THE STREET FIGHTER TRILOGY (1974)

 

PHENOMENALITY: *uncanny*
MYTHICITY: *fair*
FRYEAN MYTHOS: *adventure*
CAMPBELLIAN FUNCTION: *psychological*

All three of these films register as "uncanny" because their anti-heroic hero has such amazing martial techniques that he's frequently seen jabbing his fingers through human flesh and bone, or ripping organs from his opponents' bodies. They're of course also united by an ethos of doing anything it takes to destroy one's opponents. The main character does so with more elan than any prior heroes, with the possible exception of Mickey Spillane's sadistic crusaders.

I'll refer to the character by his Anglicized name "Terry Tsurugi" because in all three cases I watched the dubbed versions of the Japanese originals. I don't think I missed a lot of cultural subtleties, for Toei Studios and star Sonny Chiba clearly designed the movies to be as international as possible, with fast action, extreme violence, occasional crude humor, and boobs. 

STREET FIGHTER is unquestionably the best of the three, and that may be because the Japanese often display a cultural genius for concocting dire conflicts between personal emotion and societal duty. Terry (Chiba) is in every way a bull in a china shop, and eventually we learn that he became that way after seeing his father shot for treason, and after he himself was ostracized in Japan for being half-Chinese. But the viewer doesn't know that when he sees Terry's really bad side. 

Terry, who's sort of a jack-of-all-trades criminal for hire, accepts a commission to liberate a murderer from his scheduled execution, a martial artist named Shikenbaru. But after Shikenbaru gets out of Japan, those who hired Terry-- the murderer's sister and brother-- reveal that they can't pay.There's a fight, and it's not exactly Terry's fault that the brother dies. But few feminists will sympathize with Terry after he sells Sister Nachi (played by Chiba's frequent colleague Sue Siomi) into sex-slavery to mitigate her debt.

That said, Terry's rage is soon turned against a better target. The Yakuza tries to engage him to kidnap the daughter of an oil magnate, so that the criminals (who are in league with the American Mafia) can gain control of the magnate's company. Terry's reason for not taking the commission are vague, but when he refuses, the crooks decide he can't be allowed to live. 

For spite more than anything else, Terry becomes the protector of oil heiress Sarai-- and this brings on loads and loads of skull-busting violence. The gangsters bring in various assassins to kill Terry, including a blind swordsman (a shot at Zatoichi maybe?), but their main ally is Shikenbaru, brought back to succor his sister and avenge his slain brother. After a hard fought end-battle, Terry kills his opponent by the rather original method of tearing out Shikenbaru's vocal chords.

The next two entries in the series stick closely to the first movie's template: Terry Tsurugi pisses off some gang and they hurl goons at the Street Fighter until he kills them all. RETURN is probably the least interesting of the trilogy. Terry's earlier brush with heroism doesn't sway him from going back to his hitman business. He's okay with working for the Mafia this time, silencing a witness with a fatal finger-jab to the throat. But then Terry and the gangster have a falling out, and there's lots of heads and arms broken. However, Terry is a little less intense this time, palling around with a goofy girl named Kitty in a non-romantic sense. (He does have sex with a woman who tries to knife him, though.) Oh, and Shikenbaru, thought dead at the end of the first film, is back with artificial vocal chords. At least he does die for good at the end of RETURN.

THE STREET FIGHTER'S LAST REVENGE at least has a better variety of villains. Terry does a job for a crime family named the Owadas, and they cheat him. After he takes the first step in his "last revenge," he encounters a female district attorney, Huo Feng (Sue Siomi). She's monitoring his activity for her bosses, who want to see if they can use Terry as a pawn against the Owadas. But Huo has some ties with the Owadas herself, though when they make war on Terry, she ends up siding with him instead.

Kung fu kicking Huo is an interesting "frenemy," though she only gets one really lengthy fight, and a female Owada named Aya (Reiko Ike) also shakes things up when she becomes Terry's bed-partner. Yet the most colorful villain is the unimaginatively named "Frankie Black." Aya sees Black, a Mexican in full mariachi gear, demonstrate tremendous physical strength on a talk show, so of course she correctly presumes he'll jump at the chance to engage Terry Tsurugi in a martial battle. The hero's second fight with Black is the best, partly because it ends with Black suffering a terrible execution by immolation. It may be hard to keep track of the stakes this time, but at least Terry ends up on top-- of another big pile of bodies.

All three movies include a martial arts master, Master Masaoka, who repeatedly counsels Terry to overcome his rage and find spiritual peace. But of course the Street Fighter's fans want him to rage against a sea of troubles, so his trauma can't be healed. And Chiba plays the role with more intensity than any other actor of the time could have managed, to say nothing of his own martial artistry.