Streets Of Fire HD DVD Review

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Title: Streets Of Fire

Region: N/A

Media HD DVD

Genre: Rock & Roll Fantasy

Stars: Michael Pare, Diane Lane, Willem Dafoe, Rick Moranis, and Amy Madigan

Writers: Walter Hill and Larry Gross

Director: Walter Hill

Feature length: 1 hour and 34 minutes

Languages: English Dolby Digital 5.1 Plus Surround Sound and French Language Dolby Surround Sound

Subtitles: English Subtitles For The Deaf And Hearing Impaired and French Language Subtitles

Packaging: Elite Red HD Case

Chapter Stops: 16

Sound: Dolby Digital 5.1 Plus Surround Sound and Dolby Surround Sound

Year of Theatrical Release: 1984/DVD Release: 2007

Theatrical Distributor: Universal Pictures

Home Video Distributor: Universal Studios Home Entertainment

MPAA Rating: PG

Reviewer: Mark A. Rivera

The 1980s was a time when style was often valued over substance. In the early 1980s there was still a drop off in the holdover 1970s culture as popular media veered away from looking back at the 1950s and began to turn it’s attention on the 1960s because if you look back on every decade, the media always looks back twenty years to create some sort of nostalgic idealization of what it was sort of like. Whether it is a popular 1970s sitcom like Happy Days looking back upon the 1950s or a 1990s sitcom like That 70’s Show bringing back nostalgia for a time of wall-to-wall shag carpeting and so forth. This is always preceded though by a Hollywood feature film success like American Graffiti in the 1970s, which even though it took place in the early 1960s, still captured a flavor of the previous decade before as a time when American innocence was about to change for a generation. Dazed And Confused also captured the pre-disco 1970s in it’s own way to illustrate exactly what the difference between the baby boomer generation of the 1960s and the “Me Generation” of the 1970s. The differences obviously being teenagers were pretending to be like the hippies of the 60s, but mostly from the safety of their parents’ homes in the suburbs. The early 1980s was influenced heavily by music videos as well as the clean-cut images of the 1960s that were perhaps best exemplified by the “Preppies.” MTV was something relatively new and since few homes outside of major cities like Manhattan or the suburbs even had cable, there were lots of shows on both network and syndicated local television markets that aired music videos on a regular basis, the most popular being Friday Night Videos.

Now this is going to get a little convoluted so please bare with me. The original music videos were primarily concept and performances pieces designed to market talent within the industry. Slowly they began to be used on TV as a way of getting viewers to watch music variety shows by stating something akin to “Blondie is going to perform tonight on our show,” but then instead of the band actually being there live, often the music video, which was usually shot on tape, was shown instead. Hollywood caught on to this right away by releasing films that featured a performance by like of a David Bowie or Madonna early in their career before they broke through into the mainstream to market a film. The musical feature film was pretty much a forgotten genre though there were attempts to revitalize it through creating animated fantasy films where the music got top billing over the voice talent like American Pop, Heavy Metal and Rock And Rule and then there were the big bands from the 1970s that could fill a theater by creating what were essentially feature length conceptual videos like Pink Floyd’s The Wall. As 80s cinema began to reflect back upon concept music video with inspiration from films like Blade Runner being more appreciated for their look at first rather than the depth of their story, Writer and Director Walter Hill and Co-Writer Larry Gross attempted to fashion what they called a “Rock & Roll Fable” that would appeal to multiple generations by creating a fantasy world that mixed elements of 1950s and early 60s culture with what was then contemporary 1980s culture and called it Streets Of Fire.

