God Speed, Speed Us Away!

#10: Streets of Fire

This 1984 self-described "rock and roll fable" takes place in a past/future time and place where early 1950's style melds with an early 1980's version of post-apocalyptic tribalism (think American Graffiti meets Mad Max set in Robocop's Detroit). Streets of Fire is perhaps the paradigmatic late 70's/early 80's youth-in-rebellion movie, full of big hair, big leather and vinyl jackets, urban sleaze, all set off by an overwrought Jim Steinmam new-romanticism soundtrack. Visually this film evokes director Walter Hill's better known The Warriors but here the line between good and evil, personified by Michael Pere (immediately recognizable from his Eddy and the Cruisers fame) and a very young, very creepy, very powdered and rouged Willem Dafoe, is clearly drawn. It completely captures a tiny slice of time, say 1979 to 1983. That moment when Cyndi Lauper seemed like the future and Madonna was a flash in the pan. However it had the misfortune to be released in 1984. Its performance at the box office suggests it missed its zeitgeist.

I can't believe I missed it the first time around.

Given that this film is everything 1982 only more so, it would be easy to dismiss it by pigeonholing it as of the its-so-bad-its-good variety. This would be a mistake. It is true that this film deploys some of the more embarrassing fashion and cinematography of its time. It is also true that the plot is thin and that the dialogue lacks nuance. Hell, sometimes the dialogue seems to be missing verbs. But all of that does not diminish the power of this stupid movie. Its power is in its visuals, its music, and its guileless embrace of unlimited youth. It is not art but it is worth seeing. I suspect this is one of those films that benefits from a theater screening. Part of what makes it work is its ability to displace mundane reality for its own and that might be difficult to achieve if watched between phone calls while surfing the web.

The cast is full of people who will do important work in future movies. At the same time, much cultural shame could have been avoided if the people who decided these things had watch Rick Moranis in this movie more closely.

My only complaint is that the movie doesn't have enough Steinman music; he only provides two songs, both presented as concert performances by Diane Lane's character. Seriously? The whole vibe of the movie is a visual representation of the world his music describes--that excessively hormonal infatuation with speed, drama, sex, satin, and hair.