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The Crippled Masters: Kung Fu Fighting with Disability Pride

Photo: courtesy Film Masterrs.

The word cripple isn’t one any longer used in respectful discussions of disability, but here in time for Disability Pride Month is a release from Film Masters that looks back to a time when that word was common parlance for descriptions of disability. The Crippled Masters (1979) is a Kung Fu film with a twist: its story is of two protagonists, both martial arts artists, one who has lost both arms and the other who has lost both legs, as they seek revenge against the villainous master who disabled them. Its title might not seem too sensitive, its narrative at best serviceable, but its treatment of its heroes is both respectful and imaginative. The Crippled Masters is by no means a great film, but it’s one worth watching for any fan of the genre or anyone interested in representations of disability.

Film Masters, the consortium of film preservation and restoration distributors founded in 2023, looks each month to restore lesser-known films to their original quality with modern remastering techniques and contextual special features—their specialty is films like these, the historical curios and strange oddities than turn forgotten flicks into cult favorites. Their remastering of The Crippled Masters, available in a special collector’s edition on Blu-ray and DVD releasing July 23, 2024, provides a handsome restoration from original 35mm elements alongside.

The grindhouse-era Crippled Masters was originally released internationally in Mandarin in 1979 as Tiān cán dì quē, later released in the U.S. in 1982. Directed by Chi Lo, aka Joe Law (Magic Swords, Hong men xiong di, Hei lung), the film’s the story of the two protagonists’ revenge offers only a bare thread of a plot: its villain’s motivations are simple unprecipitated villainy and cruelty, and the two like-and-unlike men must form an unlikely alliance to defeat him. Once they deliver the final blow, the camera freezes, as if there can be nothing more said or done; don’t expect any characterization or theme to follow from the a denouement, for when the fighting is done, it’s time for the credits.

An armless man prepares to fight a villain.
Chao-Ming Kang, aka Frankie Shum (L) in The Crippled Masters. Photo: courtesy Film Masters.

Instead, The Crippled Masters is all about the spectacle, for better and worse, of the two protagonists and their teaming together in unique and inventive ways to fight—first each other, of course, then a slew of random henchmen before working their way towards the big bad. The two stars are Sung-Chuan Shen, aka Jackie Conn, and Chao-Ming Kang, aka Frankie Shum. Both in real life were both martial arts artists with disabilities: Conn without the use of his legs, Shum without arms. At its best, The Crippled Masters provides a dizzying and delightful display of the two’s clever dodges, blocks, and blows, both individually and collaboratively, triumphing over their shared adversity. Scenes that require Conn and Shum to combine their talents to function “as one” are gleefully inventive. And in that regard, the film is indeed an important one, one that honors rather than exploits its characters’ disability—and even better, casts disabled performers in its key roles.

Keep in mind, for a good time in Hollywood, for contrast, prestige films not only routinely employed physically able actors in disabled roles, but also earned acclaim and awards for their doing so (in, to name a few, My Left Foot, Forrest Gump, Million Dollar Baby, Rain Man, Born on the Fourth of July). Between 1988 and 2015 a third of the Best Actor Oscars were awarded for abled actors playing characters with disabilities. Even so, The Crippled Masters falls prey to one of the most recognizable cliches of representation: the villain is doubly disfigured, both by a large humpback and also by an unsightly scar, just so there can be no ambiguity about who is truly evil here. One might also wonder, during the nondiegetic opening credit sequence, if the film will serve up anything other than a voyeuristic spectacle of its stars’ talents.

The Crippled Masters team up to defeat the villain.
Sung-Chuan Shen, aka Jackie Conn (Center) in The Crippled Masters. Photo: courtesy Film Masters.

Fortunately, it does. Shum and Conn teamed up together for four films in the late 1970s and early 1980s, of which The Crippled Masters is the first. It’s good enough to wish Film Masters had been generous enough to track down one of the others for a bonus feature: to date, more than half of their releases have been double features. The Crippled Masters may hit home hardest for a slice of the traditional Venn diagram intersecting fans of Kung Fu grindhouse B-movie mayhem and those delighted to see the rarity of physically disabled but nonetheless highly skilled practitioners playing versions of themselves onscreen.

