THE STREET FIGHTER'S LAST REVENGE (1974)

Sonny Chiba as Takuma Tsurugi returns for one final bout of karate mayhem.

I first saw THE STREET FIGHTER'S LAST REVENGE with the American dub, which involves intrigue surrounding factions warring over two tapes containing a valuable formula for synthetic heroin. What I did not know at the time was that the U.S. dub had been edited to remove some of the gore — in the Japanese version, Chiba rips a guy's heart out, which could have garnered an X — the order of some scenes had been rearranged, and that the plot about heroin was added by the American distributors, completely altering the Japanese version's story. The fuckery with the American version forced the film to make little or no sense, and I hated it when I saw that version in the '90's.

Then, a few years ago, one of my favorite "grey market" online video stores began selling a set of all three Street Fighter movies, uncut and with the option of watching them with English dubs or in Japanese with subtitles. I snagged the set and watched all of the films in Japanese for the first time, and the native language made a big difference in re-experiencing them. In the case of THE STREET FIGHTER'S LAST REVENGE, seeing the original version completely reversed my opinion on the film, and watching it again yesterday cemented its place in my head as my favorite of the sequels, as the liveliness of the first film returns somewhat. It's not as savage as the first installment, but it's a solid chopsocky actioner. So, for my one-man Sonny Chiba memorial wake, I  re-watched all of the Street Fighter movies, and this time I've finally made peace with RETURN OF THE STREET FIGHTER. It's mediocre, yes, but overall it has its moments, is entertaining enough to sit through, and Chiba is excellent while in what he must have known was just a "meh" sequel. THE STREET FIGHTER'S LAST REVENGE, however...

The story is solid, with Chiba's character staying more or less his usual asshole self, only having upped his game into the realms of a 1960's spy boom hero for this third outing. He's still a mercenary jobber for assorted underworld interests, but now he utilizes MISSION: IMPOSSIBLE-style masks as disguises and has a slick, James Bondian apartment.

Tsurugi fights for the film's Mcguffin,  a tape containing a confession worth killing for.

This time around, Tsurugi is hired to break out a criminal who's about to be interrogated by the police. That daring and clever breakout places an unwitting Tsurugi in the middle of two factions who seek to obtain a tape containing a damaging political confession. (The heroin plot found in the American dub has absolutely nothing to do with what was going on in the Japanese original.) Though Tsurugi delivers on the jobs he is paid for, he is double-crossed by his employers over and over again, and as we have previously seen, he is not a man to take being fucked-over lightly...

There's more mayhem in this one than in RETURN OF THE STREET FIGHTER, and the film moves at a lively pace. It's replete with karate fights, and the legendary Etsuko Shihomi (SISTER STREET FIGHTER, DRAGON PRINCESS, THE YOUNG ARISTOCRATS: MAKI'S 13 STEPS) pops up as a young but skilled Chinese karate fighter for hire. 

Tsurugi cops a cheap feel off of Etsuko Shihomi.

There's also Reiko Ike as an underworld seductress, and she is by far the most memorable and well-developed female character in the entire trilogy. A Flemingesque avaricious viper with a hot pussy who will shift alliances in a nano-second, as long as her shenanigans will make her rich.

Tsurugi cozies up to Reiko Ike during a romantic ride though a carwash.

THE STREET FIGHTER'S LAST REVENGE would almost be on par with the original if it had more blood and overall viciousness. What nastiness it does have is fun, though, and there's Mister Black, a ludicrous American character who's another of the seemingly endless legion of martial arts thugs for hire, only this guy runs around in full-on Mexican attire, complete with huge sombrero. 

  Mister Black: the Frito Bandito with laser fingers.

He claims to possess psychic superpowers that allow him to cut through wood and metal, so our anti-hero must somehow contend with a man with laser fingers. Tsurugi has a couple of encounters with sombrero man and susses out the source of his alleged superpower, with their final set-to occurring in a crematorium, where Tsurugi lures the guy into a coffin-style box that sends him straight into the crematorium's incinerator while the guy was very much alive. His screams as he's dispatched into the incinerator and realizes what's about to happen to him are horrifying.

Anyway, none of the several bad guys who fuck Tsurugi over during the course of the story make it out alive, and all meet terrible fates. In short, THE STREET FIGHTER'S LAST REVENGE does not disappoint, is flat-out the best of the sequels, and is a good installment with which to end the series. Personally, I would have loved to see more of Takuma Tsurugi adventures, perhaps even one where he meets his inevitable and nasty fate, but Sonny Chiba chose to move on and play other types of characters. Good on him, but his Takuma Tsurugi is indelible, and he is among my Top 5 martial arts movie protagonists.

