Streets of Fire
Streets of Fire (from Weird and Wonderful II: Fifty More Cult Films by George Hughes, available from freefall-productions.com on 02/11/20)
1984 / US / 93 minutes
“You guys really know how to come through a door. What are you trying to prove?”
Director: Walter Hill / Screenplay: Larry Gross & Walter Hill / Director of Photography: Andrew Laszlow / Music: Ry Cooder / Production: Lawrence Gordon and Joel Silver for Universal / Cast: Michael Pare (Tom Cody), Diane Lane (Ellen Aim), Willem Dafoe (Raven Shaddock), Deborah van Valkenburgh (Reeva), Rick Moranis (Billy Fish), Amy Madigan (McCoy), Bill Paxton (Clyde), Grand L. Bush (Reggie), Mykelti Williamson (B.J.), Ed Begley, Jr. (Ben Gunn).
In addition to being the beginning of the home video age, the ’80’s were also the decade in which the music video properly caught on. The biggest artists produced movie- quality mini- epics to bring their new singles to TV and a new relationship between film and music took shape. This was the era in which the line between pop stars and movie stars didn’t just blur- it was almost erased completely. Tina Turner, David Bowie and Sting took lead roles in blockbusters, whilst Michael Jackson and Prince took the concept of the video to the next level by starring in their own theatrically released features.
If the time was ever right for a comic book- style adventure in which the music wasn’t just part of the backdrop but part of the action, it was then. Walter Hill was riding high on a winning streak that had lasted form his 1978 thriller The Driver, through producing the original Alien and making The Warriors and up to releasing the hugely successful 48 Hours in 1982. In the position of being given all the time and money he’d need to do whatever he wanted next, Hill came up with Streets of Fire.
Unable to find an existing comic book he liked enough to adapt, Hill and co- writer Larry Gross instead fashioned an original story based on an imaginary one, chucking in everything their teenage selves would have wanted from a film- the result was a bizarre mash up of ’50’s and ’80’s popular culture (David Lynch’s Blue Velvet- and later Twin Peaks- combined the same eras, obviously being the period of the creator’s youth and the time they were made). Whereas The Driver and 48 Hours had very much been set in the real world, Streets of Fire was going to take place in the same slightly removed from reality universe of The Warriors.
Before the film even begins the opening titles announce that this is “A Rock and Roll Fable” happening in “Another time, another place”.
“I put in all the things I thought were great then and which I still have great affection for” Hill wrote in the soundtrack album’s liner notes, “Custom cars, kissing in the rain, neon, trains in the night, high- speed pursuit, rumbles, rock stars, motorcycles, jokes in tough situations, leather jackets and questions of honour”.
The music- written by Stevie Nicks, Tom Petty and Ry Cooder and produced by Jimmy Iovine (Dire Straits, U2) and Jim Steinman (Meat Loaf, Sisters of Mercy)- is as much a character in Streets of Fire as it’s never named city: a half Western, half Noir battleground. The actual characters are intentionally thinly written pulpy archetypes, mainly played by young unknowns (nobody in the film appears to be over the age of thirty)
Pop Rock superstar Ellen Aim (Diane Lane, who was only eighteen at the time but had already done Coppola’s not dissimilar The Outsiders) is playing a massive homecoming show when she’s kidnapped- on stage- by Raven Shaddock (Willem Dafoe, recommended by Kathryn Bigelow after making his screen debut in her first film, The Loveless) and his motorcycle gang, the Bombers.
With the police and other locals all too fearful of Raven to do anything, Ellen’s friend Reeva (Deborah van Valkenburgh, who had memorably played Mercy in The Warriors and should really have got more to do in this) reaches out to her brother and Ellen’s ex- boyfriend, Tom (Michael Pare) to try to rescue Ellen.
Tom shows up and batters some lesser gang members to establish his loner you don’t fuck with credentials but makes clear he’ll want paying by Ellen’s manager Billy Fish (Rick Moranis) for finding her. Hooking up with tomboy former soldier McCoy (Amy Madigan), they head off into the Bombers’ territory in “The Battery”.
