Move over Flying Guillotine, Shaw Brothers unleash THE DRAGON MISSILE on Blu-ray from 88 Films.

When the imperial doctors are unable to cure the painful boil that has afflicted Governor Chin (Feng Ku, TIGER KILLER), he orders them executed and has the emperor's physician Doctor Fu (Li Jen Ho, ENTER THE DRAGON) brought to him by force. Although the doctor dislikes the corrupt and oppressive governor, his oath to heal requires him to try to help the man. He diagnoses that the boil is a skin cancer that dissolves the spine marrow and will kill the governor in seven days unless he is treated with the ashes of a longevity root. He writes to an herbalist friend but states that the root is for a prince knowing of his friend's dislike of the governor. The governor's wife (Wen Lai, THE GREAT LOVER) are grateful but he feels insulted and repays Doctor Fu's kindness by having him executed by Sima Jun (Lieh Lo, FIVE FINGERS OF DEATH) who uses The Dragon Missile, which looks more like "The Dragon Boomerangs", to decapitate his targets. Chin tasks Sima Jun with going to the herbalist to get the root and promises to reward him greatly, but courtier Yang (Min Min, HEX VS. WITCHCRAFT) schemes to profit himself by sending six warriors to escort Sima Jun on the mission in order to kill him as soon as he gets the root. When the herbalist refuses to give it to them upon discovering that the patient is the governor, Sima Jun decapitates him only to have the root subsequently stolen by Ehr Lung (Tony Liu, THE WAY OF THE DRAGON) who was trained in the art of Iron Fingers by Sima Jun's mentor. Sima Jun repays Ehr Lung's friendship by killing his blind mother (Sha-Fei Ouyang, CALAMITY OF SNAKES) in order to retrieve the root. Sima Jun soon finds his attempts to get the root back to the governor hampered by his escorts who want to kill him, including needle-nailed Sha Sha (Terry Liu, THE SUPER INFRAMAN) who soon teams up with vengeful Ehr Lung and the herbalist's daughter Xiao Li (Nancy Yen, 7 GRANDMASTERS).

Presumably because the film was mounted in the wake of the success of MASTER OF THE FYLING GUILLOTINE as well as a vehicle for Lieh Lo, THE DRAGON MISSILE in title and plotting places focus on a dishonorable and irredeemable villain as protagonist; then again, IRON FINGERS is a lamer title, made more so when we actually see Ehr Lung's weapons which look like a pair of daisy chain of Chinese magic linking rings that are supposed to be able to slice through anything but just jangle about in practice compared to the sparking Dragon Missiles which slice through trees, iron, and necks. It is hard to feel sorry for the character who is set up for ambush by characters only slightly more vile, especially when the only people to oppose him do so on principal and are brutally murdered for it. The vengeance-seeking good characters are rather bland so it is just as well that the script pairs them up with Sha Sha to keep the audience awake. The other five fighters do not even warrant character names. Although less than ninety minutes, the film drags in its final third before a rather limp resolution. There is gore aplenty, although the decapitations are rather laughable with severed heads yanked away from stumps by wires upon contact with the Dragon Missiles.

Unreleased in the United States, THE DRAGON MISSILE first became available in English-friendly form on Hong Kong DVD in 2007 as part of Celestial Pictures' digital restorations of the Shaw library. 88 Films' 1080p24 MPEG-4 AVC 2.35:1 widescreen Blu-ray comes from a master that carries a 2007 copyright. The older master gets the job done with a fairly clean and colorful source, although some of the soft detail is a side effect of the Shawscope lenses bowing in wide angle panning and tracking shots as well as a falloff in sharpness along the edges of the frame which is much more apparent here in a handful of wide compositions in which characters are positioned on either side of the frame. The Mandarin LPCM 2.0 mono track is in fair condition but the English LPCM 2.0 mono dub is not only badly cast but also suffers from sibilance issues suggesting overzealous digital cleanup on what was either a poorly cared for optical track or even an analog tape source. The optional English subtitles do not translate the captions that introduce each character, so I am not sure if they are the actor's names or that of the characters.