The cunning but cruel Qing emperor Yung Cheng (Feng Ku) has a hatred of the conquered Han and a penchant for having people's heads cut off, as exemplified by his revolutionary "flying guillotine" weapon.
The flying guillotine is an almost certainly fictitious weapon said to have been thrown over an opponent's head and causing instant decapitation.
However, heroic rebel Ma Teng (Lung Ti) has invented the "iron umbrella", a device to counter the flying guillotines, and even turn them back on their users.
So the emperor calls on the guillotine's inventor, a high lama, to design an even better flying guillotine.
Meanwhile, the Han rebels, including Na Lan (Szu Shih), daughter of a palace official, keep trying to assassinate the emperor.
Their plans - especially one involving poisoned daggers firing out of a scroll case - are inspired, but the crafty emperor is always one step ahead.
Ultimately, this leads to a monumental, large-scale, showdown in the emperor's palace between his forces and those of the rebels.
The denouement is not exactly what I was expecting, but I appreciated its honesty.
Set in Ancient (17th Century?) China, Flying Guillotine II aka Palace Carnage is an incredibly pacey and chaotic Shaw Brothers martial arts masterpiece, full of incredible fight sequences, superheroic wire-fu, and bonkers, physics-defying, exotic weaponry.
Throw in a couple of unexpected moments of brief female nudity, frequent splashes of bright red blood, and some half-decent dubbing and Palace Carnage is an impressive, if occasionally hard to follow, frenetic slice of 1970's Hong Kong martial arts.
There's an avalanche of palace intrigue, spying and counter-spying, as Na Lan wins the emperor's favour - much to the disgust of his senior aides - and gets to form her own all-female cadre of palace guards.
While all the main rebels are superb fighters, major kudos to the ultimate badass villain, Yung Cheng, who holds his own against at least half-a-dozen rebel mooks and ultimately faces off against the three main heroes and gives no quarter.
This final showdown is as glorious a spectacle of bloody martial arts as you could hope for from a Shaw Brothers flick.
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