Streets Of Fire is the epitome of style over substance with a strand of a story that can be best summed up as a loner soldier of fortune that left town with an unresolved relationship is called back to rescue his ex-girlfriend who has been kidnapped by the leader of a dangerous motorcycle gang in a city where there are only a few honest cops and everyone is afraid to stick up for each other. Streets Of Fire visually is a beautiful parallel universe of elevated trains casting shadows upon streets that somehow are always wet even when it appears to be sunny out and the guys and girls are sporting 1950s and early 60s haircuts, clothes and cars while going to music halls to watch bands perform 70s inspired rock and 80s inspired pop. Diane Lane is the diva like singer performing songs written by Meatloaf and Stevie Nicks that gets kidnapped by the gang leader (Willem Dafoe) whose from a part of town so lawless, not even the police seem to enter it at night. Michael Pare is the essential soldier of fortune or western man with no name only instead of being a gunslinger; he carries a sawed off shotgun and a butterfly knife. Together with a sidekick, played memorably by Amy Madigan, and the diva’s nerdy, but trash talking manager, who also happens to be her boyfriend (Rick Moranis), travels to the bad part of town and saves his ex-girlfriend. The actual “streets of fire” segment isn’t all that impressive by modern standards and I’m not even sure if it was all that impressive back in 1984 either. However the second half of the film focuses on the trek back home, picking up The Sorels, an aspiring band that looks as though they came out of the early 60s, but sings 1980s songs and their lead singer moonwalks. Finally once they get back there is the traditional unlikely reconciliation coupled by the old “better get of town if you know what’s good for you” warning followed by a western standoff between the good guys and bad guys where a one on one rumble with large railroad spike hammers takes the place who can shoot who faster gun slinging. In short, the film is intentionally a cliché whose single draw was the music and action.

Michael Pare has a memorable sequence at his sister’s diner where he teaches a gang leader a lesson by slapping him around in front of his followers while brandishing his butterfly knife. Diane Lane is just one sexy woman whether she’s lip-synching in Streets Of Fire or acting in Under The Tuscany Sun. She is so beautiful now in my opinion that I honestly was surprised she was the female lead in Streets Of Fire. Rick Moranis in an early non-comedic role ends up being the film’s most unlikable character from start to finish. Willem Dafoe’s makeup in the film is so pale; he looks more like a vampire than a motorcycle gang leader. There were a number of musical hits that came off the Streets Of Fire soundtrack. The most famous might be Dan Hartman’s “I Can Dream About You.” The music video was literally the actors who portrayed The Sorels lip-synching in unedited performance footage from the film. The song proved to be so popular that many people thought the band in the video was actually the band that sung it. Needless to state, when people finally realized who the real singer was, the illusion was broken and the video disappeared.

A number of actors who are more recognizable now than they were back in 1984 to the general public appear in Streets Of Fire. As The Sorels we have Stoney Jackson, Grand Bush, Robert Townsend, and Mykel T. Williamson. Other actors who have character roles in the film include Bill Paxton, Ed Begley, Jr., Deborah Van Vaklenburgh, Richard Lawson, and Matthew Laurence. 80s New Wave Pop band The Fixx contributed the song “Deeper And Deeper” for the film. When Streets Of Fire was released theatrically the sell through VHS market was in its infancy so when videotape titles became available that was less than twenty dollars in stores, people would buy it sometimes just to have a factory produced videotape that wasn’t a copy off of HBO or something. The music for the film being the true star of the movie was marketed on VHS with music videos of the performances from the film as well as a behind the scenes promotional featurette. Sadly the music videos are better than the film, but what I think is perhaps more sad is that Universal Studios Home Entertainment did not include the old promotional featurette or any of the music videos for this HD DVD release. Sure Streets Of Fire is not a great movie, but it is cult film that deserves better treatment and should be revisited as a “Collector’s Edition” release sometime down the road. Instead the film is encoded in a VC-1 widescreen 1080p maximum resolution where available (1.85:1) aspect ratio that looks as though the same source material for the original DVD release was used for this transfer. The English Dolby Digital 5.1 Plus Surround Soundtrack is much better, especially for the music. A French Dolby Surround Soundtrack and English Subtitles for the Deaf and Hearing Impaired as well as French Language Subtitles are encoded on to the single layered HD-15 disc as options.

As a nostalgia piece until a better HD version comes along, picking Universal Studios Home Entertainment’s HD DVD edition of Streets Of Fire now at retailers on and offline is the only way for some to remember that “Tonight is what it means to be young…”

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