Hill got Pare from the same agent who had found him Eddie Murphy for 48 Hours but lightning most definitely didn’t strike twice (frustratingly, they narrowly missed getting a pre- stardom Tom Cruise). Whilst Pare’s awkwardness could be said to work in a similar way to Sam Jones’s in Flash Gordon (it’s an anachronistic character so you could make the argument the actor’s stiffness and limited charisma works along with his deliberately retro, unnatural dialogue), he’s as hugely outshined by his leading lady and villain as Jones was.
Lane and Dafoe are both perfect as Ellen and Raven and would be two of the best comic book characters ever brought to life for film if there’d been an original comic (it remains a mystery to me why Dafoe never played The Joker). Lane leaves Pare at the starting blocks in their few emotional moments, whilst Dafoe looks to be having as good a time as his character.
Raven enjoys finally having someone stand up to him and he and his gang only seem to be about causing shit for kicks (he has no plan beyond keeping Ellen as a plaything for a few days before letting her go so, given how comically long it takes Tom to get off his arse, it’s probably safe to assume she’s never entirely “Saved”). The film could probably manage without Moranis (one of those “Big at the time” comedians who was once everywhere) and Madigan in a pretty one- trick part but they don’t get in the way too much.
In the end though, Streets is most definitely not a film where plot or characters matter a great deal (anyone who raised concerns about the ropey script was just told not to worry about it because the whole thing was going to be all about the visuals anyway). It almost crosses the line into full- blown musical at certain points, especially with the big opening and closing numbers.
Ellen was supposed to sing Bruce Springsteen’s song Streets of Fire (the Darkness on the Edge of Town album track Hill had nicked the title from) but there were rights issues so another original song titled Tonight’s What It Means to Be Young was written instead. The new track actually works much better, both for the film and for Lane’s performance (although she didn‘t really do the vocals- Ellen’s singing voice is a combination of Laurie Sargent’s and Holly Sharwood’s).
As with most of the decade’s other expensive genre benders, Streets of Fire seemed to confuse audiences. Not many people seemed sure what it actually was from it’s advertising campaign and, despite a few decent reviews, it bombed. For producer Joel Silver, a failure at the time was as rare as it was for Hill and he joked after the disastrous opening that “Today’s what it means to be dead”. Fortunately for them both though, lucrative producing gigs were just round the corner with Aliens and Predator, respectively.
Although it took a while to appear, the influence of Streets of Fire can be seen in a lot of the biggest films of the following few years. The stylised elements were never taken anything like as far again but they’re definitely there. The street sets (although obviously themselves inspired by Blade Runner) were clearly a visual reference for the turn of the decade imagined landscapes in Tim Burton’s Batman and in the ultimately calamitous but spectacular- looking Highlander II.
In the ’90’s there was the not quite real world, nameless city in Seven where it constantly pissed it down despite the place being surrounded by desert (and where futuristic background details were combined with deliberately out of date ones). And more subculture- specific Metal and Industrial bands provided the soundtracks to The Crow, Strange Days and The Matrix- all “Fantasies” set just inside our reality.
The music / film relationship changed in the ’90’s with the big hit tie- in single becoming the one big selling point for the other arena. This had had an earlier test run with the likes of Ghostbusters (1984) but it was titles like Young Guns II (1990), Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves (1991), The Bodyguard (1993) and Titanic (1997) that made the best use of the avenue. It also served as a method of getting a miniature version of the film’s poster into record shops as well as cinemas (novelisations of films, pointless since home video, were still published well into the ’00’s for the same reason).
For fans of Streets after it disappeared from screens in 1984 though, there was not just the VHS but the album (also featuring The Blasters- who briefly appear as themselves in the film- and The Fixx), which is one of the best of it’s kind. And in a strange reversal of the film’s conception, most of it’s fan fiction that emerged in the online era takes the form of digital comic books.
In 2006, I included the character of Raven in my script for a never made short film remake of The Warriors (at the time it was written, it had been more likely to be produced than the Predator fan film we ended up doing instead). Most interestingly though, B movie king Albert Pyun made The Road to Hell in 2008, a completely unauthorised DTV sequel that reunited Pare and Deborah van Valkenburgh for them to clearly but unofficially play the same characters again.
