Flying guillotine

The flying guillotine is a legendary Chinese ranged weapon used during the reign of the Yongzheng Emperor in the Qing Dynasty.



Etymology, history and description
This weapon supposedly hails from the reign of the Yongzheng Emperor during the Qing Dynasty. There are stories and crude drawings detailing its appearance but no clear instructions on its use or production are known to exist. The consensus is that the weapon resembled a hat with a bladed rim with a long chain attached to it. One alleged way of using it is that, upon enveloping one's head, the blades cleanly decapitate the victim with a pull of the chain. This gives the weapon its English name. However, there is also evidence that the weapon may have been soaked in deadly poison before use, such that it can kill a person immediately when blood is drawn (literally "at the sight of a drip of blood"), which gives rise to its Chinese name.

In media
Various forms of media often associate the weapon with Tibetan assassins sent to China to kill legendary fighters.



The 1976 Hong Kong film Master of the Flying Guillotine serves as an unofficial sequel to another film Flying Guillotine (1974), produced by the Shaw Brothers Studio and directed by Ho Meng-hwa. In 1978, the Shaw Brothers Studio produced two more movies, The Flying Guillotine 2 and Vengeful Beauty. Other films in which flying guillotines are shown include Octopussy (1983), The Heroic Trio (1992), Iron Monkey 2 (1996), Seven Swords (2005), The Machine Girl (2008) and The Guillotines (2012).



The flying guillotine is featured in television programmes such as Hung Hei-Gun: Decisive Battle With Praying Mantis Fists (1994), the National Geographic Channel Asia documentary Kung-Fu Killers, and a 2011 episode of Mythbusters.