Will anyone survive the wheelchair of mayhem?
We launch season 3 with a bang, heading to the mean streets of Tampa Bay to learn about drug smuggling and murder cover-ups. Despite what the title of the film implies, Mr. No Legs is weirdly absent throughout much of the film…but will that hurt or help it’s rating?
Listen at…
Grading the Film
As always, this film is reviewed with scores recorded in four main categories, with 1 being the best and 5 being the worst. Like the game of golf, the lower the score the better.
How accurate is the representation?
Jeff – 2 / 5
Sarah – 1 / 5
Total – 3 / 10
How difficult was it to watch the movie?
Sarah – 1 / 5
Jeff – 1 / 5
Total – 2 / 10
How often were things unintentionally funny?
Jeff – 2 / 5
Sarah – 1 / 5
Total – 3 / 10
How far back has it put disabled people?
Sarah – 1 / 5
Jeff – 1 / 5
Total – 2 / 10
The Verdict
Is this actually art??
Transcript
Jeff [talking over the theme music of Mr. No Legs]:
Tampa Bay, Florida. The 1970s. When a college boy turned drug dealer accidentally kills his girlfriend, there is only one person who can solve the problem. The amazing Mr. No Legs. Drugs, murder, a man with no legs. This movie has everything that you could possibly want and will likely piss off the liberals. Tune in to Mr. No Legs.
[Invalid Culture’s punk theme song, “Arguing With Strangers” by Mvll Crimes]
Jeff:
Welcome back to a new thrilling season of Invalid Culture and boy oh boy, do we have a year in store for you. As always, I am your host, Jeff Preston, and I am joined by my co-host, victim, Sarah Curry. How are you doing, Sarah?
Sarah:
I’m pretty good. How are you doing this year?
Jeff:
Well, I got to say it’s a new year and we have quite the belated Christmas present that’s been delivered to us here in January. This month we watched The Amazing Mr. No Legs. This is a movie from 1978, which you may have not heard of because it’s actually … Well, it was actually very difficult to get your hands on it, but thanks to some miraculous restoration, I was able to get my hands quite easily on a Blu-ray of this film, which may or may not be the final cut of the film. From the box, Mr. No Legs is about the “double amputee”. Mr. No Legs may not see much of a threat at first, but cross him and you’ll see why he’s Florida’s ruthless drug kingpin D’Angelo’s deadliest enforcer. With his unique martial arts mastery and shotgun welded wheelchair, Mr. No Legs is virtually unstoppable. But when a henchman kills the sister of a straight shooting cop, D’Angelo’s whole enterprise made undone and threatened to bring Mr. No Legs down with it. Would you say that’s a pretty accurate description of the film, Sarah?
Sarah:
It’s only missing the 15 minute long car chase, but I think other than that it’s pretty faithful.
Jeff:
Yeah, that’s spoiler, I think. You don’t want to spoil the ending there for people.
Sarah:
I don’t want to spoil a seventh of the entire film.
Jeff:
Yeah. You got to keep that under wraps. Under wraps.
Sarah:
Gotcha.
Jeff:
Now, this of course is … It’s a movie from the ’70s. It is a grind house film that is exactly what you probably imagined it is. It’s shooting, it’s punching, it’s bar fights, but it’s also a whole lot more than that, particularly because of the people that were involved in the making of this film, which is almost as shocking because the film itself. So Sarah, what can you tell us about Mr. No Legs?
Sarah:
According to my research, there is a kind of Adam Sandler like cast style to this film, as in the producer and the head writer of the screenplay already knew each other from five different adaptations of Flipper, like the dolphin, which apparently has five films. And then they called up all their friends in Tampa, Florida and said, “Hey, I’m doing a ’70s action film,” except it was the ’70s so I guess they didn’t say the current year, but they also might’ve. You don’t know. Because genre evolves and is inherent like that. And they got a shocking amount of people. They got an actual double leg amputee to play the titular role and he is also a double black belt in karate in real life. And he was a Marine and the director was on the US Air Force swim team. And the director was also a scary movie monster in one of these old horror films so he had some notoriety for that. There were a number of action movie stars in this that people recognized from other films. There was … Oh no, it wasn’t John Agar. John Agar was known for being the former husband of Shirley Temple. So everybody here is also really, really old.
So it was hard to get the original cut of this film and we still don’t know if we have the full cut of this film, and I think we can talk about that a little bit more when we get to the ending because that actually made the ending make more sense. Because you said you got the Blu-ray, which was restored in 2020. It came out in 1978, but it was filmed in 1975. But between ’78 and 2020, the original pre-VHS film versions, which were apparently recorded on a rarer film stock, were damaged. So they had to restore the damaged film stocks to get to the VHS versions to get to the Blu-ray versions and so on and so forth. So we don’t actually know if we have the full version of Mr. No Legs, also known as … What was the UK name? Destructor. Also known as The Amazing Mr. No Legs, also known as Gunfighter, which was the script name, and also re-released as Killers Die Hard.
Jeff:
Yeah. So this is a prequel to Die Hard is what you’re telling me.
Sarah:
Yeah. And it does better. It goes harder than Die Hard.
Jeff:
Yeah. There was a ton of very familiar actors in this. Rance Howard was here from Chinatown. Luke Halpin, also from Flipper. Flipper is all over this movie. I would say that we wouldn’t have this film if it wasn’t for Flipper.
Sarah:
It was a reunion of Flipper.
Jeff:
I never thought I would say that ever on this podcast.
Sarah:
Yep. But here we are.
Jeff:
So while it was difficult for them to actually get this film out, whether it be for the damaged film stock and the VHS and then numerous different names or the re-releasing, there is still a bit of critical acclaim for this film, in part because it becomes a bit of a cult classic. Which I was skeptical of at first. I fully understand now that I have watched the film. The film really became popular, weirdly though, in the 2000s. Probably because of the internet making it easier for people to access this film, which led to a variety of film websites and podcasts like this one that started covering this absurd film, which then spread its popularity. But people’s response to the movie is actually really interesting in a very kind of strange way. I have been provided a series of reviews for us to go through and talk a little bit about. Most of them have been culled from our favorite place, Amazon reviews. They’re the best, most authentic reviews, I would say, of popular culture. So let’s dive in a little bit.
Our first one, this is a five star review from Sean R., coming to us from Australia in 2020. So this would’ve been right in the thick of COVID. Take that for what you will. The title of this review, “Have you ever wanted to see a guy with no legs do kung fu?? This movie is insane. It’s got everything. Bar fights, detective work, a wheelchair with guns and ninja stars and bad assery all over. More movies need to be made like this.”
Sarah:
I actually included that review because I thought it was hysterical and probably reductive because there’s no way the film actually comes out this way. It’s actually pretty dead on and it’s funny to read after the fact because he pretty much nails it.
Jeff:
Yeah, it’s a pretty good summary actually of this entire film in a lot of ways. I do enjoy the fact that he wrote this in 2020 talking about a movie that was made in the ’70s, what 50 years later, and is like more movies need to be like this.
Sarah:
It was visionary.
Jeff:
They perfected it. They perfected filmmaking in 1975.
Sarah:
The cinematography anyway. And I think I called it when I was talking to you, the David Caruso style line delivery, which was obviously made pre David Caruso. But it felt like every single scene, two cops had to look at each other and deliver ’70s quips just minus the sunglasses.
Jeff:
The script for this movie … I don’t know if this movie was actually written or if they were just feeding them lines off camera.
Sarah:
They gave them a general scenario and just said go.
Jeff:
But sharp though. There were so many zingers in this film.
Sarah:
There were.
