Koong Fu Must See's!

Here's a new feature that will alternate with the Noirs and other favorite genres as we keep going. Behold, what is labelled Avengers Handicapped, but is better known as Crippled Avengers, Mortal Combat and Return of the Venoms. I generally know it as Crippled Avengers (Shaw Bros. 1978) dir. Chang Cheh, starring Phillip Kwok, Lo Meng, Lu Feng, Chiang Sheng, and Chen Kuan-tai. This is a Kung Fu epic, the movie starts with three swordsmen busting into Kung Fu Hero Chen's place, killing his wife and chopping off his son's hands, before Chen can kill them and swear revenge on everyone. Now we cut to years later, where Chen has fitted his boy with metal, weaponized hands, and turned him into a killing machine. Anyway, Chen is now a tyrant and a bully. When 3 guys accidentally offend him, he blinds one, mutes and deafens another and chops of the legs of the third man. Hero Chang Cheh finds the crippled men and vows to avenge them. He heads out to Chens compound where he is subdued and has his head pressed in a vice. This makes him funny. The cripples find him and set out to return him to his master, who in turn, teaches them appropriate styles to fit their handicaps, and orders the now deaf/mute former blacksmith, to make some iron feet for the guy who lost his. Thus the Crippled Avengers are born. I will tell you no more, except that it rocks! Chang Cheh was the greatest of all the Shah Bros. directors and had a real feel for epic, sweep and stylized violence. Check it out!