The Fatal Flying Guillotines

Carter Wong plays a noble hero on a quest for a book of healing which leads him seeking ultimate vengeance! The pacing is good in this film and there are a lot of fight scenes to keep the movie going. The flying guillotines look wicked and the main villain has no problems using them. Although the story isn't strong, the action is fun and draws you to the very end (which I felt could've had a sequel).

Campy and dark, this is great ol skool kung fu!!

This movie had such a good concept to start with, however, in the end, it all falls apart. Between the evil prince trying to take over China, the son who wants to avenge his mothers death, and the Buddhist temple Monks wanting to stop the evil Shen, this story got very confusing. Believe me when I say that this movie has a few great fight scenes, however, they do NOT make up for the fact that it has such a terrible ending!

Martial artist Shen Ping (Carter Wong) needs to get his mitts on a rare medical almanac in order to cure his dying mother; to do so, he first has to defeat the Buddhist monks who guard it. Shen-Ping loses his first fight with the monks, but his second attempt is successful; however, on his way home with the book, he is attacked by a hooded stranger and is thrown over the edge of a cliff.

Somehow, Shen-Ping survives his fall, and returns home to prepare the medicine to save his mum. Unfortunately, the initially successful treatment causes her to cark it soon after. Furious, Shen Ping returns to the temple to have it out with the monks; while there, he identifies his attacker, a rebel monk who had switched the book for a forgery during their cliff-top scuffle. The nasty monk stole the real almanac to give to the 4th prince, who intends to use it as a bargaining tool to recruit Shen Mo Chao (Sing Chen), practitioner of the lightning strike, a martial arts technique that uses the legendary flying guillotine: a metal hood, fitted with a rotating blade and guided by a rope, that decapitates opponents.

From here-on in, things get a tad confusing, suffice to say that lots of people lose their heads on the way to the inevitable showdown between Shen Ping and Shen Mo Chao.

Baffling plot developments aside, The Fatal Flying Guillotines is a reasonably entertaining slice of old school kung fu, with plenty of energetic fighting (including crazy wire-work, She Ping taking flight towards the end) and a decent amount of gory violence: it's not just heads that get severed, eyes are gouged, and one poor soul is impaled on a large, sharpened wooden stake. While not as bat-s**t crazy as the hugely entertaining Master of the Flying Guillotine (1976), which is hard to beat for sheer entertainment value, The Fatal Flying Guillotines is still a lot of fun for those who can't get enough of kung fu cinema's most ridiculous weapon.

you got your bearded old guy, the laughing bad guy, you know the score, the classic old style kung fu film its got some great kung fu but the special effect that try to be modern don't come off as anything other than pants. This film is uninspiring and if the writers had been as inventive with the plot as they had been with the title, then they could have been onto a classic, as it is, this is just another old style martial arts flick

1975's MASTER OF THE FLYING GUILLOTINE is an amazing and wonderful film to watch. This isn't because the fighting is particularly inspired or because the film makes any sense at all. It's because the film is so silly and so over-the-top that it is a camp classic--bad, but enjoyably bad. The film stars a blind guy who has a Frisbee-like device on a chain that chops off people's heads as he expertly throws this at his foes! Who cares that the physics are impossible or that the film features such silly things as fighters with 12 foot long papier-mache arms or that the guy was blind! It's just a ball to watch from start to finish--and one of my favorite "bad" films and great to see with friends.

Because of this film, I was eager to see THE FATAL FLYING GUILLOTINES (1977), though sadly it turned out NOT to be a sequel but a bit of a knock-off--taking many of the ideas from the original but neglecting to make the film as coherent or watchable. Sure, it's silly fun, but it never comes close to MASTER OF THE FLYING GUILLOTINE in entertainment value. Like the original film, there are these weird flying devices that sever heads, but they are quite different--with circular saw blades and almost a mind of their own. There also is no blind guy but instead are a bunch of baddies who really have no depth nor does the audience understand exactly what's occurring in this English-dubbed version, as the plot is completely incomprehensible. However, at the same time, some of the martial arts action is very good. While not up to the high standards of most Bruce Lee or Sonny Chiba films, the action is worthwhile despite the ludicrous and often confusing plot.

Overall, this is a film that martial arts fans may like (despite its many, many, many, many shortcomings), but also one that others will probably turn off or laugh hysterically at instead of enjoying the action because the film is just so ludicrous. BUT, most importantly, it never comes close to being as funny or watchable as MASTER OF THE FLYING GUILLOTINE. Too bad.