Another of Yuen Chor's seemingly endless entries in the martial world genre. This one starts with a song singing the praises of the moon and the scimitar. How does this particular film stand up against the many others by Yuen Chor, let's see.

Ding, a young upstart, is quickly moving up in the ranks of the martial world with his invincible "Shooting Star" sword technique. On his way to another duel he is tricked by the wife of his next opponent and his kung fu manual is stolen before the match. His opponent now knows the secret of the Shooting Star sword and defeats him. To add to Ding's humiliation his opponent claims that Ding's father, who taught Ding the technique and now deceased, stole the manual! Ding runs off and about to smash his sword on his father's gravestone when he is flung into a strange world inhabited by fox spirits. Ding meets a beautiful fox woman who carries the title weapon around in a flower basket! The scimitar belonged to her aunt who recently died after pining away for her lover, a kung fu master who inscribed a poem on it. The fox woman, Qing Qing and Ding marry but Qing Qing's father rules that Ding can never return to the real world. Ding is fascinated by the scimitar and can't keep away from it. Qing Qing teaches Ding how to use it and he becomes a master. Ding now feels that he can go back to the real world and avenge himself on his last opponent and restore his father's name.

That's just the set-up. As with other martial world films, there's a ton of plot and intrigue. One of this film's pluses is that we follow one main character for the whole film and only have a few extra characters to get to know. The supernatural angle is a plus. A minus is that Ding is sort of an idiot and does things that make him unsympathetic. Also the plot has a number of giant logic holes that are very apparent and the ending is a cop-out. The action is good for this sort of film with some neat fights.

OK, better if you like the genre.

I love martial arts movies from the golden age 1967 to 1984 and I love Shaw Brothers martial arts movies from that era most of all. Then there is this movie that I disliked as much as liked. I kept asking myself why this movie failed to entertain one of the genre's biggest fans and here are a few reasons.

First concerns the sword fights and this movie is mostly sword fights for action. Sword fights (or rather "good sword fights") are uniquely difficult to choreograph and execute in movies. I practice both martial arts swords and fencing. Fencing rarely works for movies and larger blades were some of the first fights ever filmed. It is easy to use the old "I'll raise my sword and you hit it with yours" technique of movie sword fighting. Just add a clever or unexpected move or a difficult move smoothly executed and you have raised the bar. This movie went the Chinese opera route and added acrobatics. Acrobatics can be a great addition to a fight, just look at most of The Venom's fights. In this movies the acrobatics in the fights was totally overdone to the point of distraction.

Second is the lead character. The lead began as somewhat unlikeable and continued to become more and more unlikeable to the point of being more of a villain than the real villains. In plot structure and scripting and character development this never works.

Finally, Shaw Brothers sets of this era were unbeatable by any other studio. Despite the excellent design, lighting and quality of materials in this movie, something just didn't feel right. I felt as if though what I was looking at was nice, it was too contrived and framed and I always knew that a few inches to the right or left of the frame there was nothing but an empty movie studio set.

I can only rate this movie as five out of ten. I realize most of my comments are purely opinion and based on nothing more so your viewing experience might be contradictory. I still recommend it (but only for only fans of the genre) and I hope you enjoyed it more than I did.

FULL MOON SCIMITAR is a slightly quirky Shaw Brothers story with a different narrative to most. The hero as played by Derek Yee is a put-upon young martial artist who finds himself beaten by a scheming rival and takes solace in a nether-world of ghosts and fox spirits. There he falls in love and finds himself in possession of the mystical titular weapon, which allows him to cut through his opponents with ease.

The rest of the film is full of action but with much more characterisation than you usually get with this kind of picture. Yee is subject to hubris which leads to his eventual downfall, and it's a fitfully exciting and dramatic production. What I found most interesting about FULL MOON SCIMITAR is that it's a film heavily indebted and infused with the supernatural, with some lovely subterranean sets bathed in a ghastly green light.

The action choreography isn't quite as outstanding as in the true Shaw Brothers classics and the fights aren't as long or in-depth. Still, they still pack a stylish punch, with plenty of acrobatic swordplay on display. As is usual for Shaw, this is a sumptuous looking film in which plenty of effort has gone into the costumes, set dressing, and the like. It looks great, and it offers something a little different to the norm which is no bad thing.