With a title like “The Amazing Mr. No Legs” (Sometimes known as just “Mr. No Legs” and SOMETIMES known by the much MUCH less interesting title of “Gun Fighter”) You’d think this 1978 grimey cop thriller would be something of a standout feature. Hell, one look at the poster was all it really took to sell me on the concept, which was why when “Massacre Video” had a sale in the middle of last year, I jumped at the chance to nab a copy. I was envisioning a kind of “Wheelchair bound Death Wish” for lack of a better explanation with our titular “Mr No Legs” blowing people out of 7th story windows now, and asking questions later! Unfortunately; this was not to be the case. And what we have here is instead an, at times impressive, but ultimately slow going watch that didnt quite light my fire.

The film opens in the basement of an abandoned factory thats currently being occupied by a criminal organisation who primarily deal in drug trafficking led by a man named Lou. In the opening of the film we see members of this gang hiding pills and powder inside vegetables as a way to get them to their intended market, and a short time after that we cut to the docklands to see the gang engaging with some dock workers about taking on some new ‘product’ Unfortunatley for the gang, the police are already in on the case and are running surveilance on them. As soon as the deal is complete the cops rush the place and take several people into custody.

Later that night, another deal is taking place and it’s here where we’re introduced to the titular “Mr. No Legs”, who doesnt much care for the dealers attitudes and blows them away with his customised wheelchair with arm mounted shotguns. With the dealers gone, No Legs and his assistant clear out of the place before the cops turn up, heading to a house party wherein Lou and No Legs discuss the days busts and murders and Lou warns him that things are starting to get a little sloppy, and that, if No Legs wants to keep his position within the business, he’ll try and stay as sharp as possible.

The busts prompt Lou to move some of his product, as he believes the cops may know about their affairs. So he gets two of his men to pack a van up and move the gear to a new location. After this is done we pick up with one of the movers, who goes by the name of Ken. Kens been taking a small amount of the drugs himself to sell to friends and family in order to pay his way through college, and at this point he’s renting a place with his *fairly* new girlfriend Tina. On returning home after the move however, Ken is confronted by Tina who had asked Ken to stop using and dealing as shes found ‘paraphernalia’.

Ken tries to play it down, but this is really the final straw for Tina who tells him shes leaving before going to grab her things. A small scuffle ensues and Ken accidentally pushes Tina, who falls over, hits her head on a counter top and knocks a TV onto her head, killing her. Ken freaks out a bit and puts a call in to Mr. No Legs, and him and an assistant turn up to Kens apartment and calmly help to frame up Tinas body to make it look like she took a drug overdose. Once they get that sorted however, No Legs tells Ken that he’s now a problem as a witness, so they murder him too and hide his body.

This effectively kickstarts the films main thrust, as it turns out that Tinas brother is a cop who works in surveillance. When the bodies reach the morgue, the chief calls in a fellow cop who knew Tina called Chuck, who gives a positive ID on the body. He tells Chuck to head to the local college to get all of Tina’s belongings while the chief will contact her brother Andy to get him down to the morgue to identify her as a family member. Andy is…well I wont say distraught…thats what he’s aiming for…but hes not THAT good of an actor…so border comic whimpering is about as good as we get, before it hard cuts to later that night with Andy in a bar getting wasted and mourning. He heads home and his girlfriend/partner looks after him for a bit.

The next day, the chief pulls Chuck into his office and tells him that he’s being moved into a surveilence role alongside Andy, they’re to monitor Lou’s drug buisness with the aim of finding a link between them and the murder of Tina, and almost immediately Chuck finds a letter in Tinas college stuff with a forwarded address from the east side of town, so he heads out to see where that leads. On arriving at the address, he meets the landlady for the property who lets chuck check the place out. Almost immediately, they discover foul play in the form of blood on the floor and the broken TV. This is also backed up by the coroner’s report that suggests that Tina DID have drugs in her system, but that they’d been put there over an hour after all her organs had stopped functioning.