Jeff:
And they were presented in a way that didn’t feel like they were looking at the camera after they dropped the line and be like, “I don’t get it.” They were just sort of seamlessly integrated in this casual way. It was great. I will say my biggest qualm, and this isn’t a script qualm, but the accents in this movie were terrible. D’Angelo talks like Al Capone for some reason. One of the cops’ girlfriends allegedly has a Latina accent. Maybe it’s an eastern European accent, maybe it’s a Scandinavian accent, maybe it’s a speech impediment. I have no idea what was going on there. It seemed like every character was thinking about a character that they’d seen in a film previously and was like, “I’ll just try and sound like that.” So the mobster guy is like, “I’m just going to sound like a mobster, which sounds like a person from New York, even though I’d be in Tampa.” And the girl was like, “Oh, I like bond movies and I’m by the pool a lot, so I’m going to sound like a bond girl.” Who are European generally. That was outrageous.
Sarah:
My bet for the brunette danger girl was that she grew up in Tampa like everyone else in this film and doesn’t have a natural Latina accent. And the director said to make her more exotic, “Hey, can you bullshit us an accent from your country?” And she goes, “I’m from here. I’m from Tampa.” And he goes, “Just do it. Just please.”
Jeff:
Right. And she was trying to do it live. She was imagining what an accent might sound like in her head as she was trying to parrot the lines
Sarah:
That is frame for frame what I think happened in the shag room on set.
Jeff:
Yeah, absolutely. Okay. So we got another review. This one is from, I believe IMDB, from Humanoid of Flesh, which is good. I prefer my humans to be made of flesh, personally. This one is a seven out of 10. A mob enforcer with no legs. Descriptive. This is the review. “First of all, Mr. No Legs doesn’t quite live up to its outrageous title, but it’s still a decent action flick with ground house exploitation feel. Rod Slinker is a mob enforcer without legs. He gets fed up with his immediate boss’ insults and pay and decides to double cross the mob when he’s had enough. The insults about his condition enrage him to the point that he decides to wage war on the mob. There is also an awesome wheelchair of mayhem, which helps him to dispatch various mobsters and other scum. Cheaply made and rather inept action flick with several fantastic fight scenes and pretty brutal killings. The action is fairly slow moving and there’s not enough Mr. No legs, but if you are into ’70s cult cinema, you can’t miss this movie. Seven out of 10.”
Sarah:
Okay, I do love the phrase wheelchair of mayhem, however, I disagree with that the action is slow moving. I actually thought that the action went a little bit too fast a lot of the time.
Jeff:
There was pretty much only action in this movie. They were either sitting beside a pool talking on phones with giant wires all over the place, or they were fighting. I mean, there were multiple murders in the same bar on different nights.
Sarah:
And the bar fights, I almost didn’t know where to look because there were multiple fights happening at once, synchronously during the shot. So whoever choreographed the fights did a pretty okay job because they don’t run full on into each other. But there’s just so much happening. I don’t know what this guy’s watching where he’s like, “Yeah, Mr. No Legs was pretty slow for me, but seven out of 10.” What?
Jeff:
Yeah, this was written in 2010. So this is of course before this man would’ve experienced COVID and understood what it really means to be in a slow event-less sort of moment, I suppose. Also, this one really stands out to me because there’s this line in it where he talks about the lack of pay and the comments about his condition enraging him. And I’m not sure here if he saw a different version of this film than we did that included scenes, but I don’t remember any scenes in which his condition was brought up, mocked or referred to in any way.
Sarah:
He had that one line when he went inside after he flips off his hot danger angel babe, where he goes like, “The mob boss is going to flick me like a pencil into the street? Hell no.” And I didn’t really even know what that expression meant, but it was clearly supposed to be an insult.
Jeff:
Yeah. But it doesn’t seem about his condition. I think he was trying to say that he was going to be penniless. That all he would have is a pencil. He would have nothing to his name, I think is maybe what that line-
Sarah:
I don’t know if the class warfare angle works for a mob film though.
Jeff:
Yeah. I’m very curious about this. I would love to know if there are scenes in which his disability was brought up, because notably, there’s only one moment when his disability is kind of … There’s two moments I suppose that we’ll talk about a little bit later, but it’s certainly not really in a derogatory way that I would say it anyway. The drive for Mr. No Legs is that he’s a bit ambitious, he’s tired of being at the bottom of the hierarchy of the mob, and he realizes that he’s about to get flipped on. That the mob boss is going to kill him, and he decides, well, I’m going to kill him first.
Sarah:
Yeah, I think he does get wise to it and he just tries to get in on the action first.
Jeff:
Okay. So we have another one, and I want to note before I read this, this was written in 2006. So this review was written before MAGA and even before … This is before all of that, and I think that’s important. Maybe there was evidence that this was coming all along. This is a nine out of 10 review from Steve Neiland. Ny-land? Neil-and? He writes, this is the title, “My New Hero and Every Liberal’s Worst Nightmare. Rod Slinker, wherever you are, whatever you’re doing right now, you are my new action adventure movie hero. This movie is one of the most amazingly endearing and delightfully stupid exercises in brain-dead cult mayhem ever created and so badly deserves a chance to see the light of day on a DVD reissue, if only for the sheer number of people who would potentially be offended by its gleeful off the wall, willingness to go beyond the constraints of good taste and show us things that will boggle the mind.”
Sarah:
I struggle to agree with this mostly because of the N word drop like an hour into the film, which makes it very problematic. But A, he did correctly predict that this would get a Blu-ray re-release a little over 10 years later. And B, I do think there’s a lot to really love about this film, especially if you’re a bad action or an ironic film watcher. There’s a lot to love. I spent a lot of this movie laughing so hard that my roommate asked me what was going on in my bedroom place.
Jeff:
I 100% agree that this movie is both amazingly endearing and delightfully stupid. Full marks. I fully agree with that. I’m wondering about this thought. And again, we will note there is a hard R N word dropped in the middle of this film. I’m wondering about this thing about being offensive. Do you think that now as we flash forward to a post MAGA world and a world where allegedly cancel culture is out of control, do you believe that there will be a sheer number of people offended by this film?
Sarah:
I think it’s possible he’s comparing this kind of off the wall nonsense film to this deep intelligentsia culture that I think is just as much a parody as the counterculture that this is parodying. Neither of those two cultures actually exist in any semblance of reality and him pinning those realities against each other is just this over the top way, like this film, of bringing two worlds together. Does it lean more to the, I don’t know, traditional hard right? Yes. But I don’t think if this came out now, anybody would A, take it seriously or B, think that it was at all trying to be this Christopher Nolan-esque hard go at epistemological thought and beat cops in Tampa Bay.
Jeff:
And at the same time, there was some interesting gender things going on in this film. I don’t know if it was intentional, but there was a scintillating homoeroticism happening at all times between almost all of the male characters. There were some delightful crop tops in this film. There was a trans woman at the bar in this film. There was a little person.
Sarah:
There was also a little person.
Jeff:
Yeah. There was a little person.
Sarah:
Watching the bar fight. Nobody punched him. They just let him watch.
Jeff:
Having a great time. And then at the same time, there were these women are to be seen, not to be heard, that women played no real role in this movie beyond delivering phones and flirting with the men a little bit.
Sarah:
But counterpoint, they did make being a danger angel look incredibly good. I came out of this movie like I wouldn’t say no to that career. They were living large. They were in cabanas. They were in rooms entirely composed of shag beds. They were eating huge breakfasts and dinners. They were being driven around everywhere. Not so bad. All I have to do is get told to fuck off when the guy has a phone call from his mob boss. Deal.
Jeff:
And also she had a gun. One of them had a gun as well. She had a loaned some gun.
Sarah:
Oh, the brunette. Yeah.
