Seeing 'The Street Fighter' at the Theater!

A poster for The Street Fighter (1974) at Shin Bungeiza. Photo by Brett Homenick.

"The Cherokee fists of Sonny Chiba!" -- a quote certainly not used during this TV spot for Roaring Fire (1981)

On Thursday, March 5, I returned to the Shin Bungeiza theater to catch a screening of The Street Fighter (1974), the notorious Sonny Chiba actioner with some outlandish fight scenes. The presentation was clearly not a 35mm print, but whether it was 4K specifically is unknown to me. Unquestionably, however, it was a DCP, and it looked quite good. 

I first saw The Street Fighter in the fall of 2001 when I found it on the Diamond Entertainment double pack with Return of the Street Fighter (1974). I liked the movie and often revisited parts of it at the time, but I don't believe I ever sat down and watched the whole thing again in its entirety until about two years ago when I finally watched it again on DVD. There's a reason for that.

While the movie has genuine moments of bonkers brilliance, it can really drag the rest of the time. This screening only reconfirmed my view. Essentially, whenever Sonny Chiba is offscreen, the movie can become a bit of a chore. By no means is it horrible, but I guess you'd expect a bit more from a movie with this reputation.

The audience I saw the movie with was mostly silent, but there was a smattering of guffaws in the audience when Chiba gets his revenge on Chico Lourant. (If you know, you know.)

About two years ago, I read a post by some goofball on Twitter, who was asserting (without evidence, of course) that The Street Fighter was somehow an inspiration for Godzilla vs. Mechagodzilla (1974). In particular, the guy stated that Godzilla does "Chiba's chi redistribution pose" (his words, not mine) somewhere in the film. The only problem here is, the two movies were released about a month apart in Japan, making any similarities between the two about as purely coincidental as it gets. When I read nonsense like this, I wish genre research were based less on connecting dots and making assumptions and based more on, well, research.  

Overall, it was a fun experience, and, when I saw that they were showing The Street Fighter, I made sure to attend. The movie is good, but it wished it flowed much better than it does.