The Return of the 5 Deadly Venoms (Dragon Dynasty) – DVD Review
The Film:
Fans will probably remember this film from its better known title, Crippled Avengers, as a group of locals are getting irritiated with a pissed off tyrant who raised his son after he lost his hands, into an unstoppable martial artist with metallic hands. Unable to stop him, these locals become crippled and soon bond and learn from an old master to use their disabilities to develop them into unique martial art masters in their own right. Evil tyrannt? Brotherly bonding? Awesome martial art fighting scenes? It must be a Chang Cheh film!
While the title The Return of the 5 Deadly Venoms makes it seem as if this film is a sequel to Cheh’s kung fu masterpiece in The 5 Deadly Venoms (here), it really only reveals its connection to the stars Philip Kwok, Lo Meng, Sun Chien and Chiang Sheng from that film. Widely known as the Venom Mob, the group of actors that were friends since childhood and attended the Peking Opera School in Taiwan before meeting director Chang Cheh and moving on to the Shaw Brothers studio in Hong Kong. They acted together and fought together, and by 1981 they were on top of their game, and in Crippled Avengers, all of this shows. What makes this film a blast is the creative handling of their disabilities and how they gain iron legs or developing a super sense of hearing, add a bit of flavor to these films, where the training montages take up a third of the running time. By 1981, the famous Shaw Brothers studio was about running out of steem, but at least Cheh delivers another stellar film.
The nature of the film’s premise has made Crippled Avengers a fan favorite amongst martial arts film fans, where some has called it a cult masterpiece. It’s a lot of fun; the weapon battles in particular are really well executed as is some of the fighting. It gets a little long at 100 minutes, but for fans, it’s bliss. Kung fu bliss.
The DVD:
Audio/Video: Dragon Dynasty offers up another stellar video presentation. There might be a little post-production digital clean-up, because of few times, skins look like wax, but overall everything is superb. Fine upgrade over those Asian bootlegs that you need to throw away. The audio, whether it’s in its Mandarin Mono or English dub, it’s clear and clean.
Extras are typical of recent Dragon Dynasty releases, meaning nothing.
Conclusion: Another great Shaw Brothers film gets a stellar Dragon Dynasty release. Too bad we can’t get something as an extra, though.
The Film: Rating: 
The DVD: Rating:
I like your site, especially the reference to the venom mob. As teachers last pupil said in “The Five Deadly Venoms” – Poision Clan rocks the world.
I am a big fan of the venom movies, I have nearly 20 of them on VHS, also a couple of Wu Tang and 36th chamber.
Although I like all the venoms, my favorite has always been the lizard.
Jon Reply:
November 22nd, 2010 at 7:50 am
Thanks! We love the Venoms too.