’s head will start doing full 360s like a fucking owl. It’s awesome. Oh, and don’t worry about going in blind, because there’s an informative “flashback” near the beginning that’s really just a full five-minute uncut scene from One-Armed Boxer. God, this movie rocks.Action Movies with Sick Choreography