While this is going on, No Legs receives a phone call from Lou asking about the whereabouts of Ken, No Legs tells him that Ken’s dead and Lou doesnt take it well, once again accusing No Legs of getting sloppy. He tells No Legs that theres a leak on his patch and to find out who’s spreading info. No Legs hangs up and heads to a local dive bar to do some dealing and blow off some steam, but while in there some blue collar racist trailer trash starts a fight with a black girl and the whole bar erupts into a blood bath. By chance, at this exact moment, the cops have JUST started trailing No Legs and one of them rushes into the bar to see what the commotion is, only to immediately end up having to take part in the free for all. No Legs spots the cops, stabs a guy and races out of the building to get away, while Andy more or less takes out half of the bar single handedly and is eventually helped out of the place by Chuck.

Some time later Chuck calls Andy to tell him they need to get down to the morgue ASAP as they’ve found Kens body, and they need someone to identify him. But at almost the exact same time, No Legs gets a call to tell him that Kens bodies been found, so he sends two guys dressed as paramedics down to the morgue to try and steal the body back before it can be ID’d. Naturally the second they arrive at the hospital, the coronor refuses to allow them to take the body without family or police ID. So they lock the coroner in the freezer and try to take it anyway. Unfortunately for them, the second they DO try, then Andy and Chuck turn up, a fight breaks out and our goons flee in the ambulance failing to take the body. Andy and Chuck check the stiff out and Andy confirms that he’s seen the guy before as he’s been dating Tina, and because the goons were Lou’s guys, they now have a positive link between Lous organisation and the murders of Ken and Tina.

Later that night AGAIN by sheer coincidence, Andy goes for a drink at a quieter bar, and non other than No Legs and one of his assistants are there drinking, the guys almost immediately recognise one another and a brawl breaks out in which No legs uses ninja stars and his shotguns, while his assistant weilds something approaching a claymore! Andy flees the bar, and hops in his car while the assistant slashes at the bodywork. Andy manages to flee and is, again (IN THE MIDDLE OF THE NIGHT) met by Chuck, who basically tries to get him back on the level, this incident basically puts No Legs on day and night surveillance as a result..

News reaches Lou about what happened and he decides finally that No Legs is a liability who needs to be taken out of the picture. And with that, we enter our final act, as the cops ramp up monitoring and the walls start to close in on No Legs, will the cops catch Lou!? Will No Legs survive a whacking order!? And, Will this film have a car chase!? It shows a car crashing into something on the poster…so I hope theres a car chase! All this and more WILL be answered, if you check out “The Amazing Mr. No Legs.”

And I really cant hide my exasperation about this film really, theres some stuff that I feel works really well here and is notable for the world of exploitation cinema. But for every good point theres something mixed to poor neutralising it.

From the off, probably my biggest gripe with the whole thing is the total misuse of Mr. No Legs. Lets make no mistake here, the guys being marketed as the star of the film, as the main USP, he’s whats putting bums on seats, So much so that they spin the promotional material to make it sound like it’s “The Cops Vs No Legs” AND to the point that they don’t even bother marketing, arguably THE main cop in the film. Andy is totally missing from the promotional material and instead Chuck (who’s like…either joint 3rd or 4th main character in terms of pecking order) gets a poster spot. By marketing this film as being pretty much the Mr. No Legs show, they’ve almost guarenteed to set themselves up to dissapoint the audience because, thats not really tonally how this film works.

No Legs here, is to this film what Jaws or Oddjob was to their respective bond films. They’re secondary characters who are distinct and absolutely memorable. But if they’d called “The Spy Who Loved Me”, “Mr Jaws Bites Back” you’d be a bit dissapointed when he only turns up like…4 or 5 times across the entire runtime and WASNT the actual drive of the film.

Because of this it automatically threw me off the movie because, had No Legs been a nice reveal for the film. I’d have probably been much more charitable towards it, but slapping him with the “main character” moniker almost immediately felt like a betrayal on the part of the film makers which instantly made me less receptive to wanting to be kind to this thing. A lesson there to you aspiring film maker that lies will make you a quick buck, but Honesty WILL get you further.

