The Street Fighter (1974)

The film that made Sonny Chiba an international martial arts star, with its legendary distinction of having received the first ever X certificate for violence in American cinematic history. There is a strong streak of sadism in Japanese culture that viewers of Takeshi's Castle and other Japanese game shows will be familiar with. Along with wreaking general mayhem on almost everyone he encounters, Sonny also manages to punch one opponent in the face, producing a cascade of tumbling teeth and blood! He pokes another bad guys eyes into a bloody pulp and afterwards examines his fingers before wiping them off on his assistant's shirt!! Rips another's adversaries balls off and for dessert tears out the throat of the second to last man standing!!! 'Nuff said. However not for the last time in a Sonny Chiba movie the audience is also confronted with a troubling moral dilemma. It appears that the Japanese ideal of honour is very different from the European version, and I don't claim to understand it. In this case "Kickass for hire" Sonny rescues a martial arts multiple killer from prison at the behest of his sister and her boyfriend. Afterwards it turns out they don't have the money to pay the balance of his fee, so Sonny proposes to sell the girl into sexual slavery. The boyfriend naturally trys to prevent this and although Sonny trys to go easy on him, he ends up going out the window to his death while trying to take Sonny out with one of those trademark flying kicks that Bruce Lee was so good at. Sonny then proceeds as planned, and sells the girl into sexual slavery! We see her being held down to be raped and injected with drugs to pacify her. Is Sonny's behaviour considered acceptable and honourable in traditional Japanese culture? I have no idea, but some may have difficulty accepting Sonny's bona fides as a heroic or even anti-heroic figure after this! Later in the movie, the same large dark skinned gentleman who was the principle rapist, attempts to repeat the treatment on another girl, but this time Sonny climbs in the window in time to relieve him of his genetalia. Does this serve to mitigate Sonny's earlier behaviour? I think not. Then during the finale, the sister who was sold into sexual slavery and her kickass brother get their chance to avenge themselves on Sonny and almost succeed. But instead she ends up stabbed to death and the brother is deprived of his throat, after Sonny rallies from the brink of defeat. (Yay?) It would be interesting to conduct a poll of which side the audience were supporting during this final struggle. As for the plot, its decent enough, the villains want to hire Sonny to help kidnap a rich heiress, but he turns them down, so instead they try to kill him, after which he decides to get involved and protect the girl instead. However at one stage he admonishes his assistant that he only hopes to make money from the girl too, just in case we were thinking the leopard had changed his spots!PS - Did Sonny Chiba really appear in 4 The Street fighter and 2 The Executioner movies in the space of a single year? Busy boy!

Martial arts legend Shin'ichi "Sonny" Chiba ratchets up the intensity in this classic of the genre, playing tough as nails mercenary Terry Tsurugi. A cold blooded chap at first, his only loyalty is to the almighty yen. When the Mafia and the Yakuza approach him with a possible assignment - to kidnap a comely young oil heiress (Yutaka Nakajima as Sarai) - he says he will do it ONLY if they meet his ridiculous asking price of 60 million. They decide to try to kill him to keep the plan a secret, and he switches sides, taking on all comers as he does his best to keep the young lady from harm.Chiba is great fun to watch in this vivid and fast paced actioner. It's full of all the expected combat that a devotee of this genre could want, and it also delivers some wonderfully nasty gore to boot. (Assigned an X rating at the time, the violence here would probably cause very few people to bat an eye nowadays.) It's packed to the brim with colourful characters, such as the humorously dubbed "Ratnose" (Goichi Yamada), Terry's blubbering sidekick. It's got a very campy, pulpy appeal to the story and dialogue, and the supporting performances are all sufficiently amusing. The young actresses are all absolutely gorgeous.Helping to make this superior diversionary entertainment is the abundant sense of humour. A subplot details a vendetta against Terry; one highlight during this subplot is a hilarious moment when a character badly times a flying kick. And the final showdown between Terry and his opponents takes place on a boat, in the rain.The opening titles for the American release were designed by future director Jack Sholder, who later helmed such horror flicks as "Alone in the Dark" (1982), "A Nightmare on Elm Street Part 2: Freddy's Revenge", and "The Hidden".Followed by "The Return of Street Fighter" and "Sister Street Fighter".Eight out of 10.

Sonny Chiba was mostly a cult star for years until he appeared in Quentin Tarantino's "Kill Bill" as a sword-maker (I'd never heard of him until then). Of course, fans of martial arts movies knew Chiba for movies like "Gekitotsu! Satsujin Ken" (called "The Streetfighter" in English).Without a doubt, the 1970s were known for martial arts movies -- along with disco -- and this movie is a prime example. Chiba plays Takuma Tsurugi (called Terry in the English dubbing), a martial arts master who has to come to the rescue of a kidnapped heiress. That's the official plot, but there can be no doubt that the flick's main purpose is to show off every imaginable move, with some scenes slowed up just so that you can see the action. I wouldn't put the movie in the same class as "Enter the Dragon", but even so, it's some of the most fun that you can have watching a movie. I hope that Sonny Chiba gets to appear in more movies!

I must confess that upon initially sitting and viewing this, it struck me to be one of those films that you hear lots of praise for but upon watching it yourself, cannot for the life of you understand what all the fuss and hype is about.Certainly, the film starts off in a decidedly disjointed manner and to be honest is a somewhat less than spectacular affair until a good way into its total running time. However, keep watching because matters do pick up and indeed pick up admirably towards the end….You see what really saves and indeed makes this film so memorable is its incredible scenes of graphic ultra-violence which even today still pack quite a wallop. In fact, this film was ostensibly the first non-horror film to be awarded an 'X' certificate back upon its initial release.Amongst the choice sights on offer include our protagonist gouging various cronies eyeballs, ripping off a would be rapists genitals with his bare hands(!), tearing out a mans throat and punching one poor chap so hard in the gut that he pukes! (probably the nastiest scene of all in fact!) Also of note include some nice gory head smashings such as when one poor wretch takes a fall over a railing and the infamous sequence in which our man cracks another chaps skull; the fatal blow being shown in 'x-ray' form!For fans of a bit of screen violence, you can't go wrong with this classic!