Point the Finger of Death (1977)

Point the Finger of Death (1977)
aka: One Arm Chivalry Fights One Arm Chivalry
Chinese Title: 獨臂俠大戰獨臂俠
Translation: One-Armed Man vs. One-Armed Man

 

Starring: Jimmy Wang Yu, Lau Kar-Wing, Lung Fei, Leung Kar-Yan, Wang Kuan-Hsiung, Hsi Hsiang, Kwan Hung, Yee Hung, Li Ying, Wei Ping-Ao, Hsueh Han, Tian Ming
Director: Chin Sheng-En
Action Director: Lau Kar-Wing

 

You’d think that by 1977, Jimmy Wang Yu had gotten the One-Armed [Fighter] bug out of his system. He had already been in about seven movies about the theme, three of which had come out the year before[1]. I guess those made enough money in the different Asian markets that Golden Harvest funded just one more, just to be sure if that sub-sub-genre was dead or not. The resulting film, One Arm Chivalry Fights One  Arm Chivalry (or Point the Finger of Death in the West), is actually pretty decent.

Set in the Qing Dynasty, our main hero is Chi Chu-Chang (Jimmy Wang Yu), a member of the Kong Hua Society of Ming Dynasty loyalists. Chi is just walking around doing his job for the society when he comes across a man trying to rape a woman. He intervenes, only to discover it’s a trap: the woman is Poisons Chi (Yee Hung, of Four Real Friends and Shaolin Kung Fu), an assassin for the evil Lord Hu Ta (frequent WY collaborator Lung Fei). Miss Poisons pokes Chu-Chang in the arm with a poisoned (natch!) needle, and the latter is forced to slice off his own arm to save his life. Poisons Chi gets away, while Chu-Chan kills the fake rapist, Hwa Fung-Chun (Hei Ying, of My Blade, My Life and Sea Girls).

This is where the story gets complicated. Hua Fung-Chun was the top student and “heir” of the Three Liang Chow’s School. The three masters of the school are members of the Kong Hua society. But when a one-armed Chi Chu-Chang shows up at the school calling their now-dead top student a Qing dog, they’re a bit miffed. After a fight breaks out, they agree to settle the matter with the Kong Hua elders.

However, that night, Liang Chow Master #1 (Beach of the War Gods’s Kwan Hung) is at his martial brother’s house, banging his wife. They are discovered by a second one-armed swordsman, who will later be identified as Lu Tien-Chu (Lau Kar-Wing, of Knockabout and The Odd Couple). Lu tells Master #2 (Hsueh Han, of Black Hurricane and a bunch of JWY movies) of his brother’s treachery and they catch the two adulterers in the act. Lu kills both the wife and her cuckold husband, although Master #1 is able to flee.

Since Master #1 and Master #3 (Tiang Ming, of The Fist that Kills and Female 007) know that Chi Chu-Chang is on to them—they are indeed Manchurian spies—they decide to pin the blame for Master #2’s death on Chi. After all, how many one-armed martial arts masters are there in the vicinity? With the help of fellow turncoat Pan Keung-Yan (Leung Kar-Yan, of Two Great Cavaliers and The Victim), they accuse Chi Chu-Chang of murder to the Kong Hua leader Yang (Li Ying, Fist of Unicorn and The Chinese Amazons). Yang is reluctant to believe them at first, but once again, it’s three against one here. Chi Chu-Chang is ordered to commit suicide, but fights his way out of the kangaroo court and flees.

While the Kong Hua men are looking for Chi, Lu Tien-Chu shows up again and fights with the two remaining Liang Chow masters. He kills Master #3 and injures Master #1 before Pan Keung-Yan steps in and fights him off. Once again, when Chief Yang shows up after the killing, they say it was Chi Chu-Chang who did it.

