The One-Armed Swordsman

The One-Armed Swordsman is a Hong Kong martial arts drama from 1967, set within the Golden Sword school. A servant gives his life so that the school's master, Qi Ru-Feng, can survive an attack, and the master repays that debt by raising the servant's son, Fang Kang, as his own and training him in the sword. Fang Kang grows into the school's most gifted student, but the master's daughter, Qi Pei-Er, resents him, and during a confrontation she cuts off his right arm. Wounded and cast out, he is taken in by a young farmer, Xiao Man, who nurses him back to health, and he studies a martial arts manual to master one-armed swordplay. When his former teacher is threatened by a rival bent on wiping out the school, Fang Kang returns to fight on his behalf.

Chang Cheh directed, working from a screenplay he wrote with Ni Kuang, and Runme Shaw produced for Shaw Brothers. The film came third in a run of Chang's features that began with Tiger Boy and The Assassin in the preceding year and continued with The Heroic Ones and a 1971 companion piece, The New One-Armed Swordsman. Jimmy Wang Yu plays Fang Kang, with Lisa Chiao Chiao as Xiao Man, Feng Tien as Qi Ru-Feng, Violet Pan Ying-Zi as Qi Pei-Er, and Yang Chi-Ching and Tang Ti as adversaries.

The film holds a 7.2 rating from around 4,100 votes on IMDb and a 6.9 from a smaller pool on TMDB, a spread that suggests broad approval from the larger audience and slightly more reserved scores from the smaller one.