Jeff:
Yeah.
Sarah:
My gun is in the other guy’s Camaro. And she goes, “Here, take mine.”
Jeff:
Take mine. Yeah. And it’s like a little dainty two shot pistol and he’ like, “Oh, is this even a gun? It’s not even a man gun.”
Sarah:
My baby handgun.
Jeff:
There was some stuff going on there. There was also an implication of a pimp that was pimping out men potentially. They see a pimp on the street and one of the greatest lines of the film is, “What he’s selling, you don’t smoke, you stroke.”
Sarah:
Yes. Extremely memorable.
Jeff:
I’m not sure. Maybe that was a reference. I read that as referring to that he has men that he is prostituted out. Maybe I’m wrong on that. Maybe they’re within-
Sarah:
No, I think you read that completely right. I think this was one of the most accidentally inclusive films of the 1970s. It’s from the Schitt’s Creek school of inclusivity where they never comment on who they’re using ever. They’ve got gay guys in bars, they’ve got sparkle wearing guys, they’ve got every edict under the rainbow. They’ve got a variety of genders and people of various ages going to school. There was like a 40-year-old in college. There was the little person in the bar. They had everybody. They had the guy in the wheelchair, and he’s not even one of the top seven or eight I named, and that’s supposed to be the titular disability or way of inclusivity in the film. And I’m just like, everybody here has something to bring to the table. That was pretty neat and nobody comments on it at all. They’re just like, “nope. Standard. This is everyday life. This is how these people want to live. They do them and I do me.
Jeff:
Yeah. I mean there was a race riot in the bar at one point.
Sarah:
But that was only because of the one woman who was then promptly killed for not being inclusive. Everybody else hated it.
Jeff:
Yeah. Well, there was a white guy who didn’t like the black woman, and then the black bartender bottled him. So there was a bit of justice in this film too. I think it’s also important to note that this movie is named after Mr. No Legs, but Mr. No Legs is not even the main character of this film, I would argue.
Sarah:
No.
Jeff:
A side character. 100%.
Sarah:
He gets as much screen time as the danger angels, and one of the danger angels is actually the calling from on high that signals that Mr. No Legs is about to get a short scene. Whenever you see the blonde babe danger angel at the pool, you know that we’re about to see her counterpart, Mr. No Legs.
Jeff:
100%. Yeah. She is the siren that inaugurates the birth of Mr. No Legs.
Sarah:
Oh yeah.
Jeff:
Yeah. So I’m interested. I don’t know that I fully agree with Steve that this would cause a liberal nightmare to occur necessarily. Which is interesting. I think maybe this film has something for everyone, which is a very weird thing for this podcast. That’s not usually the case.
Sarah:
No. We were joking that every scene construction, I guess mostly because of Mr. No Legs himself, was automatically ADA compliant in the architectural sense. There were no scenes about, oh man, the mob thing is in the basement. Mr. No Legs can’t get down there. Which was what I was kind of expecting coming into this film. No. It’s just inclusivity and compliance and racial justice and LGBT justice and alliances the whole way through.
Jeff:
We got to put a pin on that because I actually want to come back to this and talk a little bit more about the fact that this film is wildly wheelchair accessible. But we will come back to that. We have one last review. This one from Coventry. I assume the entire town came together and wrote this. I assume that’s what that means. This one is the eight out of 10, so another happy customer. This one is titled, hilariously, “He’s a role model to us all. Let Mr. No Legs be a source of inspiration for all of us. Not because he’s a relentless one man killing squad, of course. Because he’s living proof that you can still chase your dreams and realize your ambitions even if you’re physically disabled. Yeah, right. Enough with this rubbish. The Amazing Mr. No Legs is totally demented in idea as well as execution exploitation feature with a premise that is unique and refreshing, and production values look so cheap and amateurish that you simply have to show admiration for the costume crew.
“If you just imagine what these guys could have accomplished if they had a proper budget at their disposal. The titular anti-hero controls the complete drug business of a major town and acts as judge, jury, and especially executioner whenever someone screws up or tries to double cross him. Although he hasn’t got any legs, duh, everyone fears it obeys Mr. No Legs because he’s merciless, is an expert in martial arts and drives around in a heavily armored wheelchair. When the sister of a dedicated cop gets in a drug execution, it means the start of a devastating war between the good cops and the bad drug dealers and everyone in between. The script is surprisingly convoluted and well-written, but those are not the main reasons why this film will stick in your memory. It has girl on girl bar fights, wild shootouts, bad acting, sword fights, odd cars, and virulent chases and much more.
“The Amazing Mr. No Legs is extremely violent, but never actually shocking since the effects of the stunts aren’t exactly convincing. Some people might take offense upon seeing the fight sequences involving the handicapped lead character, but then again, I don’t suppose easily offended people are likely to put Mr. No Legs on their Christmas list. The slow motion sequence where actor Ted Vollrath demonstrates his genuine martial arts skill is literally jaw dropping. Ever seen a guy with no legs kick someone repeatedly in the stomach? No legs. The titular ought to be considered as one of the greatest cult icons ever. A truly menacing, bad to the bone and self reliable villain. Mr. No Legs is not an easy movie to come across, but it’s definitely worth the search.”
Sarah:
I love that he wrote his dissertation on Mr. No Legs and I kind of wish I did too because I think I would put out a banger dissertation on the inclusivity potential of Mr. No Legs. I think I figured out what we don’t like about these people apparently repeatedly saying that easily offended people won’t like this movie. This is what I think it is. I think it’s because people who tend to do the worst, most devilish, far right MAGA-esque part of that view would be of the opinion that Mr. No Legs could never be amazing or an action star or an action hero because to say that would be to go against the traditional American values that they hold as their Lord and Bible. So to have these people come out like, “Oh, the liberals are going to hate this super inventive and investigative and inclusive flick about this man with no legs that achieves everything we could ever offer.” It doesn’t really make sense, and then they try to throw it back at you with the, “If you’re easily offended, you won’t like this.” But he’s talking about himself and that’s wild to me. Right?
Jeff:
100%. Yeah. I think that they are feeling uncomfortable about it, and they assume then that the other side will also be feeling as uncomfortable as they are about this.
Sarah:
But we’re not. You guys are just unknowingly slipping over to our team here.
Jeff:
Yeah. I will say I do find it really interesting that this starts out as a weird inspiration porn. Being like, we should all be inspired by him.
Sarah:
I think he’s mocking the liberals.
Jeff:
…but then he also then comes back to it. He recants it and he’s like, “No, no. That’s all silly.” But then he returns to it and is like … First of all, he’s like, “The violence in this is not very convincing.” And then he says, “But the no legs guy’s martial arts was legitimate and amazing.” That this was an incredible ability that this guy portrayed. And I’m not a black belt martial artist. I did not personally find any of the martial arts in this film, let alone Mr. No Legs, as either A, legitimate or B, impressive in any way.
Sarah:
Okay. From background, we do know that this guy in real life is a double black belt.
Jeff:
Is a martial artist. Yes.
Sarah:
So he knows what he’s doing and he obviously does his own stunts, but we know there’s also a big stunt cast in this movie, so a lot of people are not doing their own stunts, especially when we get to the car chase. I think that’s just one or two guys playing the part of every single person in the car chase for the sheer danger level of that entire sequence. I do agree with him that a lot of the action scenes you kind of can’t take seriously because you can tell, especially in the bar fight, when they’ve got the broken bottles, they’re not actually hitting each other. They’re kind of coming close and stopping and you catch it in the lens, and it’s funny in kind of a kitschy way. Or that sword fight scene where he’s got the broad sword going into the Camaro, it makes no sense whatsoever, apart from the fact that it was a pirate themed bar. So you’re like, okay, I guess the broad sword could have maybe come from there. But could it beat the shit out of a Camaro? I’m not sure. I think the Camaro would win that fight. And then how many spoilers can we do?
