Film Masters
Blu-ray Release: July 23, 2024
Video: 2.35:1/1080p/Color
Audio: Mandarin and English DTS-HD Master Audio 2.0 Mono (restored cut); English Dolby Digital 2.0 Mono (raw scan cut)
Subtitles: English SDH (dubtitles), English for commentary track
Run Time: 91:28 (restored cut), 91:33 (raw scan cut)
Director: Law Chi (aka Joe Law)
Two men, one who has lost both arms and the other who has lost both legs, seek revenge against the villainous master who crippled them. As they hone their skills, they form a deep bond and develop innovative techniques that capitalize on their strengths and compensate for their weaknesses. (From Film Masters’ official synopsis)
The late ‘70s were a wild time for kung fu cinema in the west, as A-level films from major studios, like Shaw Bros. and Golden Harvest, were gaining in popularity as grindhouse and drive-in double-features alongside low-budget cash-ins with tasteless exploitation hooks. The most notorious of these films tended to fall into the Bruceploitation category, so named for their exploitation of the untimely death of the martial arts genre’s first international superstar, Bruce Lee. On the less shocking side of the spectrum is a trilogy of films from mainland Chinese actor/director Joe Law (aka: Law Chi) that featured a duo of physically disabled kung fu heroes.
The first and most well-remembered of the series was 1979’s The Crippled Masters, released stateside in 1982, which set itself apart from other sub-Shaw, cheapo productions by utilizing performers with actual disabilities – Frankie Shum (aka: Shen Sung-chuan) was born with thalidomide syndrome, leading to extremely underdeveloped arms, and Jackie Conn (aka: Kang Chao-ming) had similarly underdeveloped legs (possibly phocomelia). This gives the film its transgressive ‘freak show’ nature, which Law magnifies with a simplified, very familiar plot (note that there is no credited writer) and by acknowledging the uncomfortable humor of the situation. It’s not a full-bore comedy, but it is dotted with googly-eyed comic relief characters and goofball slapstick. I hesitate to call The Crippled Masters patently offensive, because bullying the disabled is depicted as unequivocally bad and the ultimate goal of the film is to show off Shum and Conn’s acrobatic skills, but it is definitely designed to raise eyebrows and challenge sensibilities.
There is a long tradition of martial arts fiction about disabled fighters overcoming physical adversity and limitations, from Zatoichi the blind swordsman, to Chang Cheh-directed Shaw Bros. classics One-Armed Swordsman (1967) and Crippled Avengers (1978). The Crippled Avengers is probably the movie that Law and his cohorts were trying to simulate here. The two plots are relatively similar, but, more importantly, Chang’s film was a massive hit that helped boost the reputation of the director, the studio, and the acting troupe known as the Venom Mob, which would’ve inspired smaller studios to follow suit. The Crippled Masters couldn’t match the star power of the Venom Mob, but, again, those guys and generations of Zatoichi actors were only pretending to thrive in spite of injury or genealogical conditions – Law had a couple of real-life inspirational figures on hand.
The choreography and martial arts direction are credited to Chen Mu-Chuan, who, like Law, worked on a lot of movies that only the most ardent kung fu fan would recognize (the only one I recognized was Chen Kuan Tai’s 1977 version of Iron Monkey). Chen tends to focus on Shum and Conn’s specific talents and for good reason, because those are the scenes people remember, but there are also a handful of standard-issue fights between characters who have all of their arms and legs intact that wouldn’t be out of place in a Chang Cheh movie. The major difference is the clear lack of budget. Shaw Bros. and Golden Harvest movies are rushed and cash-poor compared to their Hollywood counterparts, but they had the money, studio talent, and general infrastructure to make lush, cinematic costume dramas. All Law has is his grit, his gimmick, his performers, a few pretty Taiwanese locations, and the will to make it work.
I wasn’t there for The Crippled Masters’ initial American release (despite being technically alive at the time), but I was there when it became a minor sensation in the late ‘90s as late Gen-Xers & early Millennials discovered it on home video and cable TV. Regrettably, too many of us were watching it to laugh at the audacity of disabled people doing physically demanding things. Fortunately, that flippancy often turned to genuine respect for the genre, because, for all of its exploitation spectacle and bargain basement production values, The Crippled Masters is a well-designed kung fu showcase. This is all anecdotal, of course, but I did personally know more than one person my age who became a classic martial arts fan, not after seeing a Jackie Chan revival screening or The Matrix (1999), but because they bought a copy of Law’s film on VHS as a joke.
