It all sounds like a sick joke (or an episode of South Park), but Crippled Avengers is a Chang Cheh film reuniting most of the cast from his hit film The Five Venoms.

The plot is easy enough to follow. Towards the late 70’s, Cheh seemed to have given up on complicated, historically based projects and favoured more direct and fast-moving action films. This one’s basically about a rogue lord (Chen Kuan-Tai) who, having had his family killed or handicapped in an attack at his home, becomes obsessed with disabling anyone who stands up to him. He and his son (who had both arms sliced off and replaced with iron prosthetics) basically bully their way around town. Coming up against him results in one man losing the power of speech and hearing, one man losing his sight, another his legs and finally one man is reduced to having a childlike mentality. These men group together and go to Eagle Mansion, where they spend three years training and learning to work together to compensate for each others’ disabilities.

Which sounds pretty run-of-the-mill, not to mention slightly crazy and in bad taste. However, the only truly wacko stuff happens right at the start – after his young son has both arms severed, we immediately cut to him many years later as a grown man with artificial arms and his father saying, “I told you I would give you new arms!”, to which his son says something along the lines of, “Yes, these are the seventh set and by far the best!” That kind of bad scripting to show a passage of time (there’s probably a name for it, but I don’t know what it is) is just embarrassing to watch. We also see these new arms, which can fire lethal darts and extend – which is also a bit screwy. Thing is, all this happens in the first few minutes and I don’t think he ever uses them to any great advantage again in the movie!

Thankfully, the rest of the film is sheer class. The physicality of these men is truly awesome, and their skill is simply breathtaking. The exciting and plentiful fight scenes are peppered with acrobatics we’re probably never going to see again in this digital age, and the training scenes are some of the best that Kung Fu film fans can want for. The four heroes exhibit a great sense of camaraderie and have a very tangible chemistry with each other (although this could be because we know them from The Five Venoms) that at times this enters into “buddy” movie territory.

I don’t know if it was intended, but there’s also some really good, dark humour in this; in fact, it’s riddled with it. Again, I’m paraphrasing, but when Dao’s son meets the soon-to-be-blind Avenger, the dialogue goes something like this:

Dao’s son: Fight me!
Avenger: But you have no arms!
Dao’s son: Well, I have no arms and you have no eyes. It’s a fair fight!
Avenger: Why would you say that? I HAVE eyes!
Poke!
Avenger: Aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaarrrgghh! (Writhes around on floor in agony)

You have to admit, he asked for it.

This is the first time I’ve seen Crippled Avengers, despite its notoriety. I know someone’s going to tell me otherwise, but I just don’t think it was ever available in the UK. Which turns out well in the end because I’ve seen something truly fantastic in the genre for the first time and it gives me hope that there’s still more great films out there for me to discover. It’s films like this that make me proud to be a Kung Fu film fan. Crippled Avengers: where have you been all my life?