Jeff:
All of them.
Sarah:
All of them. Okay. So the other one … And maybe I just don’t have enough martial arts experience for me to personally believe this, but you were led to believe during Mr. No Legs’ martial arts sequence that once one of the baddies got him and threw him in the water, you’re like, “Oh man, it’s over. He’s got no legs. He’s going to have to use all his energy to just stay afloat.” And he ended up being more dangerous in the water than he was on land. He was taking kills like nothing, and then climbing out of the pool and climbing back into his chair like it was just another Tuesday for him and rolling away.
Jeff:
Okay. So do you believe then that Coventry, when Mr. No Legs karate chops a man to death in the pool, do you think that this person was actually what an incredible display of martial arts?
Sarah:
I mean, I think he thinks that, which is fine with me. He is allowed to be in beloved community living the reality where his martial arts skill is so great you can karate chop a man to death underwater.
Jeff:
One karate chop to death.
Sarah:
One chop. It’s all it takes.
Jeff:
Yeah. And so I found that really interesting that … Again, I’m not a martial artist. I didn’t find any of the martial arts that this felt impressive. I mean, I didn’t feel like I was watching Bruce Lee here by any means.
Sarah:
I think his above water martial arts were pretty cool.
Jeff:
Oh, I think they were cool scenes. I don’t disagree with that. But I don’t think there was anything impressive. He literally blocks a kick. Okay. The front kick and the back kick that were in slow motion, that was great cinema.
Sarah:
He delivered a very literal ass kick.
Jeff:
Yeah. I don’t know though that that would hurt. Again, I’m not a martial artist. I’ve never been punched. But I kind of feel like getting a bum to your belly probably isn’t going to incapacitate you. But again, I’m not that. What I do kind of feel though is Coventry is like, “We shouldn’t be inspired by this guy. That’s liberal nonsense.”, but then he comes back and is like, “Oh, but he’s so inspiring in his martial hearts abilities.”
Sarah:
Okay, but he doesn’t say the word inspiring. He says the word menacing, bad to the bone and self reliable. So the real villain in this is rhetoric all along. You just couldn’t use the liberal catchphrases to describe his inspired-ness. If you say menacing and bad to the bone, that is the same thing as saying you’re realizing your ambitions and being an inspiring character. You’re just being more of a badass about it.
Jeff:
Yeah. He’s cool. He’s a cool guy. And I think he is a cool guy, but it’s interesting that this need to both preface it, recant it, but then also lean into it at the same time. That even-
Sarah:
I don’t think he knows he’s leaning into it.
Jeff:
I don’t think so either.
Sarah:
I think he sees a legitimate difference in rhetoric there. And I think because we have the benefit of multiple degrees and arguing with people, we can see that he’s just circuitously making the same argument and he thinks that argument is different.
Jeff:
Absolutely. Absolutely. And I think that this maybe actually gets us to a really interesting insight in people’s responses to disability in film. That I think everyone obviously is bringing their own baggage when they watch something. They’re bringing in past insights and past experience. They’re like, “I’m a black belt martial artist, and that’s not martial arts.” For instance. But I think that in this instance, and in a lot of instances, people are bringing in with them what they believe the expected response should be to the disabled character that they’re supposed to feel a certain way. They then maybe feel a different way, and either that’s a good thing or a bad thing. So I think often because he felt good about this character, that he felt that he was cool and menacing and badass, and maybe something that he would aspire to be, then it shifts it into this is a good representation, I like it, I’m happy. But then when those ideas are conflicted or confronted in some way, people don’t feel the same way or don’t feel right about it. They have this different response then, I think, to the film and then perhaps say maybe that was offensive or that was unrealistic or unbelievable. It’s interesting that at no point did Coventry not think it was an unbelievable thing that a man with no legs would be this mobster. He was like, “Yeah, this is possible. It’s happening and it’s fricking cool.”
Sarah:
Yeah. I think what I was saying at the beginning of the review about how I think the words easily offended are working in multiple reviews is what you’re saying about how he’s taking inspirational. So we got to the same conclusion using different keywords.
Jeff:
Yeah. Well, I have to say, ladies and gentlemen, this film was a ride, literally and figuratively. And when we come back next week, we are going to get into the nitty-gritty and take this film step by step and really unpack what is the genius, maybe, of The Amazing Mr. No Legs.
[Theme song, “Arguing with Strangers” by Mvll Crimes finishes out the episode]
Part 2!
Jeff:
Previously on Invalid Culture.
Have you ever wanted to see a guy with no legs do kung fu?? This movie is insane. It’s got everything; bar fights, detective work, a wheelchair with guns and ninja stars and badassery all over. More movies need to be made like this.
Sarah:
I actually included that review because I thought it was hysterical and probably reductive because there’s no way the film actually comes out this way. It’s actually pretty dead on and it’s funny to read after the fact because he pretty much nails it.
Jeff:
Welcome back to another episode of Invalid Culture, Part Two of the amazing Mr. No Legs. I as always, I’m your host, Jeff. I’m joined by your other host, Sarah.
How you doing, Sarah?
Sarah:
I’m pretty good. Pretty sorry to leave the audience on a cliffhanger.
Jeff:
I know, but this is the car chase of the No Legs episode. We got them here and now this is the last 20 minutes of destruction.
Sarah:
That’s true. You made it and now you get 15 unabridged minutes of hilarious violence.
Jeff:
Yeah, that’s how every Invalid Culture episode’s going to go this season pretty much.
Sarah:
Oh, perfect.
Jeff:
So it’ll be good.
Okay, Sarah, so for those of our audience who have not, for reasons that I will never understand, not watched this film, can you help us understand as best as you can, the plot line of the amazing Mr. No Legs?
Sarah:
So in act one, the rising action of what becomes Mr. No Legs, you get the inciting action of the killing of a 20-something female and her 30 or 40-something boyfriend. The boyfriend is obviously tangentially involved with the Tampa mob scene for the smuggling and selling of cocaine and cocaine accessories, and-
Jeff:
A very small amount of cocaine.
Sarah:
Yes, a bizarrely small amount for… And D’Angelo gets called a kingpin for this. So Tampa in the ’70s, extremely non-competitive drug scene. Anyway, Tina finds Ken’s drug paraphernalia in his bedroom and the paraphernalia itself is hilarious, but she flips out and Ken accidentally kills her. But this kicks off the whole film because Ken was a low level mob guy and now the mob people have been called in to help cover up Tina’s death and for some bizarre reason, they decide to also kill off Ken.
Jeff:
Yeah. To get rid of the evidence of course.
Sarah:
Yeah, but they didn’t even really have to. Tina fell… It looked like she found the stuff, she goes into the living room, she falls into the back of a CRT TV, takes a critical injury and dies on the floor. Nothing needed to be covered up.
Jeff:
No, not necessarily, but they are mobsters and the key detail here, Tina’s brother is a cop.
Sarah:
Okay, that’s true. So Ken was the problem. No, Tina was the problematic character and Ken couldn’t have Tina’s dad getting involved, but he obviously had to get involved. But with all of that action, you set up what became the kind of environment, if you can call it that from the film, where there’s this kind of Romeo and Juliet action between the cocaine mobsters and the Tampa Bay beat cops.