Bottom line: THE STREET FIGHTER'S LAST REVENGE in its Japanese version is simply terrific and absolutely worth your time.

R.I.P, Sonny Chiba, dead at age 82, felled by the global scourge that is COVID-19. Thank you for entertaining us for so many years, and for being an all-around badass and sweet human being. You will not be forgotten.

 

Poster for the Japanese theatrical release.

RETURN OF THE STREET FIGHTER (1974)

The legendary Sonny Chiba returns as Takuma Tsurugi, once more facing off against rat bastard mafia scumbags. (Not that Tsurugi is himself any kind of a nice guy, but whatever...)

The international plague of COVID-19 continues its inexorable march, and just the other day it took one of the legends of martial arts cinema. Yes, COVID-19 felled the mighty Sonny Chiba at age 82, and now the legendary Street Fighter fights no more. Upon hearing the news, I was devastated, so, in Chiba's honor, I watched a triple-feature of the Street Fighter series as an impromptu wake for the martial artist/actor who had so thoroughly entertained me for nearly forty years. My thoughts on THE STREET FIGHTER, the landmark 1974 Japanese answer to ENTER THE DRAGON that was reportedly the first film to be award an X-rating for violence rather than sexual content when released in the United States, can be found here, so let's go over the first of its sequels.

Released a swift three months after its predecessor, RETURN OF THE STREET FIGHTER, though better than I usually give it credit for, is a tepid confection indeed when stacked against the masterpiece that preceded it. The plots beats are virtually the same as those in the first film — Takuma Tsurugi engages in assorted violent mayhem before being hired for a Mafia job his code of honor will not let him accept, so he fucks over those who hired him and spends the rest of the movie decimating those they send against him in retaliation for his betrayal. We also get a montage of Tsurugi's rigorous training, and he's stuck with a goofy Okinawan sidekick (Yoko Ichiji), only this time the sidekick is a young woman, with the proceedings padded out with reuse of the flashback about his father's execution during WWII (along with his father's memorable advice to him as a child) and bits of business from the previous film's Seikubon dojo sequence and fight against Grandmaster Masaoka (Masafumi Suzuki). And though he was quite decisively killed by having his throat manually and gorily ripped out by Tsurugi at the end of THE STREET FIGHTER, vengeance-seeking Masashi Ishibashi as Shikenbaru ("Junjo" in the U.s. dub of both THE STREET FIGHTER and this sequel) returns (complete with flashback footage of their last encounter at the previous film's climax, further padding things out), seemingly from the dead, to once more engage with Tsurugi, only this time somehow equipped with bionic vocal chords. Oooookaaaay... (Shikenbaru notably ends up suffering the same electrified fate as Oddjob in the 1964 James Bond classic, GOLDFINGER.)

Having seen the classic original, watching RETURN OF THE STREET FIGHTER is a textbook case of the filmmakers playing it safe and just more or less giving the audience the same film again, only this time with the gore and flagrant brutality considerably neutered. Though there are plenty of fun karate fights throughout, they are neither as lively nor as creative as those found in the first film, and the climax is very much a rehash of the first film's, with Tsurugi making mulch of dozens of opponets, though this time in a building instead of on a rain-swept oil tanker. That said, there is a memorable bit where Tsurugi inexplicably finds himself atop a snowy ski slope where he is attacked by two weapons-wielding assailants that he makes short work of, with the coup de grace being him slugging a guy so hard in the back of the head that he knocks the bastard's eyeballs out of their sockets. 

                                                             An eye-popping encounter.

That moment lives up to the glory of the initial installment, but it's a diamond found in one's truck stop sushi. Nonetheless, an acceptable and entertaining way to spend 85 minutes.

Extra points for the superb foley work. The numerous slaps, crunches, and squish noises greatly enhance the fight scenes.

Poster for the Japanese theatrical release.

Poster for the U.S. theatrical release.

THE STREET FIGHTER FIGHTS NO MORE

Requiescat en pace to the martial arts cinema icon Sonny Chiba, taken from us by the scourge of COVID-19 at age 82. His THE STREET FIGHTER (1974) was reportedly the first film to earn an MPAA rating of X for violence rather than sexual content, and it remains my favorite karate/martial arts film that takes place in the then-present day. If you have never seen it, I cannot recommend it enough.

From 2015, here's the raw footage of yours truly expounding on THE STREET FIGHTER and its meaning for and impact upon me personally, minus script and on the floor at a now-defunct Park Slope comics shop. (special thanks to Bill Scurry)