CRIPPLED AVENGERS (1978)

(aka Mortal Combat; aka Return of the Five Deadly Venoms)
Directed by: Chang Cheh

Starring: The Five Deadly Venoms, Chen Kuan-tai

"Shapes! Shapes!" the grindhouse audience traditionally screamed as the onscreen martial heroes performed their geometric forms and stances. Assuming a nice isosceles horse stance, fingers locked into rigid semicircular hooks, the martial hero spun around backwards, reached up and under, and squared the root of PI as they pulled out the Adam's Apple of the villainous reprobate who'd gotten in their way. Advanced Onscreen Geometry, with a minor in whupass — nowhere is this course of study applied more intensely than in Chang Cheh's Crippled Avengers starring his Five Deadly Venoms crew. 



Chen Kuan-tai (sporting an evil variation of the mustache he will wear five years later in A Life of Ninja) is the invincible Chu Tin-to. The Tinam Tigers show up at his house to teach him a lesson, but he's not in. They debate whether or not to leave a note but decide instead to kill his wife and chop off his son's arms. Put out, Chu tells his son he's not handicapped, he's handi-capable, especially with the new bionic arms dad gets him for Christmas. They're better than real arms, why, they even shoot darts. Rather than embark on an inspirational speaking tour of local high schools, Chu and son (Venom Lu Feng) embark on a scary terrorizing mission, strutting around town, pushing people around, and coming up with creative cripplings for those who point out Lu Feng's resemblance to the Venus de Milo. The first four victims of Lu and Chu's armless rage? High-kicking Sun Chien loses his legs; muscle man Lo Mang joins the hearing loss community; Kuo Chi (aka Phillip Kwok, the honorable eye-patched villain from John Woo's Hard Boiled) gets the ol' iron fingers in the eyes treatment; and Chiang "Cutie-pie" Sheng (sensitively billed here as "An Idiot") has constricting metal bands clamped around his skull resulting in traumatic permanent brain damage. 



Luckily these are four of the Five Deadly Venoms. Lucky for us, unlucky for Lu and Chu. The Venoms learn Differently-Abled Kung fu and show up on Chu's birthday, much to the distress of Chu's Martha Stewart-ish major domo, Wong (giving new meaning to the term "the old ball and chain"), who desperately wants the party to go off without a hitch. As insurance he's invited every evil kung fu master to the celebration and just as you feel the movie is approaching a predictable climax, cylinders seven and eight start firing and things get really interesting. 



Director Chang Cheh had previously directed the Five Deadly Venoms in a movie called, appropriately enough, The Five Deadly Venoms. The team-up was so popular that they would go on to star in over ten movies together. Chang, god of the legendary Shaw Brothers Studio, specialized in male bonding and brotherhood movies. The Five Deadly Venoms were five men who'd strip off their shirts at the drop of a hat, with Peking Opera training, and martial arts skills that allowed them to spend more time off the ground than on it. The Chang/Venom team-up is as classic a pairing of director and actor as that of Josef Von Sternberg and Marlene Dietrich. Chang Cheh had found his soulmates, the Venoms, and the Venoms had found their the man who could get the best out of them, Chang Cheh. The movies they made together represent the best of everything they could do together. 



Filmed entirely on soundstages, Crippled Avengers gives us a lurid dreamscape of paper trees and split-level teahouses in which this nightmare of amputation and pain unfolds. Exotic weaponry is brought to bear against the seemingly indestructible bodies of the Five Venoms as they are crippled, learn martial arts, and then have their weaknesses exploited by their enemies in an exhausting series of end battles. Spanning 23 years, this movie kindles the flames of hate and revenge until they melt down men into monsters in an unending holocaust of martial glory. 

Part dream, part nightmare, Crippled Avengers oozes out of the id and spreads across the floor like a pool of blood. Satisfying on every level, this is as good as movies get.