Video
The US VHS release that got people my age excited about The Crippled Masters was released for rent and sale by New Line Cinema in 1996. After that, the film sort of disappeared, aside from a non-anamorphic, 1.33:1 grey market DVD from Diamond Entertainment in 2003 and a Spanish PAL disc. The history of this particular Blu-ray debut and its new HD transfer is unique, to say the least. It begins with a beat-up Belgian 35mm print source, which was scanned in 2K and prepped for significant digital restoration. Fans had apparently written off the possibility of an HD version of this low-budget film, seemingly forgotten by even the people that made it, until this material was discovered.
The catch here is that, being a Belgian theatrical release, the print has burnt-in French and Dutch subtitles. It is basically impossible to ‘clone tool’ out two big chunks of text like that, so Film Masters made the difficult choice to crop out the offending subtitles. In order to maintain the 2.35:1 aspect ratio, they also have to zoom a bit, meaning that there is sometimes significant information missing on the bottom, left, and right of the frame. It’s not an ideal solution, so Film Masters have also included a ‘raw scan’ transfer, which gives us an idea as to the impact of the cropping, as well as the rough condition of the print. I’ve included three comparison sliders on this page (remaster left, raw scan right) to help illustrate this. As you can see, scenes without dialogue – of which there are many – are not cropped. Moreover, the zooming doesn’t lead to obvious distortion, so it seems unlikely that most viewers would even know the difference.
Putting aside the cropping thing (again, it only affects scenes with dialogue), the remaster is a solid effort. A lot of (but not early all) of the extensive print damage has been digitally scrubbed, warping has been corrected, and grading has been regulated, though there are still cases where I actually prefer the raw scan’s color quality. In fact, I quite enjoyed the grindhouse grit of the raw scan. Going back to the remaster, grain texture can be clumpy and contrast levels are cranked pretty high, but I believe this is the result of working from a print source specifically, not the result of over-filtering digital noise. There appear to be missing frames scattered throughout the film, which I’m guessing are sometimes due to major damage to the ends of reels, as seen during the raw scan cut, where the end of most reels exhibit several frames of blow-out and flashing white. Overall, this 1080p transfer was a big challenge and the people behind it made the right choice by giving us multiple viewing options.
Audio
The Crippled Masters is presented with Mandarin and English dub options, both in uncompressed LPCM mono sound. This film was almost certainly shot without sound, so both tracks are dubs – lip sync doesn’t match and I have no way of knowing if the original actors were dubbing their own performances in Mandarin. Having gotten to know the film via the New Line VHS, I prefer the English dub for nostalgic purposes. It is a bit softer and quieter than the Mandarin dub, though that track has more distortion issues at higher volumes. Both tracks are solid efforts, so you’ll be in good shape, no matter your preference.
The raw scan cut features only a compressed Dolby Digital mono English track.
Extras
Commentary with The Important Cinema Club (restored cut only) – While doing their best to use delicate modern language, Justin Decloux and Will Sloan of the Important Cinema Club podcast explore the film’s cult reputation, the careers of the cast & crew, the differences between Hong Kong and Taiwanese cinema in the ‘70s, the international kung-fu and Bruceploitation booms, the thorniness of exploiting disabled actors, the history of bad movie fandom, the hazards of film preservation, and more.
Kings of Kung Fu: Releasing the Legends (30:48, HD) – This 2015 featurette is narrated by These Fists Break Bricks: How Kung Fu Movies Swept America and Changed the World co-author (with Grady Hendrix; Mondo Books, 2022) Chris Poggiali and explores the first generation of Hong Kong (and Taiwanese) film distribution in the United States during the ‘60s and ‘70s. It includes trailer clips and advertising images.
Raw scan cut of The Crippled Masters (as discussed above)
Kung fu movie trailer compilation from Something Weird Video (18:31, SD, non-anamorphic)
Restoration comparison (2:21, HD)
Remastered and raw scan versions of the original English language trailer
The images on this page are taken from the BD and sized for the page. Larger versions can be viewed by clicking the images. Note that there will be some JPG compression.
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