There may indeed be an element of exploitation to the film, certainly beginning with and not limited to its title, but Shum and Conn elevate it far above a simple Kung Fu freak show. Theirs is a story of rigorous training, resourcefulness, determination, and mastery as well as a deep reliance on each other—their own community—to achieve their goals. Only the hard-hearted and physically ableist are going to be able to resist.

The film’s appeal rests in part on the charisma of its leads. Shum was born with Thalidomide syndrome, a defect resulting from the widespread prescription of the drug from 1958-62, when it was intended as a sedative for pregnant women suffering morning and other sicknesses but that led to numerous birth defects: facial palsy, shortened limbs, malformation of hands and digits, damage to ears and eyes, sensory impairment, or other damage to internal organs, skeletal structure, or the brain. With no right arm and only a flipper for his left, Shum is remarkable in gripping, grappling, and and throwing. Conn, meanwhile, has legs but they are not functional; even so, his character delivers crushing blows with cartwheels and other gymnastic feats as he walks using his hands. A backpack allows Shum to carry Conn in the climactic scene as the two fight together as one.

The remastered print was scanned in 2K from a rare theatrical 35mm release print and is presented in its original aspect ratio of 2.35:1. Although the original film stock was poor, the restored version is of excellent, crisp quality. The Blu-ray and DVD discs are region free with DTS-HD/Dolby AC3s audio.

The Crippled Masters cover art, featuring the two disabled heroes fighting off a horde of attackers.
Courtesy: Film Masters.

Special Features

  • Audio commentary by Will Sloan and Justin Decloux of The Important Cinema Club. The two podcast co-hosts provide a rambling, lively, insightful, and well-researched commentary track. If there were a record for words per minute on a commentary track, and to be clear there is not, Sloan and Decloux might well hold it. Their chat feels entirely extemporaneous and interactive as the two deliver the goods, with insights about the studio, the production, the co-stars, and the subgenres of Kung Fu films contemporaneous with this one.
  • Kings of Kung Fu: Releasing the Legends. This newly-commissioned documentary is narrated by author/researcher Chris Poggiali and traces the multiple generic contexts of The Crippled Masters. The featurette is authoritative, even if it suffers slightly from its constant stream of often-unidentified and uncontextualized clips that accompany Poggiali’s narration.
  • Trailers. Also included on the disc are a compilation of Kung Fu trailers (SD) from Something Weird Video; a recut of the original theatrical trailer from restored elements; and an original raw theatrical trailer.
  • Additionally included are subtitles for the deaf and hard of hearing, even for the commentary track and featurette—this is something Film Masters regularly provides, to their credit, and perfectly complementary in this instance to a film touting its sensitivity to disability and one which its competitors (looking at you, Criterion) almost never provide. A Mandarin-language audio track is provided for the main feature.

The accompanying 16-page color booklet, ensconced in a black jewel case (though the disc is not 4K), features a brief foreword from Phillip Elliott Hopkins about the film’s restoration and presentation on Turner Classic Movies and, secondly, a more detailed discussion of the film’s representation of disability by Lawrence Carter-Long, addressing the film’s subversion of dominant narratives. Both Carter-Long and Sloan and Justin Decloux discuss the spectacle of its stars’ disabilities and invoke the specter of Tod Browning’s Freaksa seminal and complex text in disability studies—in their discussions and do so with detail. Like it, The Crippled Masters presents its disabled characters as three-dimensional heroes and casts them with like-disabled actors; unlike Freaks, this film does not fall prey to the trope of suggesting that “freakdom” is a fate worse than death for a “normal.” The Crippled Masters will never be as well-known, nor as infamous, as that title, but Film Masters’ presentation here will surely bring it to new, and newly appreciative, audiences.

The Crippled Masters is available for pre-order from retailers on the Film Masters website. Suggested retail price is $24.95 (Blu-ray) / $19.95 (DVD), and the film is available July 23, 2024.

Written by J Paul Johnson

J Paul Johnson is Professor Emeritus of English and Film Studies at Winona (MN) State University. Since retiring in 2021 he publishes Film Obsessive, where he reviews new releases, writes retrospectives, interviews up-and-coming filmmakers, and oversees the site's staff of 25 writers and editors. His film scholarship appears in Women in the Western, Return of the Western (both Edinburgh UP), and Literature/Film Quarterly. An avid cinephile, collector, and curator, his interests range from classical Hollywood melodrama and genre films to world and independent cinemas and documentary.

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