Crippled Masters (1979)

Tian can di que

Cast:

Jackie Conn is Tang, the Crippled Master
Frankie Shum is Li Ho, the Crippled Master
Mu Chuan Chen

What the box says:

Two former foes find themselves facing a common enemy, the evil Ninja master who crippled them, and they train together in order to gain their revenge.

Plot:

At a Kung Fu school, a group following the orders of Lin Ching Kun cut the arms off Li Ho and and exile him as awarning to intimidate everyone else in the town.

A picture is worth a 1,000 words... Tang, another of Ching Kun's goons, is unnerved by it. As Li Ho tries to get by, he's harrassed by waiter before the the goons slap him around some more.

Later, the town's coffin maker helps Li Ho when the goons start beating him more. Chin explains how Li Ho needs to go away. Li wanders away, and a farmer lets him stay and teaches Li how he can work at his farm with arms. Let the montage ensue.

Who needs a one-armed swordsman when a no-armed Bo man is around?

Elsewhere, Ching Kun pours acid on Tang's legs. Ching Kunis attacks the students from another Kung Fu school to use their land to build a casino.

Tang stumps(instead of running) across Li Ho and begs for death. Li kicks him around until wizenend martial master convinces that both of them still have skills and how if they team up they can defeat Ching Kun. Let the training montage ensue where Ho uses his legs, and Tang trains with his arms.

This is why you should learn about the gym's exercises before paying for the membership fee.

The crippled masters return to town. Ho and Tang handle the goons and trail them when they learn that the Ching's men are after some robbers.

The goons can't handle the crippled masters who send Pow, Ching's whiny bootlicker, to warn Ching about how they'll be coming after him soon...

Pow and the other goons stumble across Ap Po who quickly beats all of those men. Pow hires him for Ching as an escort for the 8 Jade Horses.

Ho and Tang's master want them to steal the 8 Jade Horses from Ching. That night, they sneak into the and run off with the prize but have to face Ap Po who hands the horses over to them. He reveals they can use the horses to learn a special Kung Fu skill. Afterwards, Ching beats Ap Po for giving over the jade horses.

The heroes learn that Ching wants to trade Ap Po's life for the jade horses. Well, the master and the heroes go to rescue Ap Po and must fight through the goons. They rescue Ap Po who reveals that he's a government agent sent to investigate Ching because of his superior Kung Fu skills.

Ho, Tang, and Ap Po study the jade horses. The 2 heroes begin combining with each other to defeat Ching.

Town, Ap Po handles some of the goons. Ho and Tang come up against Ching. Finally, Tang gets on Ho's back.

Great idea, no one will sneak up on us... The backturning action ensues before they cripple Ching who falls over.

What I say:

Freaks is known for the number of physically disabled characters in the cast. Crippled Masters is a movie where one of the heroes doesn't have legs and the other doesn't have arms except for the left stump wouldn't be made today. These heroes are actually missing some limbs. They didn't try and hide body parts where some have an arm under their shirt.

B-movies have more than just characters like Evil Dead's Ash designing a prosthetic hand. Well, however, most of the action (One-Armed Executioner) and Kung Fu movies are more known for having characters learning the secret skills when the villain attacks them.

OK, a b-movie fan and reviewer has 2 major opposing views. 1. is the notion of all the unknown and unseen movies left for us to watch. 2. is eventually admitting you've not seen these movies. I've not found Crippled Avengers which was made before Crippled Masters, this is considered as a low-budget remake.

Crippled Mastersis not one of the precursors to the highly stylized martial art movies of anything like Shaolin Soccer. It's more similar to Brucespolitation movies that drag long and slow..

Plenty of martial arts and Kung Fu movies have plenty of weird characters. After all Deadly China Hero had a fight with Jet Lee wearing a chicken costume... Are the villains given some big birthmark or facial disfiguration to easily identify the head tyrants?

Would this movie have made more sense in it's original version? Well, I have to think that Ap Po popping up near the end of the movie would make more sense. For that matter, since the dialogue was dubbed into English, how do we know that Ap Po wasn't one of one of the townsfolk in the background or a student of the Kung Fu school's that Lin Ching Kun attacked.

Point to Ponder
Imagine if Burglar with an armless Whoopi Goldberg were made as a martial arts movie, wouldn't that be somewhat creepier than this movie?

Quotable Dubbed Dialogue
"Cut his arms off..."
"Don't talk to me like that. I've got money..."
"If I were a ghost, would I be eating pig swill?"
"You are normally very stupid, but this time you have devised a very good plan."
"Drink wine, it'll give you more courage."
"Why don't the bad guys die first in this world?"
Morals of the Story
A No-Armed man is a very warning to small towns.
Travelling by river without arms is easy.
A pig sty has an all-you-can-eat bufffet.
Evil martial artists want to open casinos.
Tossing rocks by your feet is easy to do.
Bamboo can be thrown by foot at super-fast projectile speed.