The One-Armed Swordsman (1967) on Netflix
Fang Kang's father dies defending clan leader Qi Ru-Feng, who raises the boy in the Golden Sword Clan. The other students resent him, and the leader's daughter cuts off his right arm.
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Trailer
Plot summary
When the Golden Sword Clan is attacked by the Huainan Twin Evils, Fang Kang's father, a servant in the clan, shields his master and dies with the attackers. In gratitude the clan leader Qi Ru-Feng takes the man's son as an apprentice. The boy grows up in the clan, treasuring a broken sword his father left behind, but the other students look down on him for his servant background. Fang Kang leaves to avoid a confrontation and runs into Qi Ru-Feng's daughter. She cuts off his right arm in the fight that follows, and he falls from a bridge into the boat of Xiaoman, a peasant girl, who nurses him back to health. One-armed, Fang Kang believes his days as a swordsman are over.
Cast
Did you know?!Facts and trivia about The One-Armed Swordsman (1967)
Can contain spoilers, watch the movie first.
- The film was the first of a new style of wuxia films emphasising male anti-heroes, violent swordplay and heavy bloodletting, and the first Hong Kong film to take HK$1 million at the local box office, propelling Wang to super stardom.
- The film's box office success gave its director Chang Cheh the epithet "One Million Dollar Director" and helped secure the popularity of the Shaw Brothers Studio and of martial arts cinema.
- The popularity of the one-armed swordsman films led to imitations by other studios, and Jimmy Wang played similar one-armed characters repeatedly, starting with the 1971 Japanese film Zatoichi and the One-Armed Swordsman, in which he was paired with the blind swordsman Zatoichi, played by Shintaro Katsu.
- In 1995, director and producer Tsui Hark created The Blade, an original story about a one-armed fighter, inspired by the one-armed swordsman films of the 1960s and 1970s.
