Another of Yuen Chor's seemingly endless entries in the martial world genre. This one starts with a song singing the praises of the moon and the scimitar. How does this particular film stand up against the many others by Yuen Chor, let's see.
Ding, a young upstart, is quickly moving up in the ranks of the martial world with his invincible "Shooting Star" sword technique. On his way to another duel he is tricked by the wife of his next opponent and his kung fu manual is stolen before the match. His opponent now knows the secret of the Shooting Star sword and defeats him. To add to Ding's humiliation his opponent claims that Ding's father, who taught Ding the technique and now deceased, stole the manual! Ding runs off and about to smash his sword on his father's gravestone when he is flung into a strange world inhabited by fox spirits. Ding meets a beautiful fox woman who carries the title weapon around in a flower basket! The scimitar belonged to her aunt who recently died after pining away for her lover, a kung fu master who inscribed a poem on it. The fox woman, Qing Qing and Ding marry but Qing Qing's father rules that Ding can never return to the real world. Ding is fascinated by the scimitar and can't keep away from it. Qing Qing teaches Ding how to use it and he becomes a master. Ding now feels that he can go back to the real world and avenge himself on his last opponent and restore his father's name.
That's just the set-up. As with other martial world films, there's a ton of plot and intrigue. One of this film's pluses is that we follow one main character for the whole film and only have a few extra characters to get to know. The supernatural angle is a plus. A minus is that Ding is sort of an idiot and does things that make him unsympathetic. Also the plot has a number of giant logic holes that are very apparent and the ending is a cop-out. The action is good for this sort of film with some neat fights.
OK, better if you like the genre.