At The Golden Sword school, orphan Fang Kang is scorned by his snobbish fellow students. Soon, a fight leads to him losing his arm. The depressed Fang Kang is nursed back to health by a local girl, whose half-burnt kung fu manual may help him master a new one-armed style of swordplay.

A profoundly influential wuxia classic, this opus of dismemberment and revenge made a star of its leading man Jimmy Wang Yu. Stunningly shot on studio soundstages, The One-armed Swordsman sees director Chang Cheh elevate the Shaw Brothers house style to operatic levels of artifice and abstraction.