A must-watch martial arts basic from 1976 – One-Armed Boxer – served as an sudden crossover movie, bringing collectively the underlying ideas of two beloved kung fu motion pictures, plus their star.
Regardless of being much less well-known than its predecessors, One-Armed Boxer has developed right into a cult basic. Launched amidst the “kung fu craze” of the Seventies, the movie starred Jimmy Wang Yu, a key determine within the historical past of the martial arts style.
Over the course of his profession, Jimmy Wang Yu starred in an extended record of nice martial arts motion pictures, together with two which can be thought of are among the many most influential martial arts motion pictures ever made. Curiously, each of these movies have been used to create the premise of One-Armed Boxer.
Jimmy Wang Yu Is Accountable For Two Of The Most Necessary Martial Arts Motion pictures Ever Made
Within the late Nineteen Sixties, the martial arts style was nonetheless in its formative interval, and had but to turn into even a semblance of what individuals consider it right now. The method for a martial arts style began to come back collectively in 1967 when Jimmy Wang Yu starred in Shaw Brothers’ wuxia interval piece, The One-Armed Swordsman.
The One-Armed Swordsman forged Jimmy Wang Yu as an skilled swordsman who discovered himself bodily and emotionally challenged by the lack of his swordfighting arm. After attempting to benefit from his compelled retirement from the martial arts world, Wang Yu’s character needed to return to motion to save lots of his grasp and take revenge on those that killed his former friends.
The idea – which known as for some epic coaching sequences and an thrilling, bloody campaign for vengeance on the finish – went a good distance towards setting the method for motion pictures made by Shaw Brothers, who have been the main title within the trade on the time.
4 years later, Jimmy Wang Yu took a good heavier hand in shaping the way forward for the style. For Shaw Brothers, he wrote, directed, and starred in The Chinese language Boxer, which was the primary main movie to shift away from sword-fighting motion to place an emphasis on precise hand-to-hand fight.
With its story a few martial artist who dons a masks and turns into a one-man military in spite of everything of his fellow college students are brutally killed, The Chinese language Boxer was a trend-setter in a lot of methods, a lot that it even garnered the eye of Bruce Lee.
Jimmy Wang Yu’s One-Armed Boxer Merged His Two Largest Characters
Not lengthy after that manner, Wang Yu parted methods with Shaw Brothers and started making motion pictures with different studios. Some have been unique movies, however fairly a couple of have been primarily knock-offs of his work at Shaw Brothers, with one of many earliest examples of this being One-Armed Boxer, which he made for Golden Harvest.
One-Armed Boxer was primarily what its title implies, a narrative the place The One-Armed Swordsman meets The Chinese language Boxer. Finally, Wang Yu’s Tien Lung needed to struggle with one arm like his character within the 1967 basic, however used martial arts just like the protagonist in The Chinese language Boxer. Including to that comparability was the notion that it blended the origin tales of the 2 present Jimmy Wang Yu characters.
The movie copied a number of of the story beats of The Chinese language Boxer, with a rivalry between two faculties sending Wang Yu’s character on a quest for revenge and pushing him towards studying a particular martial arts method known as “the Iron Fist.” And from The One-Armed Swordsman, it borrows the principle character dropping his arm and the recooperation course of he goes by means of.
One-Armed Boxer Is One Of The Greatest Martial Arts Motion pictures Of The Seventies
Along with serving as a wedding of kinds between two iconic martial arts motion pictures, One-Armed Boxer provided one thing of its personal – a various and gifted group of assassins whose over-the-top nature was sufficient to even steal the present from Jimmy Wang Yu himself once in a while.
To say victory, Wang Yu’s titular hero needed to go up in opposition to a villain group that comprised a vampire karate grasp, an Indian martial artist with seemingly elastic limbs, two warriors with inflatable powers, and extra. It is an extremely wild mixture of skills and skills that go so far as to defy actuality a number of instances.
That mentioned, that type of high quality goes hand-in-hand with the martial arts style, and is totally an asset to One-Armed Boxer. Its villains almost made the film themselves, however Jimmy Wang Yu held his personal as properly, with the movie placing collectively some equally enjoyable struggle scenes for his character.
4 years after the discharge of One-Armed Boxer, Jimmy Wang Yu starred in an official sequel, Grasp of the Flying Guillotine, the place he reprised his position as Tien Lung.
Because of The One-Armed Swordsman, Wang Yu already had expertise enjoying one-armed characters, which can clarify the pure really feel of the well-choreographed struggle sequences the place he makes use of only one hand to plow by means of enemy after enemy, ruthlessly and indiscriminately killing each minion who stood in his path.
Because it did not contribute something new to the style, One-Armed Boxer could not match the extent of significance loved by The One-Armed Swordsman or The Chinese language Boxer, it did achieve turning into probably the most entertaining old-school kung motion pictures of the Seventies.