Worst Sword Movies

[SeekHer]

The greatest sword fighting scene ever filmed. :mrgreen:

HTRN

Strongly supports the adage of "Don't bring a [big] knife to a gun fight!"

[Combat Controller]

Most movies have sword flinging, not sword fighting.

I found one of my favorites is the "left handed" battle from The Princess Bride.

I am more of an Epee man myself, we used to have our own set of fencing rules, to make it more realistic. Can anyone say ouch?

[Mike OTDP]

Yup. Good basic technique, though.

But as a lot of people have mentioned, a real fight with cold steel is far less dramatic...and infinitely more subtle. Read the older books on epee fencing - they stressed that the prewar epee (one touch, on grass) was very much a test of cunning and technique, not raw athletic prowess.

Please don't get me started on what the FIE has done in the last 20 years.

[toad]

Well under he old studio system actors were "requested" to learn how to ride a horse, handle a sword, and etc. Tony Curtis was one of the actors that got interested and would show up at UCLA for some saber instruction/work once in a while.

Speaking of sabers, in fencing they converted over to the light edgeless Hungarian fencing saber.
Except for certain military academies.
Apparently an old US Naval graduate joined a university fencing club in Texas back in '70s.
With the modern sport saber you pretty much do everything with your fingers. You can cut and recover very fast with no wrist movement. Well the old professor had learned with the old heavy saber in which you had to use wrist movements. The available fencing jackets were just too light to deal with power of the old gentlemen's wrist powered cuts. If you sparred with him you were going to end up with welts.

I'm having a brain fart, but one there was an old black and white movie about San Francisco cops in which a fight developed at a Kendo sparing match. Even with shinia it got pretty violent when the rules went bye-bye. Of course it was just a movie scene, but hoo boy.

One of our local Kenjitsu kids managed to take off his index finger with a botched draw.
They've got an ambulance driver/emt guy on speed dial so the finger got sewed back on pretty quickly.

[SeekHer]

There was a sword master back in the 1500s that took on and defeated (killed) five sword wielding assassins with his training bokken and before witnesses...The name doesn't come to mind but it was something like Matashushi...

Edit
Masaaki Hatsumi keeps appearing in a Google search

Mushashi or Masamune (sword making school)

[toad]

I think that was Miyamoto Musashi, author of the book, The Five Rings.
He reportedly showed up for duel on a island with no weapon, so he whittled down an oar and killed his opponent with it.