Jeff:
The start of the movie also introduces us to our titular character, the amazing Mr. No Legs who rolls into this film literally in his manual wheelchair in which he has double shotguns mounted in boxes on his armrests. So he rolls up on some people that were skimming a very, very small amount of cocaine out of the already tiny amount of cocaine. He pops his shotguns out of his arm rest and blasts away taking out these two dock workers. He will then later be called in to help dispose of Tina’s body. And it’s at that point that he explains that he leaves no evidence and shoots Ken in the head.
Sarah:
Yeah, my understanding is that he’s like a Mike Ehrmantraut style mob enforcer, but he kind of just comes onto the scene and his analysis of every single scenario is just killing whoever was involved. There’s no analysis whatsoever. He gets called to the scene, he gets there, he brings out the shotguns, he shoots whoever’s there on site. The dock workers didn’t need to die. Ken didn’t need to die. The people in the bar in act two didn’t need to die. Arguably, the only people he ever fought that actually had a reason to die were at the very end of act two, beginning of act three when people were actually coming after him. He was just ruthlessly killing for sport beforehand.
Jeff:
So he’s this merciless character. He’s a killer. He’s an enforcer. He’s also a problem solver, and he seems to have what may be the best PSW in the world. There is a man who is unnamed, does not talk and drives him around at times, seems to help him, but then also vanishes halfway through the film and is never seen again. So I don’t know exactly who this man was, if he was another mob guy or possibly like a state assigned support worker who just was like, I just worked here. I’m not saying anything. I’m enabling this man to live independently.
Sarah:
He could. Okay. It’s arguable because we also know from the last episode, he’s got that blonde bombshell, Danger Angel, and whenever he starts doing mob dealings, he just turns to the Danger Angel and goes, “Beat it baby.” He could also be doing that to his PSW. Maybe he just waits in the getaway car.
Jeff:
I mean, the PSW was there for the first murder for sure.
Sarah:
That’s true.
Jeff:
But the dock workers, the PSW was behind him and then helped him back into the car.
Sarah:
Yeah, that’s true. I don’t think we see him again after that though.
Jeff:
We see him once more when they’re back at the house. Yeah, which is why I’m not sure who this person is, but I like to believe that they’re just some low level PSW fresh out of college, and this is just the luck of the draw. This is who they were assigned and to work for.
Sarah:
Sometimes you get a grandfather, sometimes you get a mob enforcer. It’s just the way she goes.
Jeff:
Yep.
So I think we got to talk about the wheelchair because I think this is something that a lot of people are going to want to talk about because it’s so ostentatious. It is amazing. It’s very cool.
Sarah:
What did the reviewer call it? Because he had a great phrase for it. I think it was something like wheelchair of mayhem and that’s dead on.
Jeff:
Yeah, pretty much describes it.
I want to know. So Sarah, I don’t know if you noticed this, but you can clearly see the shotguns at the back of these boxes that they’re in. I thought they could have done a better job of hiding them. They did do a very good job of hiding the ninja stars, which are magnetized to look like hubcaps on the wheelchair’s rims.
Sarah:
The shuriken additions to the wheelchair killed me. When those came out…
Jeff:
Absolutely incredible. So he’s a gun wielding martial artist. He’s adept at throwing stars.
Sarah:
That’s right. And that brings us to act two. So act two introduces the homoerotic romance angle of Captain Hathaway and beat cop, Chuck, who teams up with his homie, who has the second-highest kill count in the film after Mr. No Legs, not Chuck, his homie to investigate Chuck’s sister’s death at the hands of her deadbeat boyfriend who was in the mob, but they don’t know yet he was in the mob, but they also don’t know yet the big reveal at the end of act two, that Hathaway, the police captain, is also in the mob. So they spend an entire 15, 20 minutes sussing this out on police investigations in Camaros and other muscle cars, and they find time to get into two different bar fights.
Jeff:
At the same bar.
Sarah:
At the same bar. Yeah.
Jeff:
Yeah. This is one of my favorite parts of the film is that Chuck goes to this bar to meet with his informant in which he walks into a full-blown race riot and is just like, okay, and just starts killing people.
Sarah:
He said something like, “You didn’t like the service here,” and then they launched.
Jeff:
He full-blown murders at least three people in this bar, like fully murders.
Sarah:
Four people were bottled to death, which I thought was awfully specific.
Jeff:
So he’s a bloody path through this bar. The following day, he returns to the bar and kills another two people.
Sarah:
Yes. And it was funny because when they were sitting in the Camaro and Chuck was sitting there like, “Man, this is really boring police work.” And Andy goes, “Our tusk is to observe and report.” And Andy can’t stop killing civilians.
Jeff:
So I also really appreciated the Colombo investigation scene in which Andy…
Sarah:
Oh, my God.
Jeff:
… goes into the house of Ken and finds the blood on the floor, which he picks up with a napkin, puts it in his pocket, the broken television, the dead flowers, and he proceeds to walk around and just push around some shirts, look under the bed, and then comes out. He’s like, “Well, I figured it all out. I think this guy killed Tina.”
Sarah:
I’ve done a better job looking for my phone charger drunk in my bedroom in total darkness than he did with the crime scene with Tina’s body.
Jeff:
The crime scene felt like those apps that you see advertisements for on your phone where it’s like, can you find the clues of the mystery? And there’s this giant key, it’s all highlighted. It’s like, can you find it?
Sarah:
And he brushes past the shirts in the closet and he lifts up the bouquet of flowers and he is like, “Well, no damning evidence under here.”
Jeff:
Now, all of this has led to, of course, Chuck has an informant who turns out to be a racist who drops the N-bomb in the middle of this film and starts out the [inaudible 00:11:48] riot, and that’s how he ends up at the amazingly named bar, the 7 Seas.
Sarah:
Okay, so the first bar fight was the race riot and the racists, which is weird for Tampa, but maybe not weird for Tampa in the ’70s. The racists are clearly the ones in the wrong here, and they get the shit kicked out of them by the rest of the bar mates, including Mr. No Legs, who shows up about halfway through. I don’t think we’re ever told who called him.
Jeff:
He was there. He was at a table. He was at a table in the background.
Sarah:
People get thrown through the plate class window. People get thrown over the bar top. There’s transgender people watching. There’s little people watching. There’s people of all different races watching. There’s the bartender who’s this older black male with an afro kind of just holds his head and rubs it like, “Oh, another Tuesday.” This is just standard practice for 7 Seas Bar.
Jeff:
After the fight is over, the bartender laments, “I’ll be damned.”
Sarah:
He was not upset enough about the trashing of his bar.
Jeff:
And so this leads to another, I would say, iconic scene in which it is discovered that the police have found the body of Ken, which was apparently not very well hidden. And now Leo, who is the branch manager of the mob, I guess, he’s like a middle management below Mr. No Legs, above Ken, I believe. And so he and someone called the Mower, never explained why that’s his name, dress up as ambulance attendants to go and try and steal the body from the hospital. And this of course does not go well. They are interrupted by our two researching detectives. A fight ensues, as every 40 to 50 seconds, a fight ensues in this film, and the badlands get away, but something very fishy is revealed. Captain Hathaway has sent them to identify if the body was Wilson’s body, but Andy had never said Wilson’s name to Hathaway.
Sarah:
But I love that he specifies it’s because he didn’t do his paperwork. He’s like, “I know he doesn’t know that name because I did not submit the work I was supposed to do yesterday.” The crime here was that Hathaway thought that his beat cops were halfway competent and they weren’t. And their own incompetence actually leads them to kind of accidentally reverse Colombo solve the crime, because he was like, “Wait, Wilson?”
Jeff:
“He shouldn’t know that name. He didn’t get the blood in the napkin like I did.”
Sarah:
“I haven’t done my homework for weeks.”
