The Crippled Masters

If you think you would enjoy watching a movie about an armless kung-fu warrior and a legless kung-fu warrior who team up to get back at the guys who chopped them up... this is your movie

The movie flies out of the starting gate with the punishment of Lee Ho. We do not know his crime, just that his arms have to go. You heard correctly. They chop off both his arms. As further humiliation and disgrace, they throw his bleeding, armless body into the dusty street. Minutes after his loss, Lee Ho stumbles through the streets, where his bleeding and armless body is mistaken for a beggar. He offers a man a little money to let him eat, for the promise of double pay the next time (think J. Wellington Wimpy type). He never actually gets to eat anything but is nearly beaten to death. He gets thrown out with the trash and dead bodies, ending up being rescued by the undertaker. He is then discovered by Black and White (henchman of Nin Li Kong, a.k.a. the Master, pronounced Ninja Kong) and is beaten again. After nearly drowning, feeding on some leftover rice and pig feed, Lee finds some purpose. We see Lee performing lots of chores, games and even fighting skills. This is very inspirational stuff.

Ninja Kong (a.k.a - the Master) continues the carnage by taking out the man responsible for dishing out the punishment to Lee. He pours acid over his legs, beats him up and then throws him thrown off a cliff. Ninja Kong seems like he might be Triad. He is constantly trying to strong arm people. He has a scar under his left arm and a playboy mustache. The legless one manages to crawl away but kismet intervenes and instead he meets up with Lee. Lee is obviously angry and pounds on the "leg-less" master.

In the middle of this fight, a wise-old man pops out of a basket. He does this a few times during the movie. He teaches Lee to forgive and unite. United they can exorcise their revenge on the person responsible for everything : Ninja Kong. We next see the traditional "training" sequences. We see all the deeds these two "crippled" masters can pull off. This is some more inspirational stuff. There is also something about the 8 Jade Horses that people are after, but I lost track of things after a while.

The ending is a bit predictable and a final conflict between protagonists and antagonist is quite obvious. The methodology is the surprise. It must be seen to be believed. There is also a great first person perspective of getting our butts handed to us. This movie feels like it could have been used as communist manifesto. I can very easily imagine seeing this movie at a Saturday night "party meeting". What this movie does have is the guaranteed pick-me up. No matter how sick, angry, down or depressed you are, watching this movie will guarantee you will feel more content with your own situation. Who knew contentment could be had for a one time fee of $5 from your local DVD merchant?

-Celluloid Rehab

"The Crippled Masters" manages to establish it's tone quite early: within the first ten minutes, you already know this thing isn't going to make a lick of sense. If you were to get your arms cut off would you a)bleed heavily and shriek like a little girl or b)just sorta walk it off and go to a teahouse? If you went for a), you have no business being in this movie's universe. This movie relies heavily on the one gimmick it has going for it, but thankfully it's good enough to last...until around halfway or so. The problem I sorta have here is that they came up with a plot so genius that they didn't bother to do any more writing. The structure is your typical first act injustice-second act training-third act vengeance drill, done without any real wit, creativity or even decent-looking martial arts. These choreographies are really poor, it never looks the least bit convincing that these masters are hurting the villains at all. To make matters worse you hear punch sound effects on the worst possible times. Who dubs in a sound effect during a choke hold, let alone that particular sound effect? Did the sound guys even watch the movie while they did all this? It's just kind of a lazy production, that's all I'm saying. But the gimmick well, it still provides a lot of fun. You just wish they had saved this idea for a production that knew what to do with it. Oh well, I enjoyed it anyway.

Crippled Masters? Who get the ideas for these flicks? I can barely imagine the sick person who was looking for a story to make a good flick and all he come up with is "I know! I'll make a movie about two crippled guys who do kung fu!". Anyway, the guy who thaught of this get high points for originality, as watching an armless guy and a legless one beat up people is highly entertaining. Just don't expect anything more than cheesy, campy fun.

About the story, it goes a little like this: A man gets both arm chopped off(producing a low amount of blood for this kind of flick) by an evil warlord(who has a weird drawing thingie under the eye). He then stumble around with both arm chopped off, eating pig food and such. He then meet a follow handicapable(hehe) who had his leg melted with a very low quantity of acid by the same warlord. Fast running on hands and stump hits ensue.

First of all, you gotta respect the two actors' ability to cope with their handicap and do kung fu. And they're quite good at it too(for crippled guys, I mean).

Next thing that make this movie fun is the very low production value, causing bizarre and often funny mistakes. This film also got the loud punching sound that goes along with kung fu flicks.

In the end, I'd recommend renting this flick if you feel like watching two crippled kung fu masters fight again an evil warlord who can block with his back can be entertaining, or just for the novelty factor, because there isn't much else to it...

Let's see, what do we have: Old recluse teacher type, check. Bizarre training regimine, check. Tea house scene, check. Evil bad guy with secret problem, check. Bolo Yeung, hmmm missed on this point, but there is at least one wannabe. Actor with face painted a weird shade of white/green, check.

Unusual items that make this one different? Never seen the butt used with such force before! The use of too handicapped individuals was very different, one with a limited stump of an arm instead of two and one with two fairly useless legs.

All in all very typical of the genre. Fight scenes abound linked together with a bit of a plot. The most interesting part was watching the two heroes work their way around doing daily tasks.