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The Best Movie You Never Saw
Hey everybody, it's Chris Bumbray here again with another edition of
JoBlo.com presents The Best Movie You Never Saw
And this week we're gonna talk about Walter Hill's crazy mash-up of a rock opera/action flick
Streets of Fire
Starring Michael Pare as Tom Cody,
A soldier of fortune, who returns home to rescue his former girlfriend,
rock star Ellen Aim, played by the absolutely gorgeous Diane Lane,
who's been kidnapped by a bunch of bikers, led by the psychotic Raven,
played by none other, than Willem Dafoe.
Amy Madigan co-stars, as does Rick Moranis.
And this was produced by Lawrence Gordon and Joel Silver.
If this duo sounds familiar to you,
it's because they pretty much produced every good 80's action movie.
Including Die Hard, Lethal Weapon, and 48 Hours.
And of course, 48 Hours is what brought them to Walter Hill.
Streets of Fire, in some ways, is a product of the success of that movie.
Which was a surprise mega-hit in 1982.
It launched the career of star Eddie Murphy.
But it also made the creative team behind it, including director Walter Hill and co-writer Larry Gross.
And producers' Lawrence Gordon and Joes Silver, hot properties.
Wanting to crank out another huge hit, I'm sure they figured Streets of Fire couldn't miss.
I mean, after all the mid-80's were the heyday of MTV.
And this was to be a music-driven action movie with songs by Jim Steinman,
who had two smash hits in 1983, around the time they were ramping up production.
A year before this hit theaters, with Bonnie Tyler's Total Eclipse of the Heart.
And Air Supply's Making Love Out Of Nothing At All.
Now, with the solid 14.5 million dollar budget,
Hill was able to make something not unlike his own The Warriors,
albeit on a much bigger scale.
Setting it in a non-distinct city in an obscure time period, that seems to be patterned after the 50's.
However with a huge dose of 80's new wave mixed in.
Or as the pre-credits title card simply says,
It's "Another Time, Another Place."
They had a hot cast with Michael Pare coming right off of Eddie And The Cruisers,
and doing his best Robert Mitchum as the tough guy hero Tom Cody.
Now, how did he get the part?
Well, at the time On the Dark Side was a huge, huge hit song.
And actually a lot of people thought that Michael Pare was the one doing the singing,
because the music video was actually just a clip from Eddie And The Cruisers, where he lip-sync to the song.
In fact, the guy who actually sang the song, was the guy named John Cafferty.
And I think when people found out,
that John Cafferty and Michael Pare weren't the same man, people got a little bit upset.
But anyway, Michael Pare was cast in this movie.
As was an 18-year-old Diane Lane, who was really a rising star at the time,
coming-off back-to-back Francis Ford Coppola movies, The Outsiders and and Rumble Fish,
with a third - The Cotton Club - also in the making.
Now, The Cotton Club was a really buzzed-about movie at the time.
Even though it came and went pretty quickly at the end of the year.
Now, given how big movies like Flashdance and Footloose were at the time,
both of them were "kinda-sorta", musicals like this.
You can't blame Hill and company for their ambitions.
Not only would this have a ton of pop music, but it also had action.
And it wound up being, unfortunately, a huge flop, grossing only 8.1 million dollars at the box office.
A really, really terrible result for a summer action movie.
Nevertheless, it became something of a cult hit on VHS.
And one of the songs from the soundtrack, Dan Hartman's I Can Dream About You
actually became a top 10 hit in North America.
Way more successful, than the movie itself!
Although I would bet, that at the time the movie was such a bomb,
that people didn't even realize that the song was off the soundtrack album.
Joel Silver was apparently so dismayed by the box office results,
that when he got this on a Sunday morning from the studio,
and he found out how much the movie hit gross,
he made kind of a spin on one of the names of the songs.
In the movie they play a song, called Tonight Is What It Means To Be Young,
While Joel Silver, when he saw the box office results, said,
"Tonight is what it means to be dead."
Now, say what you will about Streets of Fire, but it's very unique!
I mean, how many action movie musicals can you think of? Zero, right?
I mean, even in the era, that was dominated by music videos, this must've seen pretty bold.
But throughout his career, Hill's always been one to push the envelope -
something which continues to this day with his recent reassignment, generating copious amounts of press!
Now, it wasn't a great movie, but Hill at this time in the 80's was really on fire!
He's always had kind of a comic book movie aesthetic,
and I think Streets of Fire is probably his most realized project in that regard.
From the production design right down to the characters.
Now, in the Hill's interview, that he did with with WGA, he explained it this way,
"I thought I could handle things. I didn't know how to shoot music.
Music had been important in my films, but it was usually post production.
That was tough stuff to shoot. I already had a great respect for people like Minnelli.
(In terms of Vincente Minelli.)
I just couldn't seem to work it out..
without putting multiple cameras around and shooting an awful lot of film...
I later realized or talked to people about this and MGM in the old days everybody was on contract
and they would rehearse for weeks and weeks. We don't get that.
We would stage it and shoot it.
We got a lot of the songs a lot of the times just a few days before we shot.
We only get the final song.
The structural advantage of the old studio system we didn't have. It made for a very inefficient shoot.
I didn't think there was any other way to do it given the circumstances.”