Jeff:
This was like the ChatGPT solution of a mystery, like a murder mystery, where it’s like the end of the second act, they don’t know how to wrap it up and they’re like, “Oh, I know a good trick. We’ll just have someone disclose something that they shouldn’t know and that’ll be the way that we resolve this.”
Sarah:
Well, I’m honestly surprised that they even caught that. That had to be end level mystery solving for both of them at that point. That was their career highlight.
Jeff:
Now, at this point, we haven’t got a whole lot of Mr. No Legs. I remember as we were watching it, commenting, Mr. No Legs is not actually very present in this film, and when we do see him in the middle act, it’s either A, at the bar, shanking a racist in the stomach, or B, it’s by his pool with his bombshell, blonde mistress, wife, support worker, maybe, not sure, throwing his ninja stars at dartboard.
Sarah:
Okay. And I think that actually makes him a legitimately aspirational character because when he is not out at the bar achieving racial justice, he’s hanging out with Danger Angels at the country club.
Jeff:
This is also the moment when we finally had an answer as to why Mr. No Legs is Mr. No Legs. It’s disclosed in a conversation with D’Angelo, the mob boss, that Mr. No Legs, before he was Mr. No Legs, I guess he was just Mr. Legs at that point, was at the docks. He’d worked at the docks and he’d lost his legs in a dock accident, and D’Angelo then brought him on to the mob racket to take care of him after the injury because, of course, there is no healthcare in America.
Sarah:
Yeah, I think it’s relevant at this point to include that Mr. No Legs does in fact have no legs in real life because in disability film, we really cannot take that for granted. And he does all his own stunts.
Jeff:
Yeah, they did not Lieutenant Dan this 100%.
Sarah:
No, they did not. They did not Beautiful Mind this operation.
So then we get to act three, the final act, and the final act is also surprisingly absent of Mr. No Legs for a film that’s called Mr. No Legs. So you get the showdown. Mr. No Legs decides that he’s had enough with the bullshit of his mob boss, and he’s pretty sure that the mob boss is lining up to pick him off anyway because he’s always been fairly low level. And I think that’s where we get the review, where the reviewer thought that there was some kind of class consciousness angle there, but I don’t think Mr. Legs is about that.
Jeff:
No.
Sarah:
I think we agreed on that. So Mr. No Legs sets up a showdown between his secret informant, captain Hathaway, and D’Angelo, the small shipments of cocaine mob boss of Tampa Bay, Florida. And when they meet up, it’s actually kind of funny because they look at each other and they go, “Hey, who told you to come here?” “No legs.” “You?” “No legs.” And they kind of chuckle and they go, “Well, that’s kind of funny, actually because I was a bit to pick him off.” And Mr. No Legs, just like how he appeared in act one, rolls back into the same warehouse, does the same stunt with the double barrel shotguns on both sides of his manual wheelchair and immediately picks off D’Angelo. But Hathaway puts up more of a fight, kills No Legs with, I think he emptied the entire gun, like six shots into Mr. No legs. Unfortunately, he doesn’t even get a good death scene. We just see his arms fall to the side and that’s it. We never see him again. And Hathaway goes on an epic car chase with the rest of Tampa Bay, Florida. Discuss.
Jeff:
Yeah. Yeah. So Mr. No Legs goes out in a bit of a blaze of glory. So he’s jumped at the pool by, I believe it was three, possibly four thugs. He fights all of them off with his incredible kung fu. He judo chops a guy to death in a pool. He drowns another man. He ninja stars another man. And he butt kicks another man and then punches him to death in the face. So he is taking out four guys single-handedly. His PSW helper man, I think, ran away. He was not present at all during this scene. And then he goes and has this blaze of glory, kills the man that wronged him but doesn’t get the cop.
This car chase that Hathaway then goes on literally feels like half of the movie. It keeps going and going and it has literally every car chase cliche that’s ever been created. There are rollover cars that explode. There are cars that go through a mobile home. There are cars that drive through baskets of fruit. There’s a car that drives through ice bricks. There is cars that spin out. There is…
Sarah:
You forgot the jump.
Jeff:
… power slides. There is a jump off of a raised bridge.
Sarah:
The jump.
Okay. My pop theory is that the script was actually created after they had fully written this car chase to justify the budget needed to make this spectacular Hot Wheels style car chase. It was wild.
Jeff:
I fully endorse this theory, and it’s odd that there’s so much emphasis on the car chase, but in all of the promotional material, that is not what people talk about. Everything is about fighting.
Sarah:
That’s why I was so bothered by the synopsis. Yeah, a fifth of the film is actually just the car chase.
Jeff:
Right. And so why are you talking about gunfights and martial arts and all this other stuff when the car chase is literally the only thing you cared about? And the bar fight, I guess.
Sarah:
Fair.
And if we’re talking about things the film does well, which I think is later, but I’m going to jump in really early here. Off the top, the cinematography of the car chase, the whole sequence I actually thought was beautifully shot. I think, on average, the cinematography in this film was nothing special. Definitely not Villeneuve level or anything. When we got to the car chase, he was putting some serious thought into the direction of these supercars and muscle cars and all the damaged cars and where the placement of all these obstacles should go. It was better than Die Hard.
Jeff:
My theory is this, my vibe for all of this movie is that it’s all a pastiche of the things that the director and the writer like in film and television, and they just took all the stuff they like and tried to reproduce it. So the fight scenes are WWF, right? They are so WWF. They clearly were wrestling fans, and the bar fight in particular was like they live on steroids. It was so WWF. And so I think similarly, they love car chases and they were like, well, what are all the best things we’ve seen about chases and let’s just redo them.
Sarah:
They did that. It was greatest hits. It was the Shania Twain Greatest Hits album of ’70s, early ’80s. They’re actually also omniscient car chase scenes.
Jeff:
100%.
Sarah:
Amazing.
Jeff:
It was high octane. The cops were wearing visors clearly to hide the fact that it was the same stunt driver in every car.
Sarah:
Yeah, because the stunt driving was actually really good. They were doing stuff where I was like, this is actually actively dangerous to shoot. It’s the ’70s.
Jeff:
Oh, yeah. Again, it wouldn’t surprise me if literally this movie created three or four Mr. No legs during the car chase.
Sarah:
So in that way, it’s actually disability activism.
Jeff:
Maybe, actually. Yeah.
Sarah:
DAV recruitment. Not only inspiration, but active recruitment.
Jeff:
Yeah. I really wonder if the buddy cop piece came first or if the No Legs piece came first. Was this a matter of they knew this guy and he said, yeah, let’s get him into a movie. Let’s put it together. Did they have this buddy cop car chase thing, and then they met the guy and were like, “Oh, let’s shoehorn him in”? And then we’re like, “This is the best part. So let’s make this the sell for this film.” Because it is the most original part of this film.
Sarah:
Definitely.
Jeff:
Mr. No Legs is everything else you’ve seen a million times before.
Sarah:
Okay. And this is edging into disability theory light. And I wouldn’t say I’m on the side of goodness here because you could say that I’m being kind of tropey or putting him up on a pedestal, but stay with me. If you were the guy who directed five different versions of Flipper and a producer called you up and was like, “Yo, I’m going to give you like 100K. You want to grab your boys and make a film?” And he goes, “Adam Sandler style, knocking on doors of his friends’ houses in Tampa, Florida. And one of his friends says, ‘I got a guy. He’s a war vet. He was literally on the Marines. He wants to dabble in acting as a side gig, but there’s one thing.'” And the flipper director and the flipper writer was like, “What? What could it possibly be? This guy’s a badass.” And this other guy goes, “He’s got no legs.”
Jeff:
Movie brain.
Sarah:
Origin story. And a film was born.
Jeff:
A film was born.
