Disc Reviews

Streets Of Fire Blu-ray Review

19th Nov 2013

Walter Hill’s nuttiest bowl of extra nutty fruit nut loops, comes to Blu-ray HD in a restored, and feature packed iteration. Let’s see what happens.

Starring Michael Paré, the drop dead gorgeous Diane Lane, Wilem Defoe, Amy Madigan, and the most miscast Rick Moranis you will ever see, the film also sports appearances from the likes of Bill Paxton, and Lynne Thigpen among others.

Like a fair few Walter Hill movies before it, Ry Cooder is back providing music duties, although it’s more of a various artists affair this time, with additional contributions from Jim Steinman and Stevie Nicks to name but two.

Incredibly overlooked on a not inconsiderable $14.5m budget, back in 1984, and a resulting financial failure for Universal; Streets of Fire is as polarising now as it was back then, but has long held cult status. The movie can best be described as the crazy result of a bunch of middle aged filmmakers throwing ideas without prejudice into a pot marked ‘Our Real or Imagined Totally Brilliant Teenage Movie Components’, stirring it all up, and seeing what comes out at the end.

The result is actually quite incredible, and to be frank; depending on who you’re asking, either incredibly brilliant or incredibly terrible, there’s really very little inbetween methinks.

Incidentally, Streets of Fire naturally came up for discussion as part of Filmwerk’s Walter Hill filmography podcast a while back, and senior Editor Hurst and I were poles apart on almost every aspect of it.

I urge you to go and check out the Walter Hill podcast if you’re a fan of the director’s work.

So what’s it all about?

Well, the tag line of the movie was ‘Tonight is what it means to be young’, which is actually the name of one of the songs featured in the movie. Oh yes, I forgot to mention it’s a sort of semi-musical. The other subtitle/tagline Streets of Fire often had on promo materials etc, was to describe itself as ‘A Rock & Roll Fable’. If these things seem to be setting up a certain expectation, then stop right there; as the movie itself doesn’t really follow any of the rules, both in terms of it’s own internal logic, or pretty much any other type of logic you care to mention. You’ll either dig that about it (like this reviewer does), or you won’t; and some of it could be down to your age and/or willingness to go with the flow.

So what’s it all about (didn’t I ask that already?)

Well, it’s pretty simple really. 80s rock goddess Ellen Aim (Lane), returns to home town and gives sellout concert, and is kidnapped partway through by evil 50s biker gang. Handsome heartbreaker and ex-soldier (and ex-rock goddess hunny-bun), gets called by his sister, and returns home to rescue the damsel in distress, and cause the aforementioned biker gang (as well as the town itself), some considerable property damage in the process. Rebel without a pause. Self aware fun and games, or a hodgepodge of clunky acting and corny writing ensues; depending on your point of view.

If the above mini-synopsis sounds a little odd, you’re not alone. Walter Hill described this film as occurring in some kind of nether-world, with no real attachment to logical time and place (the city the action takes place in, is unnamed for example). This is why we get Ellen Aim, channelling some serious Pat Benatar, with the help of proper 80s grandiose rock numbers, while Dafoe’s biker gang, and all the street cops are right out of the 50s. Later on there’s even a Doo-wop group featuring Grand L. Bush (love that guy’s name). The cops all drive old Studebaker Bulletnose sedans, and their uniforms are of a bygone age. This is in direct conflict with hair stylings and fashions perfectly at home in Cameron’s Tech Noir, as well as any number of belched up bright neons, and gaudy colour clashes. It befuddles right from the off.

The main characters tend to conform to one time period or the other; although Paré’s soldier hero ‘Cody’, is more timeless in some ways, and Amy Madigan’s character ‘McCoy’ was actually written as a man’s role. The dialogue tends to sound more 50s on the whole, but not completely. It really is its own entity.

Hill messes around with all of these elements in a gently disturbing (if generally playful), way. It’s not a movie that can be taken seriously. As I said previously, it’s quite polarising. You either get on board or you don’t. For folks in the 40+ age range, the movie can certainly capture something of the period, that promotes a very affectionate response. It’s nuts for sure, and I’m certain part of the problem back in 1984, was that it simply mixed too many disparate ingredients together, in a way that only naff ‘spoof’ comedies can usually (semi), get away with. I can certainly understand why some folks don’t relate at all.

The package

The HD transfer is what we’ve come to expect from this type of restoration. If you consider a benchmark Blu-Ray like Jaws, and bear in mind that the restoration budget on that movie stands a good chance of exceeding what Streets of Fire cost to even make, you realise that we cannot judge these things on an even playing field. Actually, that’s probably not accurate, as I’m sure they didn’t spend $14 million on restoring Jaws, but you get my point).

Anyway, what we hope for is a transfer quality that comfortably exceeds that of any previous DVD incarnation of the film. In this respect, Streets of Fire delivers in spades. It looks great, and is presented in Walter Hill’s original standard issue preferred aspect ratio of 185:1.

Audio is DTS HD Master 5.1, or PCM Stereo (uncompressed 16bit quality), for those without surround systems. It’s snappy and crisp, and the music program has never sounded this good.

This package also comes with a bunch of extras. Here’s a rundown:

Rumble On The Lot – This is the meat and potatoes of the disc’s bonus features, and is a new feature length documentary with generous contributions from Hill himself, Michael Paré, and Amy Madigan. As has become common with recent HD Walter Hill re-releases; the documentary is thorough and feels well contributed to and generous of intention. The only demerit with this kind of documentary is when the (arguably) biggest stars (or in this case, those that went on to become the biggest stars, like Lane, Defoe, and Paxton), are either not involved at all, or have minimal contributions, which is a shame.

Original Electronic Press Kit – This is basically a bunch of release period featurettes, dealing with the enhanced or exaggerated realism of the film, the costumes and other aspects of the production and original promotion.

Music Videos – Yes, there are two big songs with videos here ’Tonight is what it means to be Young’, and ‘I Can Dream About You’

Unlike some of the other Hill releases that have come through Filmwerk’s hands recently; this one unfortunately does not have a commentary track to add to its armoury, this is a bit of a shame, but not that surprising. On balance, one doesn’t feel the lack of a commentary track too fiercely. The extras you do get feel pretty robust, and the disc package doesn’t feel cheap or underserved.

Conclusion

It would be interesting to see the metrics on releases like this, in terms of the purchase demographics for example. Streets of Fire doesn’t have the profile to sell by the van load to people who’ve never seen it before, so to a certain extent; any review like this one will be preaching to the choir. Having said that, It would be awesome to see the film gain a little more standing within Hill’s movie canon, as well as 80s cinema itself. It’s completely bananas, and you’ve gotta love that, I mean where else can you see a deathly pale Willem Dafoe, sporting a greasy quiff, DA, and giant leather fishing waders?!

Exactly.