1984 / US / 93 minutes
“You guys really know how to come through a door. What are you trying to prove?”
Director: Walter Hill / Screenplay: Larry Gross & Walter Hill / Director of Photography: Andrew Laszlow / Music: Ry Cooder / Production: Lawrence Gordon and Joel Silver for Universal / Cast: Michael Pare (Tom Cody), Diane Lane (Ellen Aim), Willem Dafoe (Raven Shaddock), Deborah van Valkenburgh (Reeva), Rick Moranis (Billy Fish), Amy Madigan (McCoy), Bill Paxton (Clyde), Grand L. Bush (Reggie), Mykelti Williamson (B.J.), Ed Begley, Jr. (Ben Gunn).
In addition to being the beginning of the home video age, the ’80’s were also the decade in which the music video properly caught on. The biggest artists produced movie- quality mini- epics to bring their new singles to TV and a new relationship between film and music took shape. This was the era in which the line between pop stars and movie stars didn’t just blur- it was almost erased completely. Tina Turner, David Bowie and Sting took lead roles in blockbusters, whilst Michael Jackson and Prince took the concept of the video to the next level by starring in their own theatrically released features.
If the time was ever right for a comic book- style adventure in which the music wasn’t just part of the backdrop but part of the action, it was then. Walter Hill was riding high on a winning streak that had lasted form his 1978 thriller The Driver, through producing the original Alien and making The Warriors and up to releasing the hugely successful 48 Hours in 1982. In the position of being given all the time and money he’d need to do whatever he wanted next, Hill came up with Streets of Fire.
Unable to find an existing comic book he liked enough to adapt, Hill and co- writer Larry Gross instead fashioned an original story based on an imaginary one, chucking in everything their teenage selves would have wanted from a film- the result was a bizarre mash up of ’50’s and ’80’s popular culture (David Lynch’s Blue Velvet- and later Twin Peaks- combined the same eras, obviously being the period of the creator’s youth and the time they were made). Whereas The Driver and 48 Hours had very much been set in the real world, Streets of Fire was going to take place in the same slightly removed from reality universe of The Warriors.
Before the film even begins the opening titles announce that this is “A Rock and Roll Fable” happening in “Another time, another place”.
“I put in all the things I thought were great then and which I still have great affection for” Hill wrote in the soundtrack album’s liner notes, “Custom cars, kissing in the rain, neon, trains in the night, high- speed pursuit, rumbles, rock stars, motorcycles, jokes in tough situations, leather jackets and questions of honour”.
The music- written by Stevie Nicks, Tom Petty and Ry Cooder and produced by Jimmy Iovine (Dire Straits, U2) and Jim Steinman (Meat Loaf, Sisters of Mercy)- is as much a character in Streets of Fire as it’s never named city: a half Western, half Noir battleground. The actual characters are intentionally thinly written pulpy archetypes, mainly played by young unknowns (nobody in the film appears to be over the age of thirty)
Pop Rock superstar Ellen Aim (Diane Lane, who was only eighteen at the time but had already done Coppola’s not dissimilar The Outsiders) is playing a massive homecoming show when she’s kidnapped- on stage- by Raven Shaddock (Willem Dafoe, recommended by Kathryn Bigelow after making his screen debut in her first film, The Loveless) and his motorcycle gang, the Bombers.
With the police and other locals all too fearful of Raven to do anything, Ellen’s friend Reeva (Deborah van Valkenburgh, who had memorably played Mercy in The Warriors and should really have got more to do in this) reaches out to her brother and Ellen’s ex- boyfriend, Tom (Michael Pare) to try to rescue Ellen.
Tom shows up and batters some lesser gang members to establish his loner you don’t fuck with credentials but makes clear he’ll want paying by Ellen’s manager Billy Fish (Rick Moranis) for finding her. Hooking up with tomboy former soldier McCoy (Amy Madigan), they head off into the Bombers’ territory in “The Battery”.