Sarah:
And I think the sheer notoriety of that guy, because even in the IMDB reviews, and these guys get intensively into film in ways that we don’t. I think we are casual film lovers and these guys can name every second cameraman in Caddyshack type film lovers. And they were naming other things that these relatively unknown actors were in besides Flipper. And everybody seemed to know Mr. No Leg’s backstory as this war vet, but he hasn’t actually done anything else. So I think he’s just this whole guy in Florida, like Waterloo used to have this guy named Bucket Man, and all he did was walk up and down the streets of Waterloo banging a bucket to a beat, and everyone knew who he was. My theory is that Mr. No Legs is the bucket man of ’70s Tampa. And they were like, we got to do it. We got to make an action film with Mr. No Legs and everybody treats him like he already exists and he belongs here because he does. He’s already a local legend.
Jeff:
And grew into this cult legend beyond. He is the best part of the film.
… about this film. And I got to say, of all the films we’ve watched so far for this podcast, this one didn’t give us a lot to chew on. The one most obvious thing to point out, I would say disability trope that comes up in this movie, of course there needs to be the disclosure scene. So there is that moment where it’s like, why does he have no legs? It was an incident at the dock. So we had to have that little slipped in. It had no real relevance, and there was no reason for us to know why Mr. No Legs, A, had no legs, and B, why D’Angelo employed him. Because at that point, we already knew that he was a merciless killer. That’s why he’s employed. It has nothing to do with the fact that he was injured at the docks.
Sarah:
Absolutely.
Jeff:
That didn’t need to happen. But there’s this, again, this desire that you must position disability, you must explain why it happened or what happened, because that’s the thing that everybody wants to know and they can’t get past it.
Sarah:
I think it’s worth noting though, that they wait till almost halfway through the film to do it. Normally that comes pretty early on. It was late into act two before somebody was like, “Yo, what’s the deal with Mr. No Legs?” Our introduction to him, I actually thought it was pretty badass, even from a CDS angle. He rolls into the warehouse, flips down the… What’s that called? The arms…
Jeff:
It’s an armrest.
Sarah:
… of his chair, flips them down into two fully loaded double barreled shotguns, looks up, starts firing. That’s your introduction to disability in this film. And I have no notes. That’s great.
Jeff:
Yeah, it was completely unnecessary to disclose it. I mean, and similarly, I fully believe, I thought that they were going to just be like, “Oh, he got injured in Nam.” That he’s a war vet and that’s why he’s also a killer, because he is a soldier, he’s trained, but they were like, “No, he was a dock worker and now he’s a martial artist.”
Sarah:
Well, it’s funny that they reversed the trope for it because he really was an injured and retired marine. So that would’ve been the only legitimate instance where you could do that without being tokenistic…
Jeff:
Totally.
Sarah:
… because that’s his real ass backstory. And you got to wonder if it was Mr. No Legs himself who was like, “Nah, just make me a dock worker.”
Jeff:
“Yeah, no, I’m just a regular man. Anyone could do what I do.”
Sarah:
Yeah, “Except I have shurikens on my wheelchair.”
Jeff:
“And I will go right for the neck.”
I did see the other one, and this is a little tropey. There does seem to be this desire often when it comes to adaptive devices to build in cool features. And this is something that some people get bothered by it. I actually am going to go in a really different direction with it. I think that we need to actually embrace this and realize that at the moment, we are not creative enough with wheelchairs. At the moment, we think of wheelchairs purely as mobility devices. We’re like, we’ll give you a chair, we’ll give you some wheels, maybe a battery and a motor. And that’s it, more or less. But what if we built wheelchairs that were like go-go gadget chairs. Why aren’t we putting things like our robotic arms and lift devices and all these other tools that could help somebody live independently?
We don’t do that for a variety of reasons, but a lot of them are because of policy. A lot of them are money related, but I think a lot of them is that we don’t have the creativity. And so I find… And this is where I wanted to come back to from the previous episode or mentioned, I want to talk about accessibility in this film because something that I think is really amazing about this movie, and I think this is something that we see in this super wheelchair that’s rigged out with gadgets, is that within the movie space, we have the ability to create anything. The world of a film doesn’t exist. Literally, they have to build sets to make a film. You are building buildings often if you have budget or in this instance, you’re like choosing buildings.
So for this film, they actively made these choices to ensure that all of the places that they were going were wheelchair accessible, and they needed to because they had a cast member that had a disability. But what’s amazing about it is that we then present this fantasy world in which we kind of had a what if the world was accessible? And so in some ways, in 1975, the same year that the UPIAS puts out their manifesto of the social model of disability, we have this movie that comes out that basically shows if the world was just accessible, disabled people could be anything, even killers, they could even be mob enforcers.
Sarah:
I was wondering where you were going with that whole bit. And I’m really glad we got there with it.
Jeff:
I landed it. It was a bit of a journey. I apologize.
Sarah:
You did a lot of work to get to that destination, and I appreciate that.
Jeff:
Yeah, but it’s one of those things where I feel film so often lets us down, is that rather than leaning into the fantasy of what disability and accessibility could be, they instead lean into the fantasy of a world either without disability, a world that’s precarious for disabled people or a world in which disabled people are the threat themselves because of. And I feel like this movie resists all of those things, even though Mr. No Legs is dangerous.
Sarah:
Okay, I’m going to go, yes and. And I mentioned this in the last episode, but we didn’t go into too much debate over it. I mentioned the Canadian TV series, Schitt’s Creek, because it got really famous for this kind of defacto inclusivity angle it used, and everybody was kind of wondering because the same way there’s a trope around how did you become disabled, there’s this kind of corollary trope around, especially for leading gay characters, how did you become gay? What was your moment? What was your coming out? All of these side questions. And Schitt’s Creek was really interesting because they kept doing interviews mostly for American publications where they kept answering that with, we didn’t want to honestly engage those questions. We wanted to just show you a town and a place where nobody wants to ask that. It’s just it’s fine however you are and however you come, and all the problems they have are not identity based in that way.
It’s like silly problems about socialization or class rhetorics especially, or I think there was an arc with a minor racial rhetoric, but they never, ever, ever brought the LGBT intersectionality angle to account on purpose. And I think there were some people who said, that’s not realistic and therefore not inclusive because it’s kind of this envisioning of a reality that doesn’t really exist. But I guess, my counter argument to that would be kind of [inaudible 00:34:00], the reality we’re currently in doesn’t really exist because I’ve made that up too. You can do that forever and ever and ever because my experience of the real is obviously really different from the real that existed in Tampa in 1975, and that is going to be really different from the reality of 1980s Kuala Lumpur. So if I’m trying to build arguments on what I feel the real is, we’ve entered this kind of pseudo [inaudible 00:34:31] in fantasy of now I have to define something that which is, by its own nature, undefinable. So in that instance, why don’t we just create what we want to see?
Jeff:
Yeah. Build the world that you wish to live in.
Sarah:
Yeah. Kind of Adrienne Maree Brown vibes.
Jeff:
Yeah, a little bit. A little bit. One thing that I think we need to leave off before we go into our ratings of this film is that it is remarkable in some ways, that this movie was made in the 1970s and is possibly one of the more progressive representations of disability that I have ever seen.
Sarah:
Absolutely.
Jeff:
In part because it just is. It doesn’t need to be defined. It doesn’t need to be a motivating factor.
Sarah:
No.
Jeff:
He just happens to be disabled. That’s just a thing.
Sarah:
And apart from race, which I guess was beyond the realm of the believable in the ’70s, especially ’70s America, especially ’70s southern America, you can keep adding layers onto that, but they treat kind of disabled identity, but also sexual identity with this kind of Schitt’s Creek nature of, “Yeah, dude, that’s just you. That’s how you’ve come to the table. That’s fine with me.” The only thing characters ever seem to have a problem with is race, and it’s only really the white characters who have a problem with it. So that’s saying something too, right?
