‘The Crippled Masters’ (1979) Blu-ray Review: An Astounding Restoration

There’s a wealth of unknown films out there that can be best described as oddities. They’re films so outlandish; you just can’t find any words to describe them. One such film is a gem from Hong Kong called The Crippled Masters (1979), which stars Frankie Shum and Jackie Conn, two actors and martial artists with real disabilities. It’s exploitative, but there’s more to it than meets the eye. Film Masters has lovingly worked to make this disc a worthy release. I was very impressed by the film and the work they put into getting it out to a whole new audience.

Lee Ho (Frankie Shum) and Tang (Jackie Conn) both live their lives on the other side of the law until they are betrayed by their boss, the evil Lin Chang Cao (Chen Mu Chuan). The men are tortured, disfigured, and left for dead until they meet one another as enemies. After being taken in by an old monk, they learn to overcome their disabilities and to trust one another in their quest for revenge against Lin. It takes time, hard work, and dedication to learn a new way of life, but is Lin Chang Cao and his crew too deadly for them to defeat? Lee Ho and Tang dive into the action regardless, and hopefully, they make it out alive.

Frankie Shum has no arms, while Jackie Conn essentially has no legs. Seeing them at first is a shock; you don’t know what to think. Once that wears off, it’s rather inspiring to see these two men defying the odds and using their disabilities to their advantage. The action scenes are done well, and the finale is crazy. There are no stunt doubles; the actors are doing it all themselves. The story is pretty generic, but the stars shine and give it something extra.

Don’t get me wrong, it’s totally a grindhouse/exploitation film from the opening frame. However, if you dig a little bit deeper, maybe you can see what I see. Shum and Conn appeared in three other films together, and I’d also be interested in seeing them.

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What Film Masters did as far as the restoration goes is rather astounding. They’re awfully proud of their own work (as they should be) and included some great extras for comparison. They have a feature that allows you to watch select scenes, side by side, from the 2K scan and the scan after countless hours of restoration. The difference is like night and day. The restoration is much cleaner, the scratches and pops are hardly noticeable, and the colors are more vivid.

Film Masters also includes a second version of the movie, the 2K scan before the restoration. This is interesting because there are hard-burned German subtitles on the print. How they removed them so clearly is way above my pay scale. I never would have guessed they had been there. To sweeten the pot even more, there’s a Mandarin language track (it’s English dubbed), a commentary by Will Sloan and Justin Decloux, Kings of Kung Fu mini-documentary, a collection of martial arts film trailers from Something Weird, original and re-cut trailers for the film, and extensive liner notes by Lawrence Carter-Long.

There’s a lot to enjoy on this disc, and the film itself is a one-of-a-kind, not counting the other three films they did. It’s definitely out there, but the uniqueness of it and the stars skyrockets this in a world all its own.

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