Monday, January 16, 2012

Handicaped Kung-Fu Action with the Crippled Masters

Strange but true, they made a series of Kung-Fu movies about two brothers, one with no arms and one with no legs. Actually, that's the main idea but not 100% accurate, ne has a stump of an arm only and the brother with no legs actually only had deformed and unusable legs. The actors were, in fact, handicapped. These films are from Taiwan in the early 80's, and look and sound more or less like older 70's and 80's Asian martial arts films. There's a fight scene and a few other scenes in the 3rd on that has background music that sounds essentially like the music in the background of a blackplotation film such as Shaft. This offensive joke was extended over at least three movies that I know of. I've only seen 2 and 3, the reason being that Chad Freeman was left a bunch of promotional copies of Crippled Masters 2 and 3 by Apprehensive Films who have the rights to the first and second films. I haven't seen the original Crippled Masters film because I had the opportunity to get free copies of 2 and 3. There is no way I would pay money to see a Crippled Masters films. They're essentially a crippled joke pronged across several films. They did, curiously, bother to give these films plot lines. There is, however, no real continuity between the films. In number 2 the brothers are competing for the love of a girl suffering from temporary blindness and battle a local warlord that threatens their village. It's actually a semi-watchable film. I actually don't like Crippled Masters 3 at all. The third one is slow going. In the beginning because the brothers move to a the big city to find work, and the first 30 minutes or so deals with them having trouble paying the rent. In the third one the brother who can't walk is rejected by a martial arts school even though he is clearly already a master of martial arts. The third one has a whole lot of scenes with the one without arms performing acrobatic tricks. Crippled Masters 3 has little real plot and very little action in it. It would seem impossible but the Crippled Masters series managed to jump the shark in the third film. At the end of the 3rd one, the brother with no legs is able to fly which is pretty funny. The rest of the movie is like watching wallpaper. I suppose it is pretty demented that not only do I have strong opinions specifically about the Crippled Masters films I have opinions about one Crippled Masters film versus another. I'd like to be able to write a rave review of these films because of how offensive that would be, but the truth is the third one is extremely slow.

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