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Released by: Platinum Entertainment
Released on: April 2, 2002.
Director: Richard Park
Cast: Jun Chong, Phillip Rhee, Rosanna King, Richard Ng, Steve Rogers, Bill Wallace
Year: 1985
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The Movie:
L.A. Street Fighters (or, as the DVD calls it, L.A. Street Fighter - singular) has the dubious distinction of being the film that director Richard Park would make before his 1987 masterpiece, The Miami Connection. Those who have seen his mind blowingly great collaboration with Grand Master Y.K. Kim know that there's no way any other film can really complete, but this movie… it definitely has a lot in common with that later picture.
The movie revolves around Tony (Phillip Rhee), who has just enrolled at a new high school. Here he makes friends with a gang leader named Young (Jun Chong), who doesn't get along with one of the other top kids at school, Chan (James Lew), who also has a gang. For the first fifteen minutes or so of the movie, these gangs fight a lot, often at the drop of a hat, for reasons never really properly explained. They just fight. They also fight a gang called The Spikes who chant 'spike them…. kill them' over and over again before throwing down and they also fight a Mexican gang who chant 'Chino Chino Chino' over and over again. But we're getting ahead of ourselves here, but it needs to be noted that later in the movie a giant fat shirtless Latino dude will try to unbuckle his pants in time to urinate on Tony and Young's car. Things get a bit tough for Tony when he makes a delivery one night and meets a beautiful girl named Lily (Rosanna King). They fall for each other in a matter of minutes and before you know it, they're running around the dark streets of Los Angeles. Unfortunately for Tony, Lily is Chan's sister and Chan doesn't like it when dudes hang around her too much. Things are always tough for Young though, because his mom is a horrible parent and might have a drinking problem.
Later that night, Young and Tony get into a street right with some random hoods. As a couple pass by and see this, they're so impressed that they hire them as their personal security guards. This lands Tony and Young in hot water with the previous gang who worked as the security crew for these guys. It's a good thing too, though, because a fat grey haired guy in a belly shirt is there to cause trouble. Then Tony goes to a toga party and then later to a liquor store. When he's in the in the liquor store there's a guy playing a giant flute. Tony tries to buy a six pack of beer with a hundred dollar bill and the guy with the giant flute turns out to be a very sly pole fighter. Tony takes him out like it ain't no thing and off he goes, into the night with a six pack. This doesn't play out in the same order in the movie as it does in this review. I watched it a few nights ago and I'm just sort of putting down random memories as I try to make sense of it all. It's not working.
Soon enough, they're working as bouncers at a posh private party run by a drug dealer who specializes in stupid cocaine. As the party comes to an end, Young gets a wild hair up his ass and decides that it would be a good idea to steal the giant bags of money that the coke dealer has foolishly left laying around on the table while he's off fucking Brinke Stevens in a giant bathtub.This doesn't go united and two deadly hitmen - a Samurai/Yakuza warrior named Yoshida (Ken Nagayama) and a white dude named Kruger (Bill 'Superfoot' Wallace) are hired to get the money back and dole out as much pain on Tony and Young and their pals as possible.
Young winds up having to defend himself and his friend against the two assassins while Chan has decided he has had enough of Tony's treating his sister all nice and stuff and has decided to kick his ass. Men will die, some by way of a well placed pitchfork.
This movie is awesome because it has a lot of guys in their late thirties/early forties running around a high school in tight sweaters pretending to be teenage street warrior martial artist dynamo types. Alternately known as Ninja Turf, though seemingly completely devoid of ninjas, the movie bounces around and makes very little sense, existing really just to string together a bunch of possibly well choreographed fight scenes (the movie is too dark to know for sure) and bombard us with inane scenes of poorly dubbed background characters talking over each other with no sense of conversational flow whatsoever.
The movie also foreshadows what would later blossom into wonder in the Miami Connection with some odd homoerotic overtones, polite showering, and really bizarre emotional moments occurring between friends. A good example? A grown man/high school student moved to tears when presented with a birthday cake. The movie also features an inordinate amount of groin injuring. Honestly, it's all pretty great.
Video/Audio/Extras:
The movie is presented fullframe. No idea what the original aspect ratio was for this, it's possible it was shot wider but this could very well be open matte as there isn't a whole lot of obvious cropping. At least it doesn't appear that way - the damn movie is so dark and the tape source this disc was culled from so lousy that half the time you can't really make out what's happening on screen. Rest assured though, it's most likely awesome stuff that is happening on screen.
The English language Dolby Digital 2.0 Mono track is obviously dubbed and poorly at that but it does at least offer reasonably clear dialogue for most of the movie. Some hiss is present and the levels bop around a little bit now and again, but this is serviceable. Nowhere close to good, mind you, but serviceable.
Extras include an ugly static menu, chapter selection, a very vague text biography of Bill Wallace and a Trivia Quiz made up of three questions. If you answer the second one correctly, you'll be congratulated with a cocaine deal.
The Final Word:
While it can't quite hit the delirious heights of Park's next project, L.A. Street Fighters has definitely got its own share of wacky energy and completely off the wall filmmaking. The DVD, sadly, looks pretty horrible but as it stands right now, it doesn't appear that there's a better version out there. If you enjoyed Miami Connection, this isn't as good - but it does work on some of the same strange levels as that film and is worth checking out for that reason.