Now, of course, that's probably why the movie had such a huge budget, 14.5 million dollars.
Which seems expensive, if you watch the movie.
Considering that, you know, Star Wars in 1977 only cost 10 million.
Now, Michael Pare and Willem Dafoe are particularly interesting in this.
With each giving heightened performances that might have rubbed audiences the wrong way in 1984.
But seem kinda legit now, especially given the modern dominance of the comic book film.
Pare in particular should have become a much bigger star.
But the 80's were not really an era for the kind of cynical, low-key hero he’s playing here.
Audiences either went for square-jawed, classic Harrison Ford type,
or musclemen like Arnold Schwarzenegger and Sylvester Stallone.
Pare is a lot like Michael Biehn in that regard.
Both guys would have probably had much bigger careers if they had come along twenty years later.
Heck, even ten years later.
Now, Streets of Fire was also an early shot at stardom for Diane Lane,
who’s IMPOSSIBLY gorgeous as rock star Ellen Aim.
And I think she was about 18 when they shot this.
While she didn’t do her own singing, she lip-synchs like a pro,
and looks terrific in Aim’s far-out New Wave outfits.
Another great performance in this movie, and I have to single it out is given here by Amy Madigan,
who hasn’t acted too much in recent years but was a terrific as the earthy-leading lady at the time.
And you can check her out in Uncle Buck or Field of Dreams, she's terrific in both of those movies.
She steals a whole lot of scenes as Michael Pare’s sidekick, a gunslinger named McCoy,
who apparently was written as a man until Madigan came along.
Now, Rick Moranis is also cast against-type in a much more cynical role than we're used to.
He usually plays nerds.
He is kind of a nerd here, but he has kind of an edge to him.
He's very cynical and seems like a bit of a vessel for Hill
to make some sly commentary on the state of the music business,
with him valuing money above other things – even if he – natch – turns out to be an OK guy in the end.
"You know something, Waldo, we're gonna be rich."
"Yeah. Long live rock and roll."
It helps that Streets of Fire is an insanely propulsive flick,
with Hill and his three editors keeping the thing rolling along
like a freight train throughout its ninety-three minute running time.
Hill also manages to sprinkle in some impressive action set pieces,
including Cody’s raid on the biker hangout,
his opening fisticuffs battle with some knife-wielding thugs that try to rob his sister.
(Played by The Warriors’ Deborah Van Valkenburgh.)
And best of all, the epic sledgehammer fight finale.
Now, Michael Pare actually talked about this, when he gave an interview to Ain’t It Cool News.
"You gotta realize that, out of the whole cast, nobody was over thirty.
Diane Lane, I think, was eighteen.
It was an enormous Hollywood production.
My manager had me hire a limousine to pick me up at home and take me to work.
I was like, "Jesus, this is incredible. This is... Hollywood.
The real Hollywood. The Hollywood they make movies about."
And it was scary.
And Walter isn't the kind of guy who works well with kids.
He's a cowboy. He's like John Ford.
"Don't ask me how to act!" he'd say, "I'm a director!"
Now, for me Walter Hill does a really good job staging the MTV scenes.
My favourite scene in the movie, of course, is the sledgehammer fight at the end.
But I don't want to ruin that for anybody, who actually hasn't seen the movie.
But one moment, that's actually great, is the pre-credits opening,
where Lane is in full rock star mode lip-synching to the catchy Nowhere Fast.
While baddie Willem Dafoe and his crew, including the punk band Fear’s Lee Ving plan to snatch her.
"Here's a bunch of f$#kin' jerk-offs, do you know that?"
Everything right from the time they say "Another Time, Another Place"
to the part when Ellen Aim gets dragged away on Willem Dafoe's motorcycle is absolutely perfect.
I mean, it's cut in time to the propulsive music,
which is a mix of Ry Cooder's core and Jim Steinman's songs.
In fact, I saw this movie on 35 millimeter at a revival screening about three years ago.
And the audience was just rockin' throughout this opening. And it's a high bar for the movie!
And I'm surprised that it wasn't a bigger hit.
Now, if you want to see Streets of Fire, you can actually catch it in a lot of ways.
It's out on DVD and Shout Factory actually did a really good re-release of it on BluRay.
It also shows up on a lot of streaming services, you can get it on iTunes..
It's been on Netflix from time to time.
And if you wanna see the movie, I mean, it's out there, you can check it out.
Now, it's nice that Streets of Fire has indeed picked up some kind of cult following over the years.
Not a lot of people, in my opinion, have heard of it.
It’s a really cool little 80's gem, and a good entree into some of Hill's more obscure but great works,
like Extreme Prejudice and Johnny Handsome.
For what it’s worth, Michael Pare is still doing a pretty good work,
having had a cameo in the recent Bone Tomahawk, and a really solid part as Barry Seal in The Infiltrator.
And a starring role in our own John Fallon’s The Shelter.
Who you may all know as the editor and chief of Arrow In The Head.
Check it out, it's a great little movie!
As for Diane Lane, well, I mean, she’s still impossibly beautiful, right?
I guess some things never change.
Until next time, I'm Chris Bumbray for JoBlo.com!
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Written & Narrated by Chris Bumbray
Edited by Lance Vlcek
A JoBlo Movie Network Production Copyright 2019
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