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+---- Thread: The Street Fighter (1974) (/showthread.php?tid=8293)
The Street Fighter (1974) - Drunk Monk - 02-03-2025
I should’ve revisited this when I did that best of retrospective on Chiba when he died - http://www.brotherhoodofdoom.com/doomForum/showthread.php?tid=6469
I’m doing a Karate focused piece and went back for it. It’s brutally dated. Chiba is a reprehensible anti-hero. He’s got a heavy asshole vibe and assails most of the women characters forcefully smooching them until they submit. His karate is weirdly overacted in some flailing attempt to mimic Bruce that doesn’t work at all. The choreo is crude and clunky, an attempt to imitate the Kung Fu choreo which was fire at that time. And there’s some simply nonsensical logic leaps, like with his henchman ‘Ratnose’ attempts to free Terry Sugary (that’s how Tsuragi is dubbed) and Terry falls off a cliff into a river, but somehow Ratnose recovers him even though they were both with the baddies on top of the cliff.
It’s the violence that’s stand out. It’s sanguineous, bright red paint blood spilling in buckets. There’s a wicked dagger to the eye which when plucked, gushes prolifically. There’s the first use of x-Ray vision for a skull crushing. And there’s two grabs that come back with bloody chunks, a throat and a groin of a black rapist. Now it’s all tame but back then, this film earned at X rating, the first ever given for violence.
It’s a fascinating watch now because it was a blockbuster import back in wake of Bruce’s death, a significant stepping stone for martial arts movie immigrating west. But now it’s dated grindhouse fare, notable for being at the right time, and it’s overall ruthlessness.
Not D00M recommended. Seen on YouTube.