In terms of the script, this is fine…like, it didnt fully win me over plot wise, but i’ve seen worse exploitation fodder in terms of story, style and tone. To be completely honest, the film it reminded me most of while watching was “Death Force” just in terms of what it was trying to do and how it was going about things narrative wise. Given how heavily it leans on it’s exploitation elements to try and sell the movie, Mr No Legs isnt in the film nearly as much as he could be, and doesnt really get anything fun or interesting to do, barring the bar fight scene which, even then, isnt integral to the plot, it seemingly just exists because the writers looked at what they’d done so far and went “Oh Shit…the films called “Mr No Legs” and not only does he only turn up to talk mundane bollocks for the first 40ish minutes…but NOTHING outside of a couple of kills in the first 10 minutes ACTUALLY happens in this film at all…we need something to wake the audience up from the coma they’re probably in by this point.

And thats a pretty good summary for how this film plays out honestly, what we have is 3 lumpy acts, that are badly paced, where, because most of the budget seemingly went on the effects shots and the 3rd act, we only have the scope and budget left to pay for our characters to stand in locations and spew exposition at us with very little else to actually show for itself. Tonally, the thing IS out and out exploitation, theres a little racism and ablism thrown into the mix here and there, but that sleazy attitude that can only come from this genre between ‘65 and ‘85 is alive and well here and is probably the scripts saving grace honestly, as…if it wasnt for the bleakness of the picture and the questionably grimey dialogue, this would be a very VERY dull movie.

However, even that comes with a caveat because, with the film ONLY trading in bleakness, or at best mild apathy. It means theres almost no nuance here, no contrast, nothing that really helps give the film that extra dimension that would help push it above and beyond just another film trying to grift a buck. ‘I Drink Your Blood’ is probably a decent example of exploitation tone done right, because you have a Rabies based horror film thats marketed as a ‘Health Picture’ to try and skirt the MPAA and while it IS absolutely bleak in its subject matter and regularly gets into grim and unpleasant terratory. It also has campy, over the top segments and even a moment or two of dark comedy and psychedelia to help offset that bleakness to create a bold and well rounded vision.

No Legs doesnt have that, it doesnt have the charisma or the attitude about it to have that added shading. It’s just one tone all the way through, and while that does still produce some nice moments, it means the film falls well short of what it potentially *could* have been and instead just kind of ends up a bit middle of the road.

Oh! And also, mild spoilers here, so…please skip to the next chapter if you don’t want the ending mildly ruined. But they DO indeed go all out in the 3rd act…but in the least engaging way possible. The film ends with a mild shootout (literally a 3-5 minute scene) which then leads INTO a 10 minute long car chase, that may not sound like a long time to you. But if you’ve ever sat through a rather uninspired car chase scene, you’ll know that, unless they can keep it fresh? It can be an arse numb-er make no mistake. And here? Its LOOOOOOOOOOONG. Im not a big fan of extended car chase scenes, in the same way im not a big fan of extended martial arts fight sequences when they’re not constantly growing in scale or energy. Just watching two people mildly slap each other back and forth for 10-15 minutes (occasionally bringing in and removing weapons from the equation) is terminally dull to me. And the same can be said for car chases.

You’ve seen one police car flip over and catch fire, you’ve seen them all. If they can keep the chase interesting, add some suspense, shake up the cine, keep ramping up the stakes with more stunts and explosions, then sure…I’ll keep watching to see how crazy it gets. But here? Theres about 8 minutes of just…cars driving at speed down long stretches of highway, often in locked off mid wide and wide shots, interspersed every 3 minutes or so with a cop car blowing up. The scene ends with a rather impressive crash involving a large block of ice. But it’s just not enough to keep me engaged, and by about the 5 minute mark into this chase, I ended up on my phone bcause I knew this thing wasnt ending anytime soon and I knew it wasnt going to improve much beyond what i’d already seen by this point. It was a nice idea, just executed in arguably one of the dullest ways imaginable.

The end result? Was a script that to me was a slow and at times hard going picture, that did have a few interesting moments dotted throughout, but wasnt nearly interesting or entertaining enough to completely hold me for the full runtime. It had good intentions in the 3rd act that it couldnt deliver on and a cast of characters that were a bit too “One note” to ever really truely be memorable. No Legs is the best part of this film and he does surprisingly little all things considered.

