[16] At a lavish banquet, the Manchurian Empress Dowager Cixi of the 19th century Qing empire orders security chief of the Forbidden City Liu Jing Tian to capture the five thieves that stole 2 million taels from the Royal Treasury.

One constable, Peng Lai, who wandered off to feed the starving Han Chinese villagers, is ambushed and staked alive.

Fang, dying from the wounds inflicted by Leng, reveals it was Lord Liu that had sent his troops after them and that he in fact arranged for the gold to be stolen.

An underlying theme in Killer Constable is the oppression of the poor and famished Han Chinese by the corrupt and greedy Manchu ruling class (which include the protagonist).

[17] Similarly, movie critic John White of the Digital Fix highlights the "dramatic message of a political class which uses the security force/police as its tool for keeping the people oppressed and itself enriched".

[18] In the 1970s, crime-centered themes gained traction in Hong Kong cinema and, as in the case of Killer Constable, spread into the Kung Fu genre.

[19] Researcher Benjamin Freudenberg argues that the figure of the Killer Constable represents "the traditional Confucian fear of mechanic enforcement of the legal text".

[21] In one instance constable Ling and gang leader Fang go as far as pretending to be old friends in order to prevent her from finding out the truth, a scene that may have inspired a similar event in The Killer by John Woo.

[7] Filming occurred in Hong Kong and South Korea and included a Korean assistant director Kim Seon-Gyeong.

[26] He had starred as the lead in earlier successful movies directed by Chih-Hung Kwei, such as The Teahouse (1974) and Big Brother Cheng (1975),[27] that also share the same screenwriter Szeto On.

[29] In a 2002 interview, Chen Kuan-tai has stated that "We were using real weapons" in Killer Constable and that a fellow actor chopped off his right-hand pinky finger when shooting a fight scene.

[30] Actor Austin Wai was originally panned to star in Killer Constable, but had to leave due to a severe back injury.

[38] Contemporary reviews, such as those in the popular Hong Kong movie magazine City Entertainment (Chinese: 電影雙周刊), praise the carefully crafted atmosphere through set photography and martial arts arrangements.

[47] In the US market, home video releases of Killer Constable emerged that were not sanctioned by the Shaw Brothers,[48] some appearing under the title Lightning Kung Fu.