Save your money for something good and enjoyable

It is a performances centric movie

Like the great film, it's made with a great deal of visible affection both in front of and behind the camera.

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

Another year, another Jimmy Wang Yu film in which the kung fu star plays a one-armed fighter touring the countryside and looking for revenge against villains unknown. ONE ARMED SWORDSMAN AGAINST NINE KILLERS is a kind of does-what-it-says-on-the-tin type film, a series of straightforward fight set-pieces in which Wang Yu battles against various assassins and fighters who get tougher and tougher as the running time progresses.The film was made in Taiwan on the cheap, but makes good use of arresting locations like hillsides, old caverns and temples, and cliff tops in or on which to set the action. The fight scenes are a little slow but staged well in the usual Wang Yu style, not much complexity in them but they prove entertaining nonetheless. Lo Lieh has a welcome one-scene role as a villain but is killed far too quickly, unfortunately. There's a little blood spray and gore spread here and here and in the end this is reasonably entertaining viewing.

I must admit that I have seen the bad cut version of this movie. As soon as a fight begins and the enemies face each other, there is a cut and in the next seen, a dead man lies on the ground and the main actor continues its strange journey. I don't know who has cut this movie to pieces but that's probably the worst job I have ever seen as it makes this movie completely senseless in a ridiculous way and the little twists in the end which allow me to give at least some plus points for the final voting are really hard to observe and understand.But I will try to ignore those cut down fight scenes and analyze this movie from another point of view and might realize that it doesn't get better in any way. The dialogues are simplistic and ridiculously humorist by accident. The acting is more wooden than in an old martial arts video game. The direction and filming is mediocre, the chosen settings are cheesy and ordinary, the music doesn't quite fit to the atmosphere. The movie represents some strange and provoking opinions: people joke about cripples, prostitutes, homosexuals, old people and women in general. Those racist, sexist and simply dumb prejudices are completely unnecessary and keep me away from getting an approach to any of the characters performed by the already quite wooden actors and actresses.But the most important thing in such a movie are the fighting scenes after all and those that haven't been cut are simply terrible. the one armed fighter has no particular skills at all and not even a glimpse of elegance. His fights are as wooden, limited and crippled as the whole character and movie itself. You can see that the main character's enemies lose their battles in the most stupid ways and the nine guards and seemingly best fighters are nothing but a bad joke. One guy is fighting with a sword of two meters that burst into pieces like a piece of papier-mâché. Even for a low budget movie this scene was a great example for the quality of the entire movie. Ed Wood Junior couldn't have created a better piece of trash. That's probably the worst offering I have ever seen in a martial arts movie. Even Jean-Claude van Damme and Chuck Norris are faster and smarter.In the end, I can't suggest this movie to anyone with one humorous exception. If you happen to have a party with some good friends and you had way too much beers or drugs in your head, you may laugh like hell while you watch this piece of trash but it's really hard to get yourself on such a low level that makes you appreciate this worst Asian movie I have ever seen in my life. No, honestly and to be serious, don't believe the good rating and avoid this at all costs. Check out my other reviews of Asian flicks, there are so many better films to find no matter what you're looking for.

A man has had his family wiped out by a group of nine assassins and their evil boss. However, you do not see any of this take place in the movie nor do you have any idea what's going on with the missing arm--at least until very late in the film. So, one by one our hero takes on the jerks and their many minions in order to exact revenge (a very, very common theme in the genre). The film is very scant on plot and offers practically non-stop martial arts action.This was a very big disappointment. While the American title is ONE ARMED SWORDSMAN VS. 9 KILLERS and it does feature Yu Wang, the film should not in any way be considered a sequel to the wonderful 1967 ONE ARMED SWORDSMAN film. The only sequel is THE RETURN OF THE ONE ARMED SWORDSMAN (1969). The differences are many between this 1976 film and the original. First, this guy's left arm is missing--not the right. This was the dead giveaway at the start, though it would have been pretty funny if they had just switched it and kept the original character! In addition, the killer is NOT a swordsman--only using swords on occasion. I think they called him the "one armed swordsman" to cash in on the prior films and I assume the film makers did NOT try this when the film was originally released domestically. The man's primary weapon of choice is instead the "bad martial arts chop"--consisting of a kung fu strike that obviously misses his foes!! In other words, this film is the standard not especially good martial arts techniques film--not a transcendent film from the genre like the original film.Another huge disappointment was that unlike the brilliant 1967 film, this 1976 film was packaged by an organization that could have cared less about the film or audience. Instead of offering BOTH the dubbed and subtitled versions, this film from VideoAsia only has the crappily dubbed English version and was made directly from a degraded videotape!! Several times, the picture skips and shakes and no effort appears to have been made to bring a decent copy to the customer--making me glad I only rented this thing. Viewers should insist on subtitled versions, as they are almost always better and lack the stupid sound effects and crappy dialog films like you'll find in this film (unless you are looking for a good laugh).Now if you don't compare it to the original One Armed Swordsman and only compare it to other crappily dubbed American versions of any martial arts film, this one actually is better than average. None of the fighters offer stupid gimmicks (except for the HUGE sword, though such stupid things as fighting gorillas, giant tongues or other amazingly ridiculous weapons are otherwise absent from the film) and while the martial arts used aren't great, they really aren't that bad either. Plus the story is reasonably engaging, there's a funny fight scene with four idiots, it has MANY twists and features a cool surprise at the end. So it isn't all bad news for the martial arts film fan. Just don't show this one to anyone you want to get hooked on the genre--they'll probably laugh at some of the dialog and fighting.

I am only rating this 2 because there is a home made DVD going around under the title Der Foltergarten Der Gelben Schlange. While the other reviews here don't like this film too much, I didn't have as much problem with the movie itself but just this copy of it. This reminded me of when I used to watch movies on TV when they'd show them on a Saturday afternoon and everything was cut out. Every time Wang Yu goes to kill a guy there's a cut and suddenly we're somewhere else. Even the big "secret" when he is caught with two arms is so cut it's hard to tell what happened. The copy I watched was 77 minutes long and while there are rare copies on Ebay none of them gives a time so it's hard to tell if the ones being sold are heavily cut like this is. Hopefully a full version will come out on DVD. But beware! This cannot be the entire film but what I would call a cut TV copy dubbed in hilarious English. OK over a year later I rented the DVD of this movie. Sadly it is even worse than the homemade DVD I already reviewed. The DVD for rent looks like a bootleg of a really beat up VHS tape complete with tracking lines flashing scenes and drop outs. It's as if someone had an old tape they had used for years with no credits and put it on a DVD washed out bad color flaws and all. The home made DVD I reviewed (with Dutch subs) is a far better print and looks good as a DVD but it's missing all the stabbing, blood and some key scenes. Both of the DVDs have hilarious English dubbing. I think it's better to have the 83 minute DVD that is up for rent but here's hoping a DVD company will do Wang Yu justice and put out a remastered complete version hopefully in Chinese with English subs. All Wang Yu movies are worth getting this treatment. He is as important as Bruce Lee, Jackie Chan and Jet Li as a martial arts star.