The script was written by Jack Cowden, he has 8 writing credits and almost all of them are for movies involving “Flipper” the dolphin or are flipper adjacent (my guess is the man cant write for movies involving legs). The film was directed by Ricou Browning. Who many here will probably recognise as the guy who did all the underwater work while dressed as the Gillman for all 3 of the “Creature from the black lagoon” movies. He has 7 directing credits, mainly for animal based movies such as “Flipper” and “Gentle Ben”. “Mr. No Legs” was his final directing credit and Unfortunately he passed away in 2023 at the age of 93

On the direction front, its all a bit hectic. I’ve mentioned earlier that this film looks and feels like a very generic example of the grindhouse exploitation genre, and the notable thing about grindhouse exploitation cinema is that its often incredibly cheap looking (with notable exception) grimey, messy and often not really grounded in the standard rules of film production. And thats probably the best way to describe this film. While some of the locations used are impressive and there are moments in the 3rd act where its clear a budget was present. This doesnt feel like a particularly coherent production. THe lighting teams arnt really working with cine to get the best out of both of their fields. The cine and the cast don’t seem to be communicating much beyond basic framing and the director doesnt really seem to be pooling these crowds together in a way that could help take this film to the next level.

I cant even really say it’s inexperience because the guy had 6 directing credits prior to this across a 10-15 year window. Whether budget or apathy was the cause, I cant say, but we have a film that quite often doesnt really seem to know what its trying to say through its direction, and frequently fumbles what are actually quite easy lands, had it just had a bit more time, money and thought put in. It’s not ALL terrible, but theres just a whole lot of “That’ll do” being thrown around through this production, And if this channels showcased anything across the time i’ve been doing this, it’s that “That’ll Do” seldom actually does.

Direction of the cast isnt great either, again. Im not sure if it was because of budgetary concerns around having to do reshoots or just an unconfident director at the helm. But we’re in that awful territory of cast members largely staying bolted in place when on screen, rarely if ever working with their set space, using props minimally and only as instructed, and failing to really set things alight. It doesnt help either that I think most of the performers in this just arnt very good…but the lack of a careful and considered hand in terms of trying to utilise their space a bit better has only compounded the issue even further. Its a quite dry viewing experience all things considered.

As for the cine? It’s drab. Its grimey late 70s seediness shot on heavy grain film stock using basic shot types with maybe a few cutaways and AT BEST a handful of instances of “Super slow motion” during some of the action scenes for added emphasis. Composition is considered, but sometimes forgotten, theres not really any attempts at blocking shots, it’s usually just a case of the planets aligning correctly by chance that anything good happens rather than the directors intervention. Everything kind of has a blueish/greenish tint to it and I cant decide if thats just print damage or an attempt at colour usage. But, in either case its distracting more than it is engaging and the sequences aren’t exactly ‘well’ cut together. Its by no means the WORST i’ve ever seen on the editing front…at least they *largely* cut when they’re supposed to, but this could have absolutely been a much tighter production than we ended up with, instead, it just comes across as a terribly basic production…which again, is very much the nature of ‘Grindhouse Exploitation’ cinema…it’s just not an example of GOOD grindhouse exploitation cinema.

Performance wise, its a wash out, theres one…maybe two decent performances here in the form of Ted Vollrath as Mr No Legs a double amputee who fought in the korean war who ended up opening his own martial arts studio and advocating for the rights, health and wellbeing of other disabled actors. Who here, despite not really getting to show us too much of his martial artistry IS decent enough to carry the film through some of its duller times and does give the film some of it’s better moments. The other would be Rance Howard (father of Clint and Ron Howard) as Lou, who decides to play his role as the king pin of an international drugs cartel as muted. Which I think was probably the best angle to approach this from and does lead to some of the more decent sequences as he can be menacing without having to be overly dramatic. I think he does a fine job and again, helps just about keep the film afloat in places where it would have otherwise sunk.

The rest of the cast though…arrre not so great. With Richard Jaeckel and Ron Slinker as Chuck and Andy giving VERY dry performances that are a bit stilted and awkward honestly, they can just about do ‘cool action cop’ (which they don’t get to do very much here unfortunately) but anything outside of that is beyond there range it seems. Andy mourning Tinas death has GOT to be one of the least believable performances i’ve seen this season and is really kind of ‘the bar’ with which almost all the other performances chalk up to. Noone here really has a strong screen presence, the ability to read their lines with any aspect of beliveability and, for the most part, It borders on the comedic. Which is a shame, because i’d have enjoyed an infamous performance almost as much as a good one. As it stands I just kind of shrugged my way through this one.

