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 that differed from Lee’s. 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 who’s come to the prison to comfort the condemned criminal before revealing his kickass abilities, Terry accomplishes this mission with backup from his lackey/ live-in servant Ratnose. Continue reading
SURF NAZIS MUST DIE (1987) – The ideal companion piece to the original Point Break! Rest assured, the Surf Nazis are depicted as the scummy villains they are and that they do get their just desserts in this 83-minute bundle from So Bad It’s Good movie Heaven. Though distributed by the venerable Troma Team, Surf Nazis Must Die was actually produced by the Institute. The film was directed by Peter George and written by George with Jon Ayre. 
Surf Nazis Must Die is refreshingly played mostly straight – but still howlingly bad – and the 
Over the years, Balladeer’s Blog has reviewed several of Jorg Buttgereit’s envelope-pushing, taboo-breaking horror films. Because I review everything from the extreme fringes like Buttgereit (at left) to mild, even family-friendly items let me offer a warning for readers who don’t like extreme violence or extreme concepts. If you fall into that category, please DO NOT look up my long-ago reviews of Jorg’s most notorious films and then blast me because the subject matter appalls you. I am giving fair warning about what they’re like. 
CAPTAIN BERLIN: RETTER DER WELT (1982) – Buttgereit was only 18 when he made this 10-minute short film. He wrote, directed and played the title superhero with Bela B. from the German punk band Die Ärzte co-starring as Mister Synth. This work about West Berlin’s only superhero fighting a monster from outer space is of interest only because of Buttgereit’s and Bela’s involvement. 
Decades later, Buttgereit would revive the Captain Berlin character in one of his stage show-radio show hybrids, titled Captain Berlin versus Hitler. That production – which I will review at some point in the future – was eventually filmed and released to theaters and on dvd. 
HORROR HEAVEN (1984) – Jorg starred as an old-fashioned Horror Movie Host introducing several horror shorts of his own making in this 24-minute project. Buttgereit structured it as a salute to Boris Karloff but with some gore thrown in. 
PLEASE DON’T TOUCH ME (Filmed in 1959, released in 1963) – Buy this for the Lash La Rue fan in your life, but mostly for the Ron and June Ormond fan in your life. For people outside of us lovers of Bad Movies I’ll point out that Ron and June Ormond were the famous husband and wife team of low-low-low budget filmmakers. 
Though Please Don’t Touch Me sounds like it would be a sexploitation flick, lurid assault film or Nudie Cutie, rest assured there’s nothing in this 67-minute oddity that your grandmother couldn’t handle. Well, maybe your mother, instead of grandma. 
MYRA BRECKINRIDGE (1970) – This film is based on the novel by Gore Vidal, who once called director John Waters “the pope of trash.” Well, Gore, Waters never had anything to do with Myra Breckinridge in any of its forms, so you have no room to talk. 
First up, a summary of the plot – Myron Breckinridge, played by THE Rex Reed, the famed film critic, is fascinated with Hollywood and is conflicted about his sexuality AND about societal notions of masculinity. Myron believes that the film industry has distorted and perverted masculinity into what would today be called by certain people a “toxic” stew of rabid machismo. 
Next, as Myra Breckinridge instead of Myron, the character goes to Hollywood to work at the acting school run by her uncle – former cowboy star Buck Loner … played by JOHN FREAKING HUSTON! Myra’s plan is to change the way male thespians behave and how men are portrayed in film so that she can destroy the very concept of traditional macho movie heroes forever. 
THE CLONES (1973) – This neglected sci-fi item from the 70s was directed by Lamar Card & Paul Hunt, based on Hunt’s story. The Clones falls into that category of films that I always refer to as “X-Movies” because of the way they put one in mind of the paranoid and conspiratorial air of the best X-Files episodes. 
Gregory Sierra, best known to trivia buffs as “And Gregory Sierra” for the number of times he was credited like that in various television shows and movies, plays Nemo, a government agent tasked to keep the clone project a secret and bring in the escapee. 
STRAIGHT TO HELL (1987) – For a glib, one sentence review of this movie, how about “Quentin Tarantino minus Quentin Tarantino equals Straight to Hell?” Though this flick came out years before Tarantino’s films it clearly influenced him and to this day it feels like a lost, inferior effort by Quentin. 
Alex threw in some of his stable of regulars from his two earlier films, slapped together a script in three days (co-written by Dick Rude) and used a mere few weeks to make this oddball genre-bender in Spain. 
AMPHIBIAN MAN (1962) – This “mad scientist creates a man capable of living underwater” movie was made in the Soviet Union but frequently appeared in dubbed English on American television decades ago. 
Many online reviewers accuse the makers of The Shape of Water of ripping off this 1962 movie that is based on a 1928 novel. Arguments can be made for that, but it’s important to remember that all sci-fi stories draw from the same general inheritance of tropes. 
ICHTYANDR SALVATOR (Vladimir Korenev) – A young Argentinean man whose scientist father prevented him from dying of a lung disease in childhood by grafting shark gills on to his body. Ichtyandr has been raised and educated in isolation and his father even designed a comical looking underwater suit for our hero to wear, complete with a shark fin. 
Regular readers of Balladeer’s Blog are familiar with my odd sense of humor. While searching for some more obscure films to watch and review, I came across this synopsis of the storyline for a 1974 Italian comedy. The movie in question is La Cugina (The Cousin), and the English translation of whatever the contributor actually wrote in Italian is … a bit garbled. Hilariously entertaining, but garbled nevertheless. 
PRAY FOR THE WILDCATS (1974) – That’s Wildcats as in the Baja Wildcats, the name given by the villainous Andy Griffith to himself and his fellow over the hill dirt bikers – William Shatner, Marjoe Gortner and Robert Reed! 
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