“Don’t worry
about it. They always hire bums like me
for jobs like this.”
When you’re young you pretty much have
no choice but to watch what your parents watch be it on TV or at the
movies. Growing up in during the birth
of both the cable generation and the home video age I watched a lot of videos
and cable TV, mostly what my dad watched.
So if he watched Barney Miller, so did I. He watched Wild Wild West, so did I. He watched the same three Michael Paré movies
all the time, then so did I. It took a
while for me to come around to both “Eddie and the Cruisers” and “The Philadelphia
Experiment” both had for the time, complex relationships and themes that I was
too young to really get. I just liked the music in ‘Cruisers’ and the
man-out-of-time element in ‘Philadelphia’.
The film that I gravitated toward was “Streets of Fire”, being 9 years-old
the time, the title immediately brought an image to mind. Then I heard the soundtrack, after that I was
on board.
The film
directed by Walter Hill the man behind classics like “The Warriors” and “48
Hrs.” is a mash up of genres, the sets and costumes of the movie is steeped in
50’s cinema, and the music, dialogue, and action is all 80’s. The story is pretty basic, biker gang kidnaps
up and coming pop singer, for unknown reasons, and her old boyfriend is called
back into town to rescue her. An18 year
old Diane Lane plays the singer Ellen Aim, and a young tough looking Michael
Paré plays Tom Cody. He gets to town at
the behest of his older sister Reva (Deborah Van Valkenburgh) and no one really
seems all that rushed to save her, we get character set up of Cody, Ellen’s
manager/boyfriend Billy Fish (Rick Moranis) and even the sidekick of the film McCoy
(Amy Madigan) with a dash of what every
film needs a little Bill Paxton. But
time is given to set up the plan and get to the neighborhood called the “Battery”
to save the girl. Even the villain of the
piece a young and creepy looking Willem Dafoe dressed in rubber overalls takes
his time before taking advantage of a tied up on a bed Ellen. It feels really silly watching now, and takes
away from trying to enjoy it even on a visual level. Which is even harder, since the sets look
like their straight out of “The Flash” TV show.
The only moments I liked watching now, was some of the 80’s dialogue is cleverly
blended together with the 50’s speak, and Paré’s performance as the tough guy
who says little with his cowboy looking duster and rifle. I also enjoyed some of the humor brought by
Madigan and pretty much all of the Rick Moranis performance.
Overall it
was not like how I remembered it, though I still liked the Sorels (Stoney
Jackson, Robert Townsend, Grand L. Bush and Mykelti “Bubba-Gump-Shrimp” Williamson),
lip-syncing to the Dan Hartman song “I Can Dream About You”. The music is very 80’s but still enjoyable,
and what can I say, I’m a guy, but Diane Lane is hot in this movie. This film was set up to be a trilogy, which
shows at the ending. None was ever done because
of the poor success of the film. However
someone did try to make a sequel called “Road to Hell” starring Michel Paré, I watched
the trailer on youtube, and it’s awful.
Kind of a failed version of Sin City.
I was going to put the video at the end here, but it’s way too bad, so I
went out on the best note I know…
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