Jeff:
Absolutely. Yeah, and I feel like they fully knew what they were doing in that, or not, or maybe not. Maybe they accidentally got this right. And maybe-
Sarah:
If that was accidental, that’s a phenomenal accident because that film was more inclusive than most actual published disability theory I read in my lifetime.
Jeff:
There were so many accidents, so many accidents in this film.
Sarah:
Yeah.
Jeff:
Well, as you know, every movie that passes through the gates of Invalid Culture must be evaluated through our completely scientific, rigorous, tested methodology, a scale that we use to measure the quality of film.
Sarah:
It’s at least as rigorous as anything coming out of clinical psychology, I’ll say that.
Jeff:
Taking shots, I appreciate that.
So like in golf, our scores mean the lower the score, the better a movie fares. Lower is better, that’s what we’re looking for.
So we’re going to start out here. On a scale of one to five, with five being the least accurate, how accurate does this film portray disability?
Sarah:
I think if we’re reading it with the live into what you want to see and be and do in the world argument, which is what we were ostensibly operating on toward the end of this conversation, I’d have to give it a one, because it is portraying the disabled world as we want to see and be and do in it. And it’s doing a lot of work that a lot of modern disability films seem completely incapable of or are blatantly unwilling to do, which is to take people as they are.
If you put this up against, especially psychosocial disability films like Silver Linings Playbook and A Beautiful Mind, the entire consciousness of the film is about what’s wrong with them and how you can use that positively. In this film, it’s still about… It centers on the disablement of Mr. No Legs. They call him Mr. No Legs. It’s probably not his name, but it’s about everything he can do. Even the reviewers who called themselves far writers who in this argument, you think they wouldn’t be with you on this, they could do nothing but tell us how much of a badass, how much of an inspiration, how much he brings to the world and society. So in that way, he would be a really phenomenally well done disability character, even if this came out last year, which I think in a lot of ways is kind of sad, right?
Jeff:
Right. Yeah.
So I was almost in line with you. I gave this a two out of five, and the only reason that I took off marks was that I don’t believe the full accessibility of the mob layer and everything else in Tampa was very accurate to reality. It did present this sort of dream world of full accessibility, but I think that’s a minor sin. I’m not totally against that, but it would’ve been kind of hilarious if he had gone to the bar, the 7 Seas Bar to start shit and it was inaccessible and he wasn’t able to get in. That would’ve been… Actually, and then double barrel shotguns [inaudible 00:39:43] for it. [inaudible 00:39:44].
Sarah:
Okay. He would’ve, I’m calling it, thrown the chair with one arm down the stairs, launched himself down there and started fighting.
Jeff:
Yeah.
Okay. On a scale of one to five, with five being the hardest, how hard was it for you to get through this film?
Sarah:
I thought this film was an absolute delight. I said in the last episode, my roommate actually asked me what I was doing because I was sitting in my room with Jeff just laughing maniacally for much of this film. It is genuinely hilarious. I give it a one. I’d watch it again tomorrow.
Jeff:
Yeah, this was a hard one for me. It was under 90 minutes. Blessings. But also every scene, at the end of the scene, I was ready for the next. I was like, give me more. I want to see what’s coming next. There were zingers throughout the film that were delivered perfectly. It was silly and funny and weird and a fight every 10 seconds.
Sarah:
And you know what? Callback to the cinematographer. Whoever they got for that, he was legitimately very good. He was well above the caliber of Mr. No Legs, the film, and he made it look, especially the car choreography at the end, really good.
Jeff:
Totally.
And this might be actually the hardest one for us to answer. On a scale of one to five, with five being the most, how often did you laugh at the [inaudible 00:41:20] that we’re not supposed to be funny?
Sarah:
Okay. Yeah, that’s hard because I really do think that there’s no way this was supposed to be serious. There’s no way. And if you know, it’s supposed to be a funny kind of pseudo parody, but also goes really hard for a parody on manly man bravado action films, it’s a one. But if you think that they legitimately wanted every minute of this to be Die Hard and you come out of this kind of wishing you were him, I guess it would be a 2 or a 2.5. I don’t know. I think maybe I’ll go in the middle. Maybe I’ll go two.
Jeff:
So hilariously, I had almost the exact same wrestling with angels in my mind, and I also came out at a two. And the only reason I came out at two is that I think there were lots of moments in this film that were objectively hilarious. I think they clearly wanted to be funny. A lot of the little one-liners were clearly supposed to be funny. I think a lot of the fight scenes… When you stab at a Camaro with a broad sword, clearly intended to be funny.
There were other parts of the film that I’m not totally sure if they were in on the joke or not. I’m not sure if they were trying to mock hypermasculinity or if they were just performing hypermasculinity, unclear. But either way, it was funny, and I think I lean more towards you, like this is supposed to be like a Grindhouse-like film. And so I think that that kind of over the top nature, that sort of funny, I think it’s supposed to be funny. So I’m going to give it a two. It might be a one, but I’d want to talk to the directors and find out a little bit more about what they were actually intending.
Sarah:
Yeah, if the directors came out and said, this is a parody of big macho action films, it would be a one for sure.
Jeff:
Okay.
And our last question. On a scale of one to five, with five being the most, how many steps back has this film put disabled people?
Sarah:
I think we should be citing this film in the AODA. I think this should be a core piece of disability arguments and disability empowerment moving forward because it wins over even the most hard to win people on the epistemological and ontological use value in the loosest sense of CDS gang. One.
Jeff:
Yeah, this was an easy one. I didn’t even have to think about it. If there was the ability to give zero, I would give zero. I do not believe this set us back. Okay, maybe it did earn the one. It doesn’t deserve the zero. The only thing is that I think it does unfortunately lead to a tremendous disappointment by both disabled and non-disabled people when they realize in the real world that every wheelchair does not have double barrel shotguns hidden in the armrest. And that maybe does set us back a little bit. It promises a future that never occurs.
Sarah:
You know what? Never say never. Because everybody thought iRobot was a spectacular 2044 future, and it’s looking more like a 2004 future.
Jeff:
Fair enough.
With the lowest score ever on Invalid Culture, drum roll please, the amazing Mr. No Legs clocks in with a score of 10. This might be an underappreciated piece of art.
Sarah:
If I saw a poster in a store for this film, I would buy it outright.
Jeff:
If I saw Mr. No Legs’ in Tampa, Florida, in real life, I would beg to become his Danger Angel.
Sarah:
I want to be a Danger Angel as a career choice now. This movie has changed the trajectory of my life and probably yours because you will forever be in pursuit of a Mr. No Legs style chair.
Jeff:
Yeah. So I’m going to chalk this one up as an enormous win for the disabled population and an absolute abject failure, on my part, for trying to find a terrible movie, because I didn’t. I accidentally found a good one.
Sarah:
I’m going to be so much more disappointed next month because the fall is going to be hard from here.
Jeff:
It is a steep drop-off as we get going in the year of 2024. That’s right, folks, there are many more episodes to come, so be sure to tune in next month as we continue, or rather maybe begin our descent into the depravity of disability representation in film.
And thus concludes another episode of Invalid Culture. Thank you for joining us. I hope you enjoyed it or not.
Do you have a film you would like for us to cover on the pod, or even better, do you want to be a victim on Invalid Culture? Head over to our website, invalidculture.com and submit. We would love to hear from you.
That’s it for this episode. Catch you next month, then until then, stay invalid.
[Theme song, “Arguing with Strangers” by Mvll Crimes finishes out the episode]
