Crippled Avengers

When a martial arts master's wife is killed and his son's arms cut off, he begins taking revenge on everyone around him: he blinds one man, leaves another deaf and mute, cuts off another's legs and destroys the mind of a fourth. The four come together, train for years, and each turns his impairment into a technique. Chang Cheh made it for Shaw Brothers with the fighting ensemble known as the Venom Mob. The choreography is among the hardest in the genre: fighting on iron legs, the blind man defending by sound, the deaf man and the blind man working as one. The story is simple and purposeful. It is the best-known example in Hong Kong martial cinema of staging disability as method rather than weakness. Who it is for: viewers who like classic kung fu and the Shaw Brothers period. Who it is not for: anyone troubled by disability used as spectacle.