Visual Vengeance: Fatal Flying Guillotine (1977) - Reviewed

Images courtesy of Visual Vengeance

Raymond Lui started out as a character actor in the very first Golden Harvest film The Angry River in 1971 before mounting his first feature with the 1974 Success Film Production Company release Hard as a Dragon.  Maintaining work as a character actor while dabbling in writing and directing, his second feature in the director’s chair for Success Film Production came in the form of a Taiwanese/Hong Kong scope 2.35:1 widescreen wuxia entitled Fatal Flying Guillotine.  Capitalizing on the success of Jimmy Wang’s Master of the Flying Guillotine, it was regarded as an off-brand entry into the flying guillotine frenzy that also happened to feature Carter Wong from Big Trouble in Little China and Sing Chen from the JCVD vehicle Double Impact.  

 
Picked up by Visual Vengeance who ordinarily deal in videotape terrain, the limited- edition disc release for Fatal Flying Guillotine is interesting in that it is restored in 2K from original surviving 35mm film elements with portions filled in with rough beat-up looking VHS inserts for additional violence and gore.  Like Nine Demons before it, the elements are unbecoming of Arrow or 88 Films but perfectly suited for Visual Vengeance’s ever-expanding library of forgotten or lost films preserved and rereleased by dedicated archivists.  The resulting release is a bit like the now discontinued and sold-out Big Bosphorus Media release of Dünyayı Kurtaran Adam otherwise known as Turkish Star Wars which was also a composite print made from a 2K scan of surviving 35mm elements with tape inserts filling in the gaps. 

 
Hidden in the Valley of No Return resides an insidious long white-haired-and-bearded master martial arts fighter Shen Mo Chao (Sing Chen) with a secret weapon dubbed the Lightning Strike: a modified version of the flying guillotine with dual spinning blades.  Attached to ropes and whipped around like oversized bells that fly through the air, land atop a victim’s head and neatly slicing it off by the neck, Shen Mo Chao’s mastery of the Fatal Flying Guillotine makes him an insurmountable adversary who will most certainly kill anyone who stumbles into his territory and/or merely locks eyes with him.  Meanwhile, a young fighter named Shen Ping (Carter Wong) is on the hunt for a book by Shaolin monks which holds the key to medicating his mother back into good health.  But upon discovering the book given to him is a false one perpetrated by none other than the indefatigable Shen Mo Chao, it posits the young fighter into a personal war through many adversaries before meeting his destiny against the undefeatable Fatal Flying Guillotine.

 
Co-authored by Raymond Lui and Sheng-Yu Hsu with an effectively reverberating grungy score by Frankie Chan, the cinematography on the surviving print is a bit washed out or blown out in terms of brightness or contrast.  Performances across the board are mostly fine with Sing Chen stealing the show while Carter Wong is your average joe good guy serving as our only hope against the arch villain.  Otherwise it isn’t really anything special.  From the hokey sound effects of the guillotines flying through the air, rougher sounding punches, kicks and sword clashing to the trademark fast zooms and whip pans to imply the ease with which Shen Mo Chao’s flying guillotines go about the sky, Fatal Flying Guillotine is a little bit rough around the edges but who cares.  Anyone picking up a Visual Vengeance title has to temper their expectations somewhat in terms of content or picture/sound quality.  Where it stands out are the VHS tape inserts which are accurately posited and edited into the film itself seamlessly so you’ve an idea of how it might’ve appeared in widescreen despite missing the sides of the image.

 
When you open a Visual Vengeance Blu-ray disc package, you get more than just a slipcover and reversible sleeve art.  Hell you get a time-honored sticker packet, a booklet about the film with posters and essay writing, reprinted lobby cards and a mini poster reprint of the original Success Film Production advert.  Opening the case with all the goodies falling out of the side pocket of the amaray case can feel a little overwhelming but again I’ve come to expect this from Visual Vengeance and am not complaining.  Included on the disc extras itself is a running commentary with Justin Decloux of The Important Cinema Club podcast, two video essays including on the flying guillotine movie craze, an archival interview with Carter Wong, 10 styles of Tamo demonstration and a ‘Dirty VHS’ version of the film itself for those wanting to get the worn analog CRT experience.  While nowhere near as wild or funky as Nine Demons, it is exciting to see Visual Vengeance working with film elements now and trying to do widescreen pictures in the most complete form available even if it means resorting to tape sources also.  All in all, another solid knockout for the ordinarily SOV (shot-on-video) curators.

--Andrew Kotwicki