Master of the Flying Guillotine

Master of the Flying Guillotine is a 1976 martial arts film from Hong Kong and Taiwan, written and directed by Jimmy Wang Yu, who also stars as Liu Ti Lung, the one-armed fighter at its centre. Having stepped back from competitive combat, Liu now runs a kung fu school, but word of a martial arts tournament draws him out of retirement to watch. His low profile does not last. A blind assassin known as Fung Sheng Wu Chi, a former imperial enforcer who wields a flying guillotine, has sworn to avenge two of his students killed in an earlier encounter, and he pursues the one-armed man relentlessly. Three subordinates assist the hunt: a Thai boxer, a yoga master and a specialist in kobo jutsu. The film follows their converging paths toward the tournament, where the confrontation becomes unavoidable.

In the director's filmography this is the second feature, arriving four years after One-Armed Boxer (1972), and Wang Yu again writes and directs himself in the lead role. The cast of about twenty credited performers includes Lee Lee, Doris Lung Chun-Erh, Sham Chin-Bo and Lung Fei, with Wong Cheuk-Hon producing. It runs 93 minutes and mixes action and drama with fantasy elements.

On IMDb, the film holds a rating of 7.3/10 from roughly 5,100 votes, and on TMDB it rates 6.7/10 from about 107 votes. A critics' rating of 7/10 drawn from 21 reviews places critical opinion close to the wider audience response.