And In This Corner...

It started several months ago. Steve, one of my co-workers, was telling me about a snippet of a movie one of his friends had shown him. It was one of those old poorly-dubbed kung-fu movies, called “The Flying Guillotine or something like that.”

“It was hilarious,” he said. “This guy is in a restaurant and gets up to leave without paying. The waiter stops him and the guy says, ‘Don’t you know who I am?’ The waiter says, ‘No.’ And the guy says, ‘God damn it! I’m the One-Armed Boxer! I killed seven with one blow!’”

I know, when you read it, it doesn’t seem particularly amusing. But the way he told it, with much laughing and a heavy emphasis on the “God damn it” part made it funny. So, naturally, every time Steve and I saw each other over the next few weeks, one of us would say, “Don’t you know who I am?” And the other would respond, “God damn it! I’m the One-Armed Boxer!”

As always happens with things like this, we did it less and less over time, until it was maybe once a week at most that one of us would reference it. The last time it got brought up was last Wednesday. Steve mentioned at the time how rare the movie was and what a difficult time he was having finding a copy of it.

The very next morning, as I was perusing the Showtime listings (I’m always seeing what’s new to record) while I ate breakfast, there it was: “Legend of the Flying Guillotine”. I couldn’t believe my eyes. I flipped to it and sure enough, there was a one-armed man fighting with someone else in what appeared to be some sort of kung-fu tournament. The one-armed man won but, before he could celebrate his victory, a guy in red appeared and chopped the one-armed man’s head off with his “flying guillotine”, which looks like a large bee-keepers bonnet with blades on the fringes. This caused some commotion, but I had to leave for work, so I looked up the next time it would be on and set it to record.

A word, now, about how I watch TV. I rarely get to watch programs that I care about, besides the occasional sporting event. The kids always want to watch their shows and the wife likes Dr. Phil and Oprah and such. So the only time I can watch something like Legend is at 5:45 in the morning, before work, while eating breakfast. I have about 20 minutes each morning dedicated to eating on the couch with remote in hand. That means when there is a movie a want to watch, I have to watch it in 20 minute segments. Since I want to make an attempt to blog more often, I am going to summarize each segment of this movie over the next few days. Lucky you.

The movie begins showing the Flying Guillotine (TFG) in front of his hovel doing his morning kung-fu forms. Each movement, no matter how slight, is accompanied by a crack, like a piece of wood being hit by a mallet (which, presumably, is exactly what the Chinese FX guys were using to make the sound. The movie was made in 1975). TFG has long hair and a long beard. I mean really long, so long that it drags the ground. This creates amusement for me since his hair is constantly getting in his way as he moves thorough the forms, but turns out to be no hindrance to him, since he is blind.

The voice-over explains that the government is living in fear of rebellion and has chartered a group of assassins to seek out rebels and kill them. The assassins’ weapon: the new and deadly Flying Guillotine (pronounced “gill-o-teen”. The translators apparently were not French). This pronouncement is demonstrated as TFG produces the bee-keeper hat and proceeds to behead man-shaped dummies with it.

Then TFG gets a message via homing pigeon telling him that his two disciples have been killed by the One-Armed Boxer (TOAB). He immediately sets fire to his hovel (for whatever reason) and sets off to avenge them.

In the meantime, TOAB demonstrates how to walk along the edge of an empty basket and walk up walls and on ceilings to the students at his kung-fu school. For those of you who would like to try this at home, the trick, apparently, is in breathing properly. Give it a shot. TOAB’s brother then tells him about a kung-fu tournament being staged by the governor of the province. TOAB is persuaded to go, just to watch, not to fight, because his students might learn something.

Tune in tomorrow for the next exciting episode of “The Flying Guillotine”!!