Watch The One-Armed Swordsman For Free

Very Cool!!!

Simply Perfect

This is a coming of age storyline that you've seen in one form or another for decades. It takes a truly unique voice to make yet another one worth watching.

An old-fashioned movie made with new-fashioned finesse.

Fang Kang's father sacrificed himself to save his master Qi RuFeng during an underhanded attack. Master Qi is famous for his Golden Sword Kung Fu and takes Fang Kang as his student. Fang Kang's prized possession is his father's broken Golden Sword. Years later, Qi's only child spoiled daughter Peier and other students hate the humble Fang Kang and look down on him as a servant's son. Fang Kang sets out to walk away from an impending confrontation but Peier insists on fighting. She underhandedly chops off Fang Kang's right arm. He walks off and rescued by XiaoMan. She's an orphan turned pacifist farmer after her swordsman father was killed. She kept a burned swordsmanship book and with his father's broken sword, Fang Kang recovers to be an one-armed swordsman. Master Qi is calling in his disciples to take over as the new master. Old rivals Smiling Tiger and his older brother Long-armed Devil are out to kill them. Long-armed Devil has studied Master Qi's standard Golden Sword and has created a Swordlock to beat it.This is a great early Hong Kong kung fu classic. The story is filled with duty, sacrifice and the underdog. It's pure melodramatic gold and the action is modern. There's no wire work yet but the modern action is well on its way. The acting is solid. It's a blend of natural and the older melodramatic acting styles. This is a mix of great story, iconic characters and fun action.

A lower caste servant gives his life in defense of his master, Qi, master of the Golden Sword school. Qi promises the dying man that he will raise his son; the boy retrieves his father's broken sword (which will prove pivotal later), and grows up to be Wang Yu. Belittled for being the son of a mere servant, the adult Yu decides to leave the school- but Qi's daughter, whose advances Yu has rebuffed, takes it upon herself to amputate his right arm in retribution. This impromptu surgery takes place in a snow-bound forest and is foreshadowed by the chopping off of a tree limb. It's a remarkably bloodless affair, and Yu staggers away to throw himself off a bridge- but he falls, instead, on the (conveniently) passing boat of Miss Xiaoman, who nurses him back to health. Meanwhile, Smiling Tiger (whose smile is deceptive) and Long-armed Devil (whose whip and short spears are "extensions" of his reach, one presumes) have decided to hunt down and kill all of Qi's Golden Sword students. The bad guys have developed a "sword-lock" weapon that, coupled with the use of a dagger, makes them night unbeatable. Yu, meanwhile, gets "better," though he's remarkably proficient with his left hand for a man used to fighting with his right. (He even develops Chi to the point where he can push air (?) hard enough to trim limbs from a tree and leave his palm-print in a tree stump. These two incidents happen back-to-back and both involve tree LIMBS and a tree STUMP. One can only wonder if the symbolism was intentional by director Chang Cheh. My guess would be that it WAS.) All of the foregoing leads to a final confrontation at the Golden Sword school that should not be missed.

Wow, if only all Asian martial arts movies were this good, the genre would sure get a lot more respect in the West. All too often, the movies I've found at video stores are the horribly dubbed and occasionally quite stupid martial arts films--you know, the ones where the action is so fake that they films are better for their laugh value than for their excitement! However, there are several amazing films (this one included) who set high standards for the genre, such as many of the films of Sonny Chiba, the Bruce Lee films (few as they are) and the Zatoichi series. Remember folks, not all martial arts films are created equal!! While I could harp on a few flaws that are noticeable in the film (such as the scene at midnight that goes from day to night like an Ed Wood film), the perfection of most of the film greatly outweighs the few mistakes--plus for the time it was made, it was about as good as you can find. And while I am very, very hesitant to give scores of 10, this one deserves it because it is the epitome of a great Chinese martial arts film.There are two main reasons to love this film. First, being the premier episode of the One Armed Swordsman series, there is much more to the movie than a "boss battle". Instead, you learn the devious and complicated reason for Fang Gang losing his arm as well as the steps he took to learn to fight left-handed. Second, and probably more importantly, you see the best sword fighting and martial arts action...period. Gone are the obvious misses as they pull their swings, gone is the grunting and silly dialog (provided you watch it with the optional Chinese language and English subtitles) and there is plenty of realistic looking blood--though not so much to make it a disgusting or gratuitous movie.If you like this film (and only an idiot wouldn't), then try watching the other films in the series. Also try the films of the others I mentioned above. Not every Kung Fu or Karate movie involves (uggh!) martial arts fighting gorillas, men with arms that grow to 12 feet in length and the other silly touches you see in lesser films. Now I still watch and enjoy these other films (when I need a laugh), but they just can't come close to class products like this one.

Plotwise this is relatively standard fare. Student suffers a personal defeat , goes into recovery and training mode, then redeems himself.My beef with this movie was the Qi/Chi sword style. The evil villain devises a special technique, complete with a custom sword to defeat the Qi sword style. And the Qi family is completely unable to defeat this new technique. They push forth like lemmings, each one dying in the same fashion as his predecessor. When their self preservation instinct raises a notion to perhaps team up and take advantage of their 20 - 3 numbers to defeat their enemies, the main villain chides them to keep fighting one on one. As self preservation once again takes a step back, they continue fighting and dying one at a time, until the timely arrival of our handicapable hero who uses his new style to quickly dispatch the villains.If our hero kept his arm, he no doubt would have died too, as the Qi sword style is apparently completely incapable of improvisation. This really killed the enjoyment of the movie for me, as by the time the 10th Qi student died IN EXACTLY THE SAME FASHION, I would have figured that someone would have tried something new. At no point did Bruce Lee's critique of the rigidity of Chinese martial arts ring more true.If this particular problem does not bother you as much as it did me, then this can be a quite enjoyable late 60s Shaw Brothers experience. But if seeing fight after fight resolve itself in exactly the same fashion begins to grate on you, then perhaps look elsewhere.