SONNY CHIBA’S FILM “THE STREET FIGHTER” (1974) – NOTHING TO DO WITH THE VIDEO GAME

THE STREET FIGHTER (1974) – Long before the Street Fighter video games there was this ultra-violent cult film from Japan starring the one and only Shinichi “Sonny” Chiba. Long before Riki-Oh: The Story of Ricky and Romeo Must Die, this 1970s grindhouse actioner featured an “x-ray vision” scene of the damage being done to a villain’s skull and brain by a powerful blow from the star.

Sonny Chiba had been a television and movie star in Japan for decades by this point, starring in everything from serious action films to kid-friendly ventures like Invasion of the Neptune Men and The Golden Bat. The Street Fighter, titled Clash! Killer Fist in Japan made Chiba an international sensation.

The iconic Chinese superstar Bruce Lee had passed away by this point, and Japan’s Sonny Chiba was hailed as Lee’s true successor in martial arts cinema, albeit with karate, judo and other skills. There is a degree of truth to such claims, but Sonny was a much darker, grittier figure even if he DOES make the same kind of noises that Bruce made.

The Street Fighter is notorious as the first U.S. film to be tagged with an X-Rating based purely on violence. Chiba’s character Takuma “Terry” Tsurugi is a brooding, bitter man of half-Japanese and half-Chinese background, and he grew up as an outcast due to such a mixed heritage. Hell, he was even imprisoned in an Imperial Japanese concentration camp as a child.  

A lifetime of fighting in the streets of Japan has molded Terry into a legendarily hardened and ruthless man who is now a high-priced mercenary badass for hire. He’s not quite a “hero” since this film doesn’t have any, he’s just the main character like Michael Corleone in the Godfather movies.

The Street Fighter begins with Tsurugi being hired to bust out a Japanese gangster before his scheduled execution. Posing as a Buddhist Priest before revealing his kickass abilities, Terry accomplishes this mission with backup from his lackey/ live-in servant Ratnose.

Next, we get a glimpse of how merciless our Street Fighter truly is. The clients who paid him to spring the gangster – the criminal’s brother and sister – admit they can’t pay Tsurugi the rest of the promised money. Terry retaliates in very ugly fashion, killing the brother in a fight, then literally turning the sister into a hooker until she pays him all the money he is owed.

First-time viewers realize they’re not in Kansas anymore, having gotten a taste of the amoral quality that makes The Street Fighter so infamous and scandalous. The gangster freed by Tsurugi in the opening learns of this when he comes out of hiding to hire a prostitute, only to realize it’s his own sister. AWK-waaaaard!

This makes the gangster and his sister unite to start hunting down our star to kill him for his actions. 

Meanwhile, Terry is approached by the Yakuza, who want to hire him to kidnap Sarai, the beautiful young Japanese woman who just inherited her late father’s oil company. Tsurugi turns them down in his typically coarse, uncivilized manner.

The Yakuza then sends men to kill Terry to prevent him from talking about their planned kidnapping, but he dispatches them in characteristically bloody, eye-gouging, rib-breaking fashion. Chiba is incredible in his fight scenes, sometimes killing multiple opponents before his first victim can even hit the floor. 

Our Street Fighter plays for keeps and his uncompromising brutality makes Bruce Lee look like squeaky-clean Gene Autry to Sonny Chiba’s Clint Eastwood. That’s not meant as an insult OR a compliment, just an observation. 

Angry that the Yakuza tried to bump him off, Tsurugi decides to get revenge on them by thwarting their planned abduction, then guarding AND romancing the gorgeous heiress in order to gain access to her money. Like I said above, Sonny’s character is not by any means a hero, just riveting.

So, the stage is set for the rest of the film, with Terry being aided by his manservant Ratnose and by Kendo, his long-ago teacher in the martial arts, who may be old but can still kick Tsurugi’s ass in a fight. That formulaic respectful depiction of an aged master in an Eastern actioner is a reassuring element amid the taboo-breaking chaos of the rest of the storyline.

Most of The Street Fighter consists of fight scenes, but these stand out from other chop-socky flicks by their envelope-pushing violence. Tsurugi breaks bones, knocks out teeth, crushes windpipes, disrupts intestinal tracts, ruptures kidneys, tears off balls, tears out eyes and even rips out a throat for good measure.   

There’s also the aforementioned moment of hilarious tastelessness as we get an x-ray vision view of Terry’s fist shattering a foe’s skull and mashing his brain. Think of the x-ray vision looks at physical damage on the series 1,000 Ways to Die for a comparison.   

In addition to the graphic, gory violence, The Street Fighter has all the little extras that make a cult film immortal. There’s a wildcard blind martial artist who kicks butt like Zatoichi, a sexy fox-hunting outfit worn for no reason by the previously whored-out sister, Sarai’s sinister uncle who wants to lay his hands on her inheritance and bizarre dialogue that will stay with you forever.    

My personal favorite awful line may be “Your father’s a traitor; your mother’s a whore; you’re no Japanese!” (I wouldn’t be surprised to learn that t-shirts saying this were among The Street Fighter merchandise. If you don’t like that joke try this one – That line always makes me wish that Lloyd Bentsen had instead said to Dan Quayle “Your father’s a traitor; your mother’s a whore; you’re NO Jack Kennedy!”)

At any rate, Ratnose gets killed by the blind swordsman, who is killed in turn by Tsurugi. The bad guys – who are now allied with the escaped gangster and his sister – kidnap Sarai and it all comes to a head during a rain-soaked fight on the ship where they have stashed the heiress.

Our title character is the last man standing after another orgy of bone breaking and blood-vomiting from internal injuries inflicted by Terry. The Street Fighter should have been left as a stand-alone classic, but unfortunately a sequel – Return of the Street Fighter – was already being teased in the closing credits.

Return of the Street Fighter, also from 1974 (1975 in the U.S.), just couldn’t live up to its predecessor. The violence was toned down, and the series became even closer to mainstream with The Street Fighter’s Last Revenge and Sister Street Fighter, which starred Chiba alongside a female butt kicker played by Etsuko Shihomi. (She played the gangster’s sister here in The Street Fighter.)  

But, just as Rick and Ilsa will always have Paris, lovers of ultraviolent grindhouse fare will always have The Street Fighter. NOTE: ONLY the uncut version of this movie delivers all the goods. If you’ve seen any version under 91 minutes long you’ve been robbed of some of the gory glory.   

FOR MORE WEIRD AND BAD MOVIES CLICK HERE.