‘Return of the One-Armed Swordsman’ or — Now THAT’S a Sequel!?
‘The One-Armed Swordsman’ (1967) tells the story of Fang Kang (Jimmy Wang) who accidentally gets his right arm lobbed off one day by the woman who secretly loves him so Fang has to learn a special one-armed sword fighting technique in order to defeat the bad guy. It’s a pretty straight forward tale with enough bursts of action to keep everything entertaining and fun and the film was successful enough that a sequel appeared two years later. Does it live up to the seminal original? Well, you might want to stand well back and grab an umbrella because ‘Return of the One-Armed Swordsman’ (1969) blows its predecessor out of the bloody water!
Taking full advantage of the fact that the character of Fang Kang is already firmly established — he only has one arm but is an expert fighter — the sequel wastes no time in plunging right into the action and from there on out it never lets up for a nanosecond. Not only that but the number of baddies has significantly increased going from the first film’s single opponent, albeit one accompanied by various henchmen, to an astonishing eight, all with their unique and increasingly outlandish fighting styles — flying air attacks, slicing sickles, spinning razor-edged bucklers, a sword that’s also a shotgun that shoots poisonous smoke?!
The film’s first half introduces us to all these different deadly techniques in action; the second half shows us how Fang defeats them. This simple structure gives ‘ROTOAS’, as with the deliriously entertaining ‘Five Element Ninjas’ (1982), a vast amount of variation in terms of combat with something new and unexpected always taking us by surprise and cutting one of our limbs off.
Director Chang Chen also shows more confidence with the filmmaker not only upping the violence (there’s so much blood… and it’s awesome!) but also the scale with the sequel containing not only one-on-one sequences but also plenty of group battles and clashes, all propelled along by some seriously energetic camera-work and editing.
There’s a phenomenal moment when some evil ninjas (okay, they’re not technically ninjas but you get the idea) attack the inn where the good guys are staying one night. Chen shoots these black-clad figures dropping down from the trees onto the roof but because he keeps the trees above the camera and out of sight it looks as though they’ve floated down from thin air. It’s similar in effect and feel to the Harkonnen soldiers suspensor belt scene at the start of ‘Dune: Part Two’ (2024) except, oddly, even more exciting and captivating. Follow that up with an exhilarating tracking shot across the rooftops and I found myself muttering “That’s more impressive than anything Villeneuve’s ever done!”
‘The One-Armed Swordsman’ is a great movie and absolutely worth watching, although if you do I desperately urge you to watch ‘Return of the One-Armed Swordsman’ immediately afterwards because the staggering leap in energy is as stimulating and jolting to experience as the movie itself. This might be the finest example of a sequel improving on the original in the history of cinema. In that respect it’s even greater than ‘The Godfather Part II’ (1974).
