Saturday, May 24, 2014

Mr. No Legs (1979)

Director: Ricou Browning

Writer: Jack Cowden

Composer: ???

Starring: Richard Jaeckel, Ted Vollrath, Rance Howard, Ron Slinker, Lloyd Bochner, Joie Chitwood, John Agar, Courtney Brown, Joan Murphy, Luke Halpin, Billy Blueriver, Jim Kelly

More info: IMDb

Tagline: Don't Cross Him or He'll Cut You Down to Size

Plot: Meet Mr. No Legs! Deadly professional hit-man for a drug syndicate... and a limbless cripple! With his cool wheelchair, armed with shotguns and shurikens, and his amazing kung fu skills he means trouble for everyone he confronts, even his own boss! Things get ugly when a unlucky drug dealer kills his girl by an accident, especially because the girl's brother is a cop! And No Legs apparently have his own plans how to take over the whole business.



My rating: 5.5/10

Will I watch it again?  No.

THIS SPOILER ALERT HAS LEGS!!!  YARRRRRR!!!

What a great poster!  What a great tagline!  What a great idea!  What an amazing title!!!  Too bad it's slow as fuck and there's very little 'no legs' action.   Sure, Mr. No Legs gets a couple of lines but Mr. No Legs doesn't do jack squat until one hour in, leaving you 25 minutes left in the picture.  It's a great ass kicking scene but a picture sold to the public like it was deserves more.



8 minutes later he shows up at a warehouse to take care of the bad guys with his tricked out wheelchair complete with machine guns and ninja stars only to be gunned down dead within seconds?!?!  We've still got almost 20 minutes to go!  The music score is cheap and often feels out of place. I've seen this 2 or 3 times already and each time I think it's going to get better but it doesn't.  I REALLY want to like this film but when the titular character has less than ten minutes of screen time and he's barely being used to his full potential, you've got to question the film makers' salt.  Director Browning was previously known for working with animals, directing episodes of FLIPPER (1964) and GENTLE BEN (1967).  Take a few seconds and read about Ted Vollrath, the man who was Mr. No Legs.  He was an admirable man. 







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