First, let's get the title genealogy out of the way.
Our first feature is known by a number of titles, depending on which
part of the world you're in (and when). A lot of books refer to
it as Crippled Avengers. Its original title anglicizes out
to Can Que, translating as Incomplete. The most popular
English title was Mortal Combat. Now it has been released
on video by Crash Cinema, as The Return of the Five Deadly Venoms
(doubtless fearing a lawsuit by Acclaim, whose lawyers cannot tell
the difference between Combat and Kombat).
Are we all clear now? Good.
Well, there's one more thing, before we go on. The
Five Deadly Venoms do not return in this movie -that would
have been tough, given that movie's ending - the actors who
play them are the ones who return. This group teamed up with director
Chang Cheh to make several movies that have come to be regarded
as classics in the kung fu genre, and this is certainly one.
To kick things off (so to speak), three guys from
the Tinan Tigers break into the compound of warlord Tu Tin-to, apparently
because Tu has been getting too big for his britches, or somesuch
excuse to get the story rolling. Tu is not in, they find only his
wife and son. The Tigers employ bad guy logic: "So let's cut
off his wife's legs...and his son's arms!" No sooner is the
heinous deed done, than Tu (Chen Kuan-tai) returns. The warlord
demonstrates his famous Tiger style for the ersatz tigers, killing
each of the brigands with a single blow. Though his wife dies, his
son survives the ordeal.
Flash forward nearly two decades (I guess). Junior
(Lu Feng) is on his seventh set of iron hands, and has become a
kung fu 
master
in his own right. These hands are a marvel, employing not only James
Bond gadgetry (they shoot knives and can extend out a foot), but
responding as normal hands would. Apparently, whoever made the hands
corresponded with Ash's blacksmith in Army
of Darkness. Unfortunately, two decades of living with hatred
and grief have turned Tu and his son into sociopaths - Tu's birthday
present to his son is the kidnapping of the Tinan Tigers' now-adult
children, so he can cripple them.
Tu is also running the nearby town via the typical
Reign of Terror - you know, his entourage of thugs pushing people
out of the way as he and his son walk down the street. When a traveler
(Philip Kwok Tsui) speaks approvingly of the local blacksmith's
refusal to back down before the bullies, Junior blinds him with
his steel fingers. Later, Tu summons the mouthy blacksmith (Lo Mang)
to his compound and forces a potion down his throat that robs him
of his voice permanently; when he continues to mouth off via writing
on a table, Tu ruptures his eardrums, rendering him deaf as well.
Later, a man in the midst of an argument (Sun Chien)
bumps into Junior on the street, and summarily has his legs cut
off. The three victims band together, with the plucky blacksmith
thinking he can support them all with his work, but Tu's private
army,
under the command of right hand man Wei (Lung Wei Wang, who made
a career out of villainous right-hand men), makes sure that no one
will give the blacksmith the time of day. A wandering hero, Mr.
Wang (Chiang Sheng, or 'cutey-pie', as he is known), sees this injustice
in action and goes to Tu to exact some vengeance. But the combination
of Junior and Wei proves too much, and he is captured. As all the
obvious means of maiming have been employed, Tu has a metal band
slowly tightened around Wang's head until his brain swells, rendering
him an imbecile.
The three maimed men find a letter to Wang from his
teacher upon his person; eventually they find the teacher, and remand
Wang to his care. The Teacher sighs that it is a sad thing when
a hero like Tu Tin-to goes bad. He then agrees to teach the three
kung fu so they can put things right.
Thereafter follow the usual training scenes, referred
to in the trade as "torture" scenes, because the kung
fu student must suffer the tortures of the damned to strengthen
his body. Some movies, like The 36th Chamber of Shaolin
(Shaolin Master Killer on Crash Cinema) seem entirely composed
of these scenes; to a large degree, they were the inspiration for
the training scenes in Mask of Zorro. I'm not a big fan of
them, but they are a necessary part of the genre.
As in 36th Chamber, these training methods are at least interesting,
as Blindman and Deafman sharpen their remaining senses. Deaf
man
also employs his skills to make iron legs for Legless, who proceeds
to learn first to walk, then to kick up a storm with them, with
Wang as a target.
Wang is a constant foil through all this, exhibiting
the brains and sense of humor of a three-year-old (push over the
man teetering on artificial legs! Hooray!), but he still
knows kung fu. In particular, Blindman and Wang seem to like to
play an odd acrobatic game with steel rings (yeah, you're right:
I only mention this because it's important later).
After three years, they are ready, and journey back
to town separately. First, Blindman fights Wei and some of his thugs
to a standstill. Wei returns with more thugs, who he tells to be
vewy vewy quiet, so they can sneak up on the blind guy. Deafman
kicks over a table, however, and he and Blindman again fight
them to a standstill. Actually, it's only a standstill because each
time, Wei holds up his hand and says, "Let's go," prompting
the bad guys to make an orderly exit. Perfectly reasonable response
- time to go get bigger guns. But it also makes a nicely understated
running gag.
