The Flying Guillotine (1975)

Just as weird as the title suggests. The emperor has an elite guard who throw round spinning weapons that lock on to their target’s head and decapitate them. It’s a 1970’s movie so it’s not too gruesome, but you do see the headless flailing bodies for a few seconds.

Chen Kuan Tai is the most skilled killer on the squad. He figures out the emperor is ordering the executions of scholars and ethical government officials and though he’s sworn an oath to the emperor he can no longer be his assassin. Someone else is scheming to use the guillotine squad to take out personal enemies and impediments on their path to the throne and hates the moral minded killer. Chen flees with a lovely musician and they start a life together elsewhere, but the emperor’s men never give up keeping them on the run.

Lots of kung fu and wild guillotine action. The kung fu was okay, but given that CKT was actually trained in the martial arts, the fight scenes seemed slow and stodgy. That didn’t stop them from breaking all the furniture in the room though! Plenty of unsuspecting people lose their heads with the flying killing machines while their loved ones or colleagues look on in horror.

Even with all the action and actual character development of the lead the story seemed slow at times. Wai Wang played a great dastardly villain, but didn’t seem to have enough time on screen to be a more menacing threat. Despite those drawbacks, I never expect much from kung fu movies. This one kept my attention and if you enjoy kung fu movies it’s worth seeing for the creative guillotine fights.

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