Crippled Avengers

Crippled Avengers (Can Que) (1978)

Runtime: 100 minutes

Directed by: Chang Cheh

Starring: Chen Kuan-Tai, Phillip Kwok Chun-Fung, Lo Meng, Sun Chien, Lu Feng

From: Shaw Brothers

You know, some of the characters here (hero or villain) could do battle against Thanos...

This weekend on the El Rey Network, they showed various films from the Shaw Brothers, which they used to do on a weekly basis but that went away. This was chosen as it was the highest rated film (here and at the IMDb) that I hadn't seen before and it fit my schedule. I could have seen this on Prime but I saved some bandwidth by checking it out that way... or at least that was the plan. Of course, things went awry as both my cable and Internet went out as I was watching the film, requiring me to finish viewing it today via Prime.

Crippled Avengers starts off with a mother's death via legs being chopped off and a young boy has his limbs from the forearms down cut off; you'd think that he and his dad would become heroes, but instead they turn into evil bastards... so evil that when the kid becomes an adult, he and his dad rule the area, assisted by prosthetics the son has... that are made of iron; hell, projectiles even shoot out of them. Several people mouth off and act foolish, so they get crippled... one becomes a deaf-mute, the second is blinded, the third has his legs chopped off, and the final suffers the cruelest fate by suffering a brain injury which “makes him an idiot”; thank Heavens it wasn't as awkward and Simple Jack as it could have been, although OF COURSE the idiot still has his kung-fu skills.

Even the blinded character could see how implausible and silly the plot of this motion picture is. That is fine with me when the movie is so damn fun; the camp value is accentuated by the fact that what is available is a cheesy dub instead of having subtitles. It is easy to root for the heroes and loathe the father, son, and their minions. The direction, choreography, sets, situations, etc. are top notch, as I've come to expect from a Shaw Brothers joint. The training that this unique quartet does to become great despite their handicaps: great. In the second half, there is plenty of action and it becomes more and more impressive-it's usually creative-building nicely to a rousing final battle & finale.

I discovered that what good words I heard about this film were not utterings from buffoons and knaves.