One-armed Swordsman
Taking its thematic cues as much from Japanese samurai films as the American western, One-armed Swordsman sees Chang lift the in-house Shaw Bros studio-shot aesthetic to new levels of artifice and abstraction.
In its baroque orchestrations and macho codes (laced with a liberal dash of Freud), it’s the antithesis of the other film that kickstarted the wuxia wave in the late 60s, King Hu’s female-centric Come Drink with Me, released the previous year. The film made a star out of leading man Jimmy Wang Yu, and while his acting chops were never going to turn him into the next James Dean as Chang had hoped, the film’s many sequels and spin-offs still saw him become an icon of alienated youth in his native China.