And finally; the soundtrack! Library funk! And LOTS of it! They actually got a band in to do most of the score here, they’re called “Mercy” they play live in the film…and they sound like a band that makes library tracks. It’s not particularly memorable, but it more than defines the film as a 70s flick and it’s a clean score thats used as much as its needed to be. I cant really fault it, but I cant say its standout…it’s just kind of…there. What IS an issue on the audio front however is the ADR, which is atrocious. NO attempt has been made here to blend the redubbed audio in with the onset stuff, meaning it will randomly cut from an airey and open sounding on location recording to an air tight studio dub and back again frequently across the runtime. I can also assume they didnt get decent quality atmos tracks while recording the on location audio because a lot of the sequences are incredibly hissy and annoying. I appreciate they didnt really have a lot to work with for the remaster on this one (more on that shortly) but yehhh…this thing sounds very wobbly all things considered.

“The Amazing Mr. No Legs” was released to cinemas in 1978 and a VHS release followed in either 1979 or 1980 (I’ve received conflicting reports) by Temple Video. And from there the film fell into relative obscurity a few unofficial bootleg DVDs of the old VHS tape “Dumped on disc” being touted about through the 2000s in europe and the US, but it wasnt until 2020 when the film would finally receive a bluray release with some limited extras courtesy of Massacre Video. And it’s here really that a major problem was identified. While ‘Massacre’ were looking for the apropriate elements in order to restore the film, they discovered quite quickly that there wasnt really a tremendous amount of the fim left to restore. All of the original elements existed right up until the early 2010’s until they were destroyed by Hurracaine Sandy. They were able to source multiple 16mm US prints of the film, but they were all either damaged beyond use, decomposed due to vinegar syndrome or in various stages of mould/water damage making them unsuitable for use.

After much searching, they eventually stumbled on a 35mm french film print, it wasnt in immaculate condition, but it was (and at the time of recording, still IS) the best film source this movie has. A lot of footage was removed for the french release, So; where instances of that have occurred they’ve gone back to the old VHS release and basically pulled those scenes, upscaled them and reinserted them back into the movie…with mixed results. They’re very clear to state that this was a mixed quality patchwork effort aimed mainly at restoring the film to as ‘complete’ as possible in the highest possible quality. and…While I personally would say I feel it looks a little overly compressed to my eye and that would also explain some of the audio issues I experienced when watching this. I think they’ve done a tremendous job of restoring this thing.

Extras are a bit thin on the ground which is a shame, theres the option to watch the film both in it’s uncut VHS/Film print version, or just the 35mm french print as it was recovered. Theres a still gallery, a couple of trailers and a crap ton of ads for other ‘Massacre Videos’ releases, and thats about it. Which is a bit of a shame as I think a short documentary on the story behind how they located and restored the film would have been decent, and this is one of the few instances where I think a solid ‘Making of’ the movie might have really helped bring this one to life a bit more for me.

Ultimately, ‘The Amazing Mr. No Legs’ is a bit ‘all mouth and no trousers’ it has a few good elements of action and suspense dotted across it’s 90(ish) minute runtime. But ultimately; theres too little to really out and out make this stand out against any of the other exploitation flicks that tried and failed to launch around this time. At it’s current retail price of near $25 dollars, I cant recommend this one as I don’t feel theres enough here to justify it. But if you can score it for $10 dollars or less, your big into the exploitation genre or you have some buddies who enjoy a good cheesy movie and your looking for something to break in your evening. I’d say this was probably what your looking for. Its a shame really that a film that had the potential to be so much more interesting and crazy, has wound up being actually kind of generic and dull. Its absolutely an example of a bad movie, with good ideas that could be done better today if someone were to transplant it’s core ideas out and make an entirely new movie with them.

source https://letterboxd.com/tytdreviews/film/mr-no-legs/1/