One-Armed Swordsman

The benchmark virilization of wuxia spectacle hinges on an ornate Freudian joke, the showdown is between noble broken sword and nefarious vaginal clamp. The hero is an orphaned brooder (Jimmy Wang Yu) adopted by the master (Tien Feng) with a petulant beauty for a daughter (Pan Yin Tze). The amputation happens as part of the maiden's tantrum, staged at midnight under a gentle snowfall so that the protagonist can leave a bloody trail on the ice as he staggers off a bridge and onto the boat of a peasant girl (Chiao Chiao). The recuperation (Yojimbo, One-Eyed Jacks) is duly sketched, farming just isn't for him, a half-burned manual on left-handed demolition restores his strength. Meanwhile, a horde of rivals with names like Long-Armed Devil and Smiling Tiger scheme a takeover, the maimed warrior slashes back into action. "Look at what the martial-arts have gotten you," cries the virtuous heroine, but let King Hu ponder the spiritual dimensions of the arena—sensible nesting can't hold a candle to brutalizing macho flesh in Chang Cheh's world, particularly when said flesh is buff, stripped to the waist, and lacerated as baroquely as St. Sebastian's. Wang extends his symbolic castration to a pair of henchmen about to ravish the kidnapped daughter, though his one-armed blade style doesn't really kick into high gear until later at a roadside tavern, quelling a roomful of opponents as the chest-level camera seesaws through the melee. Poisonous incense in ceremonial scrolls, grinning masks at the temple fair, so it goes to the final showdown, "death before dishonor." Victorious, the hero takes the road of pacifism, which leads to Return of the One-Armed Swordsman, The New One-Armed Swordsman, The One-Armed Swordsmen... With Huang Chung-Hsin, Chang Pei-Shan, Tang Ti, Feng Ku, and Yang Chih-Ching.