There’s so much I want to write about this movie, but I don’t want to ruin it if you haven’t seen it. How about this: This one blind dude has a flying guillotine. A flying guillotine looks like a beekeeper’s mask on a rope with razorblades on it. ‘Flying Guillotine’ wants to kill a kung fu master with one arm (the ‘One-Armed Boxer’) who has amazing ‘jumping’* skills. There is also a martial arts contest where tons of dudes with crazy powers and/or extendable appendages duke it out in pairs for like half the movie, but you wish it went on for like the whole movie.
If that doesn’t sell you I don’t know what will.
The majority of the soundtrack consists of songs by Neu, off the album ‘Neu 2.’ I bet when Neu was recording ‘Neu 2’ they didn’t realize that they were actually composing the best ever soundtrack to a kung fu movie. Actually I know they didn’t: the use of Neu songs on the soundtrack was blatant (and awesome) copyright infringement. In my dreams, the boys from Neu were very happy that their music was ripped off by people they didn’t know half a world away, but I don’t know how they actually feel.
I do know this: the people who enjoyed ‘Neu’ (Neu – the name of the band – is also the name of the album. Confused?) didn’t seem to care much for ‘Neu 2.’ Neu (the band) actually ran out of money while recording the album. They only finished three songs, and in a fit of desperation (or genius?) they just played back those three songs at different speeds instead of spending more money on recording. The album is made up of those three tracks, sometimes very fast, sometimes very slow, sometimes at normal speed. Some people think that was a cop out (it was). Some people think it was the antecedent to the “remix” albums that are sort of popular today (it was). I think it is best digested while watching a bunch of dudes kick each other’s asses with mystical weapons (it is).
Even if ‘Neu 2’ isn’t an amazing album – I think it is, by the way – it existence is justified if only that ‘Flying Guillotine’ needed a theme song, and Neu provided him with an immortal one in the form of “Super 16,” which is actually the track “Super” slowed to about a quarter speed.
There seems to be a lot of racism ‘lost in the translation’ in Master of the Flying Guillotine. The Thai dude is evil because he is Thai. Duh. Also, obviously everybody knows that if a character is Japanese, he wants to rape the female protagonist. I mean, have you ever met a Japanese person that doesn't want to rape the female protagonist?
In fact, at the beginning of the movie, it took me a while to realize that Flying Guillotine is supposed to be the bad guy, but I think we are supposed to understand that he is the worst form of human scum automatically because he himself is a Chinese national, but he hangs out with foreigners. ... It’s a weird movie.
The fights in this movie are really amazing and really fun, in a “Holy shit, did they seriously just do that!?” kind of way. The Indian fighter (also evil) is especially notable for his special brand of low-budget, stretchy-arm martial arts. I wasn’t joking when I said that the martial arts contest takes up almost half the movie. It never even comes close to boring, though. Each fight is unique and excellent, and each fight is better than the one that came before it.
By the way, have I mentioned that you should be watching this movie right now instead of reading this?
Magic Moment: The One-Armed Boxer and his buddies play a nasty trick on the Thai fighter. They “turn up the heat,” so to speak. The only thing that would have made this better is if One-Armed Boxer had displayed his ‘jumping’ skills again.
-Ben
*Apparently in China ‘jumping’ is synonymous with ‘walking on the ceiling.’