Hill got Pare from the same agent who had found him Eddie Murphy for 48 Hours but lightning most definitely didn’t strike twice (frustratingly, they narrowly missed getting a pre- stardom Tom Cruise). Whilst Pare’s awkwardness could be said to work in a similar way to Sam Jones’s in Flash Gordon (it’s an anachronistic character so you could make the argument the actor’s stiffness and limited charisma works along with his deliberately retro, unnatural dialogue), he’s as hugely outshined by his leading lady and villain as Jones was.
Lane and Dafoe are both perfect as Ellen and Raven and would be two of the best comic book characters ever brought to life for film if there’d been an original comic (it remains a mystery to me why Dafoe never played The Joker). Lane leaves Pare at the starting blocks in their few emotional moments, whilst Dafoe looks to be having as good a time as his character.
Raven enjoys finally having someone stand up to him and he and his gang only seem to be about causing shit for kicks (he has no plan beyond keeping Ellen as a plaything for a few days before letting her go so, given how comically long it takes Tom to get off his arse, it’s probably safe to assume she’s never entirely “Saved”). The film could probably manage without Moranis (one of those “Big at the time” comedians who was once everywhere) and Madigan in a pretty one- trick part but they don’t get in the way too much.
In the end though, Streets is most definitely not a film where plot or characters matter a great deal (anyone who raised concerns about the ropey script was just told not to worry about it because the whole thing was going to be all about the visuals anyway). It almost crosses the line into full- blown musical at certain points, especially with the big opening and closing numbers.
Ellen was supposed to sing Bruce Springsteen’s song Streets of Fire (the Darkness on the Edge of Town album track Hill had nicked the title from) but there were rights issues so another original song titled Tonight’s What It Means to Be Young was written instead. The new track actually works much better, both for the film and for Lane’s performance (although she didn‘t really do the vocals- Ellen’s singing voice is a combination of Laurie Sargent’s and Holly Sharwood’s).
As with most of the decade’s other expensive genre benders, Streets of Fire seemed to confuse audiences. Not many people seemed sure what it actually was from it’s advertising campaign and, despite a few decent reviews, it bombed. For producer Joel Silver, a failure at the time was as rare as it was for Hill and he joked after the disastrous opening that “Today’s what it means to be dead”. Fortunately for them both though, lucrative producing gigs were just round the corner with Aliens and Predator, respectively.
Although it took a while to appear, the influence of Streets of Fire can be seen in a lot of the biggest films of the following few years. The stylised elements were never taken anything like as far again but they’re definitely there. The street sets (although obviously themselves inspired by Blade Runner) were clearly a visual reference for the turn of the decade imagined landscapes in Tim Burton’s Batman and in the ultimately calamitous but spectacular- looking Highlander II.
In the ’90’s there was the not quite real world, nameless city in Seven where it constantly pissed it down despite the place being surrounded by desert (and where futuristic background details were combined with deliberately out of date ones). And more subculture- specific Metal and Industrial bands provided the soundtracks to The Crow, Strange Days and The Matrix- all “Fantasies” set just inside our reality.
The music / film relationship changed in the ’90’s with the big hit tie- in single becoming the one big selling point for the other arena. This had had an earlier test run with the likes of Ghostbusters (1984) but it was titles like Young Guns II (1990), Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves (1991), The Bodyguard (1993) and Titanic (1997) that made the best use of the avenue. It also served as a method of getting a miniature version of the film’s poster into record shops as well as cinemas (novelisations of films, pointless since home video, were still published well into the ’00’s for the same reason).
For fans of Streets after it disappeared from screens in 1984 though, there was not just the VHS but the album (also featuring The Blasters- who briefly appear as themselves in the film- and The Fixx), which is one of the best of it’s kind. And in a strange reversal of the film’s conception, most of it’s fan fiction that emerged in the online era takes the form of digital comic books.
In 2006, I included the character of Raven in my script for a never made short film remake of The Warriors (at the time it was written, it had been more likely to be produced than the Predator fan film we ended up doing instead). Most interestingly though, B movie king Albert Pyun made The Road to Hell in 2008, a completely unauthorised DTV sequel that reunited Pare and Deborah van Valkenburgh for them to clearly but unofficially play the same characters again.
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