A friend of Tu's, a large specimen named Chu, comes
to visit. Chu likes to strut around in his kung fu guy pants and
Elvis cape, looking very much like a pro wrestler. He offers to
take care of his old friend's enemies for Wei, and gives Blindman
and Deafman each three blows and three kicks to knock him down.
Alas, he's one of those Iron Skin kung fu guys, and not even the
powerful Deafman can take him down. "Now it's my turn!"
grunts whoever is doing Chu's dubbing. Ah, but Legless and Wang
show up, and Legless wants his turn at bat. "Look out!"
says Wang, "He has iron feet!" Sadly for Chu, he thinks
this is just more Kung Fu Nomenclature, and so winds up stuffing
his guts back into his abdomen, before he dies standing up.
Well,
after all this light-hearted slaughter, it's finally time to storm
the castle. Wei is prepared, with drums and cymbals to confuse the
Blindman, and mirrors to dazzle the Deafman. He doesn't count on
Wang, however, who upsets things nicely, knocking over drums and
slapping henchmen around cuz it's fun. Blindman and Wang
take on Junior, using their steel-ring dancing maneuvers to finally
break through Junior's defenses, but only at the cost of Wang's
life. It takes the remaining three to take down Tu in a pitched
battle. The end (oh, like they were going to lose).
Chang Cheh is generally credited as the Shaw Brothers
director who took the kung fu film out of its mannered, Wong Fei
Hung days and into the hyper-violent, frenetic form we know today.
He made stars out of Jimmy Wang Yu and Alexander Fu Sheng. It's
generally easy to spot a Chang film - besides an operatic approach
to plotting, the fight scenes are varied, creative, and extended
long past any reasonable expectations. The viewer is exhausted
after watching even one of his lesser movies. As mentioned
earlier, his work with the "second crew" - known in the
West as the Venom Gang - define the Shaw Brothers experience for
a lot of us.
Crippled
Avengers does pretty well by most of the Venoms - Lo Mang, in
particular, gets to show a more humorous, jovial side than was his
usual lot, and the fact that 90% of his performance is mimed only
enhances his performance. He and Philip Kwok form the heart of this
film, in more ways than one - their characters constantly clasp
hands, to reassure and empower each other. It's a strong, remarkably
affecting example of male bonding that would be unthinkable in a
Western film, and therefore all the more touching.
Philip Kwok Tsui is my favorite Venom, and he shines
here. His fight scenes rely heavily on his acrobatic skills, and
always emphasized a more dancerly esthetic. The second half of the
lengthy duel between Junior and the combo of Blindman and Wang,
in particular, looks like a gymnastics tournament gone ballistic.
In The Kid with the Golden Arm (and where is my good copy
of this, Crash Cinema?), Kwok played one of those drunken
kung fu practitioners, and his ever-present pot of wine was woven
into the structure of the fight; trying to prevent the breaking
of the precious vessel provided unexpected defensive and offensive
moves. Kwok is still working today - he had a bit part in Story
of Ricky. Viewers who will only watch the modern HK exports
but not the older stuff (why?) will be much more likely to recognize
him as the honorable killer Mad Dog in John Woo's ultimate gunplay
film, Hard Boiled.
While not the best of the Shaw Brothers catalog, or
even the best of Chang's films, Crippled Avengers runs a
very close second in each of those categories. A bit too
long, it repeats the same setups over and over until it's time for
the final fight - but that's a fairly minor quibble, and I make
that criticism only because the rest of the movie is so good. A
little more cohesion in the second act, and it might have been perfect.
RATING: 
And then we have Crippled Masters.
Crippled Masters is not a sequel - it's more
of a low-budget remake. Its major claim to fame is the fact that,
unlike its source material, where the filmmakers had to find various
creative ways to make it look like Sun Chien had no legs - Crippled
Masters employs actual handicapped men as its stars.
The movie gets right down to business with a scene
of Corrupt Warlord Ling Chang-kung having a bodyguard's arms whacked
off - exactly why is never explained. At first I had a fairly queasy
feeling; in John Carpenter's The Thing, a bilateral paraplegic
was
employed as a body double for Richard Dysart in the scene where
his character's arms are bitten off. This was before the days that
CGI made such a thing possible with the real actor. Carpenter went
through a lot of angst and finally talked with the fellow
about the scene, and any bad memories that might be dredged up by
the experience. The guy was cool about the whole thing, and was
basically glad to be making the money.
I was wondering what sort of flashbacks might be involved
for this poor guy; it wasn't until later, when he began using what
was supposed to be the remnant of his left arm, that I realized
he wasn't the victim of some horrible accident... he was the victim
of a birth defect. The truncated limb with two digits was a dead
giveaway - no way is it the product of a sword blow.
After a series of misadventures, Armless hits his
nadir - starving, he is eating from a pig trough when he is discovered
by the farmer. This simple soul puts him to work, and he begins
learning to deal with a life without arms. Meantime, the guy who
was in charge of his dismembering runs afoul of Warlord Mental Health,
who pours acid on his legs, causing them to waste away. You guessed
it: another birth defect exploited.
