Cocky young double-swordsman Lei Li (David Chiang) is framed for a robbery he did not commit, and accepts an “honour fight” with local hero Lung and his three-sectioned staff, with the loser to chop his own right arm off and retire from the martial arts world. Lei Li loses, and despite Lung telling him he can keep his arm for all he cares, Lei whips off the said limb without a second thought. Further intrigue follows when it turns out that Lung’s men were behind the robbery in the first place and he’s not such a hero after all. Another young hero adept at the twin sword technique (Hero Fung, played by Ti Lung) turns up to help Lei seek revenge.

“Jimmy” Wang-Yu had already left Shaw Brothers in search of obscurity by the time this film was made, so a new hero was needed. The obvious choice (and indeed, perhaps the ONLY choice) was David Chiang. Chiang would follow Wang-Yu in his own pursuit of severely mediocre to downright awful films outside the Shaw studio a few years later.

So no Wang-Yu and plenty of David Chiang…Hurrahs all round then?

Actually, no. I hate to say it, but I kind of missed Jimbo and his tiny-mouthed Hero Fang character with his stubby broken sword. There’s nothing wrong with David Chiang in this film, but there’s too much for him to live up to. The production values are high, the script isn’t bad and there are some cracking massacres along the way, but this does feel like it was building up to something that never happened. What I mean is it feels like this was a film to start a new franchise and it never took off. Maybe the public’s lust for one-armed antics had been sated by the time this film was made (Wang-Yu’s ONE ARMED BOXER came out the same year) and it was time to move on. I would have loved to have seen a “Return of the New One-Armed Swordsman” though, purely for the title!

I also missed the theme tune from the first two films. It has been replaced here by a bafflingly contemporary (to 1971) soundtrack, complete with what sounds suspiciously like a sitar (or an electric guitar played through an effects pedal). Somehow, it just doesn’t seem right.

Hero Lung is an interesting character. Although the main bad guy, he actually doesn’t come across as totally evil like you would imagine, and even builds a nice shrine for one of his defeated foes (who dies a particularly gruesome death that only Chang Cheh could deliver). Sad to say, though, that apart from him and the David Chiang / Ti Lung double act, the rest of the cast are a little dull. The action is solid throughout, though, and is worth seeing if only for the blood-drenched finale, which takes place on a rather impressive looking bridge.

David Chiang’s character would ultimately team up with Wang-Yu’s Master Fang from the first two films and make ONE-ARMED SWORDSMEN, a project which must have looked GREAT on paper!