Shortly afterward, Chi Chu-Chang is confronted by his fellow loyalists, who are now accusing him of another murder. That meeting is interrupted by the arrival of a quartet of Tibetan lamas in the employ of Lord Hu Ta, who want to kill Chi themselves. Chi kills them all, and his valor is enough to convince most of the other Kong Hua elders of his innocence. However, the Liang Chow henchmen attack and injure him. He is rescued by fellow patriot Chen Yuen-Fang (Wong Goo-Hung, of Adventure at Shaolin and The Swift Shaolin Boxer), who knows the truth about the other one-armed swordsman, Lu Tien-Chu. Lu has a personal vendetta against the Liang Chow school and Pan Keung-Yan, but will he be able to exact his revenge in time? Will Chi Chu-Chang be able to clear his name before his compatriots catch up to him? Will the evil Lord Hu Ta be able to defeat the rebels by sewing discord?

The story becomes even more complicated at this point, throwing in a second adultery subplot (?) and a long-lost brother as well. The former is especially interesting: two slutty villain wives in one film. Huh. That brings to mind an infamous incident in the real Wang Yu’s life when his second wife, Wang Kaizhen, had an affair with a young businessman and Wang Yu responded by leading the press to his wife’s trysting place and exposing them publicly. That doesn’t quite happen in the movie, but it’s hard not to think about it when you see all the wives sleeping around here.

While the film is paced well, it does get bogged down after Chi Chu-Chang is injured and has to recover in a secret cave. That’s where the long-lost brother subplot comes into play and we discover that female Qing assassins have cages and spiked ceilings in their bedrooms(!). Otherwise, this a standard Ming-vs-Qing storyline in which you can’t help but think that the pro-Ming movements were never successful because their elders were gullible and stupid. This all leads up to the titular fight, followed by a pair of parallel climaxes: Lu Tien-Chu vs. Pan Keung-Yan and Chi Chu-Chang vs. Lord Hu Ta.

The action was handled by Lau Kar-Wing, who had choreographed a few other Wang Yu efforts, including The Deadly Silver Spear and Tiger and Crane Fists. That certainly feels appropriate, considering it was his brother Lau Kar-Leung who had choreographed the first two One-Armed Swordsman movies. I would say that the fighting is pretty good, mixing equal doses of one-armed swordsmanship and one-armed boxing. There are lots of scenes of Wang Yu fighting off multiple opponents, which lack the mass slaughter quality of a lot of his work, mainly because he’s fighting his brothers-in-arms. Don’t look for anything resembling the finale to The New One-Armed Swordsman in this one. But Wang Yu has his one-armed shtick down to a science by this point, so if you liked his other films, you should enjoy this one.

As good a choreographer as Lau Kar-Wing can be, Point the Finger of Death does not represent one of his better fight jobs. I can’t help but wonder if he sort of toned everything down so that the rest of the cast didn’t outfight Jimmy Wang Yu. Perhaps they were on a tight schedule so there wasn’t as much time to plan the fight scenes. There is a sort of sameness to the group melees, maybe because there is only so much you can do with one arm while you’re trying to hide the other one beneath your shirt. The best fights come at the end, when Wang Yu faces off with Lord Hu Ta’s bodyguards (including the late Huang Ha), who wield hook swords. He then has a sword vs. spear fight with Lung Fei which is solid; Wang Yu always did his best work with weapons as opposed to fisticuffs.

While Jimmy Wang Yu movies often had their loopier moments, the action here is generally played straight. There is one fight almost midway through when the Tibetan Lamas show up to fight Chi Chu-Chang and they are challenged by one of his cohorts first. That guy is played by Philip Ko Fei and his lama opponent is played by a young Ricky Cheng Tien-Chi (of Five Element Ninjas fame). The latter has a special move where he flips into air, comes down vertically with a palm attack to the top of the skull, and then swings his other hand down to gouge out the eyes. That is probably the most over-the-top movie in an otherwise tame martial arts film.

Fans of old school movies will definitely get their fill of one-armed martial arts action with Point the Finger of Death, and the fighting is a few rungs above Wang Yu’s early 70s basher movies. I’m not sure how his Taiwanese counterparts from the previous year (save Master of the Flying Guillotine) will compare to this one, so I’m hoping that he was able to maintain a medium-high standard throughout this period of his career. You, the reader, and I will find out in short order…

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[1] - Those would be: One-Armed Swordsmen; One Armed Against Nine Killers; and One-armed Boxer vs. the Flying Guillotine (aka Master of the Flying Guillotine).