The Warlord himself is quite a piece of work. He has
some sort of bizarre burn-like scar under one eye, and he is also
a hunchback. Or, judging from his fight scenes, he's wearing a wok
under his jacket, since every time somebody lands a blow on it,
there's a hollow GONG! sound. And, as Joe Bob Briggs would point
out, he employs Hump Fu, repeatedly whacking opponents with his
wok. Er, hump.
Well, Armless discovers Legless, and drags his former
tormentor away to torture him to death, however you do that without
arms.
He brings him to an out-of-the-way house, which turns out to be
the home of an old master who likes to practice yoga in baskets.
The old man convinces them to team up and take on the Warlord; to
that end, he will teach them kung fu.
The training scenes for Crippled Masters reflects
how much lower the budget was, compared to its inspiration: Instead
of the bizarre training apparatuses of other movies, Legless has
to hoist himself across numerous parallel bamboo poles. Armless
has to walk up a hill strewn with small tubes of bamboo - without
arms to balance yourself, it's harder than it sounds. He also gets
to show off some work with a bamboo staff that, given he only has
two fingers, is pretty impressive.
The master is actually training them to steal back
The Eight Jade Horses, an artifact he found but the Warlord stole.
Helping them in this (and a couple of other fights) is a mysterious
white-clad character named Ah Po, who has his full compliment of
arms and legs, but is no match for the Warlord and his hump fu.
Armless, Legless and and the Master rescue him, and he confesses
that he is a secret agent for the provincial government, come to
stop Humpy's villainous hijinks.
The Eight Jade Horses supposedly hold the secret to
an invincible kung fu style, and when Ah Po puts two of the figurines
back-to-back, he suddenly understands, and begins training the two
wronged men in the new, improved style. They finally take on the
Warlord, and at the climactic moment, metal bands pop out of Legless'
back, and he attaches himself to Armless like a human knapsack.
They whirl about, the appropriate fighter countering the Warlord
at every turn, until he is hurled into a freeze-framed death. The
end.
Crippled Masters' main selling point is, naturally,
what the two main characters can accomplish despite their handicaps.
It is 
supposed
to be the result of months of rigorous training, but is actually
ability honed by a lifetime of dealing with these handicaps.
Whether exploiting these is a canny idea on the part of the filmmakers
or simply monstrous is a distinction which is, frankly, beyond me;
I can't wrap my head around it. My first instinct is to brand it
the worst thing since the carnival freak show; but some of the denizens
of that particular underworld found a certain kinship, and a sense
of belonging there - when everybody's different, nobody's different.
There is also no way these two men would have gotten a similar chance
anywhere else. Hopefully, they were paid well.
Not that it's a good movie, or anything like. Avengers
is cruel, but heavily tempered by melodrama; the first half hour
of Masters is simply a litany of the cruel things that can
be done to a man with no arms. (apparently, in feudal China, waiters
urged men with freshly bleeding, hacked-off arms to come into their
teahouse). Besides this whole contrived teahouse segment, the central
concept of using bizarre methods like the leg-dissolving acid to
explain what occurred to these men by nature only seems to
underline the picture's essential thoughtlessness. Then there is
the concept of ancient artisans crafting two interlocking jade figurines
just in case some day an armless and a legless man need to fight
an evil warlord. This impresses me a being as likely as the Founding
Fathers somehow encrypting the blueprints for a giant robot into
the Constitution, just in case we ever need it*.
Even bad dubbing can't be blamed for some very, very bad,
fast, sloppy writing.
While we're on the subject of sloppiness, we might
as well address the fight scenes, which is the reason we watch these
films in the first place. Sadly, many of the fights show a jerky
quality, which can only mean the participants performed a few moves,
stopped, tried to get back into the same place, then went onto the
next few moves. When Chang Cheh had to break in his fight scenes,
he substituted some energetic camera moves to keep things flowing
smoothly. Here, the only adjective that describes the proceedings
is cheap. Tsk.
Crippled Masters used to be available on New
Line Home Video, and this tape proudly bore the logo of Turner Entertainment
- with the interesting benefit of it being the best-looking
print of a kung fu movie I've seen in ages. Reel.com, for 
some
reason, carried it under one of its alternate titles, Fighting
Life. Can't remember the label's name, but longtime kung fu-philes
would recognize it as the one that always had the cover blurb, "A
tribute to the master!" What master? What kind of tribute?
What the hell?
Sadly, after the first fight scene with the titular
masters, you've pretty much seen everything this movie had to give
you, and anyone who has seen Johnny Eck the Half-Man caper about
in Tod Browning's Freaks has already seen half of
that. The novelty wears off quickly, and you soon yearn for
the end to come. Only the mystery of the composition of the Warlord's
hump kept me tuned in until the end of the movie, hoping he would
whip off his jacket and reveal whatever it was, flesh and
bone or steel and iron. Alas, in that I was also disappointed.
