I could hardly help myself. After writing up my review for Frozen Scream, I decided to go straight into Lady Street Fighter, the next of the great Renee Harmon films. I hope your ears are prepared for even more of that luscious German accent, because this is one great movie.
We open with a scene of a woman being gruesomely tortured by men who want to know the location of a certain dog. Rather than talk the woman dies under torture. It turns out the dog in question is a stuffed one presently in the possession of Linda Allen (Renee Harmon). The dead woman, Billy, was Linda's sister--after learning of her sister's death, she decides to use what leads she has to break into the organization that killed Billy. The dog contains a microfilm with a master file detailing all the tiers of operations in this gang. Once this premise is established in the first ten minutes, all that's left is to follow Linda as she eludes government agents and criminals alike through authentically tacky stripper acts at the "Goo-Goo Club" (note that everyone but Renee says it as "Go-Go Club"). Up until the first half-hour, the movie behaves like a run-of-the-mill sleazy crime film, albeit a quirky one with some odd choices in editing and sound mixing. But eventually Linda arrives at a party hosted by Max Diamond, one of the members of the crime organization, and all Hell breaks loose. There is too much for to describe happening at this party, which every overly-decadent eccentric movie gangster party ever; one of the least remarkable things, to give context, is Renee Harmon sucking on a stalk of celery like it's a dick. Not only is a tremendous amount of insanity set up at one time, with very little warning, but it's shot professionally, with fascinating set-ups, acting, and framing. Everything from there on out is cooldown, until the literally explosive climax.
On the surface, Lady Street Fighter appears to make sense, but the mark of Bryan is high on it. Either I have worse attention problems than I thought, or nothing in this film leads to anything in particular. I never want to overuse the description that something "looks like a dream" but there's always something mystifyingly elusive about the sequence of cause and effect in how this movie turns out. I have so much difficulty following the dialogue sometimes because, like in Don't Go in the Woods, there are some lines which are written like they're bad translations, even though this was an American project made generally by English-speaking Americans. Some of Renee Harmon's lines are hard to make out because of her accent, but even when you can understand her, there's a seeming gap between content and context.
There's still a shape to the movie, though, even if it sometimes does screwball things like having cops who show up at murder scenes seconds after the murder is first discovered, or giving us a heroine who crushes and burns her enemies in car crashes. This movie is all about Renee Harmon kicking ass. Gas fires aside, Linda Allen's quest for sororal vengeance is pretty cool, and she has a lot of great fighting moments. She's also pretty good-looking for her age, and many of the characters in the film seem to think so too...though this isn't always a service to the audience.
The soundtrack also makes the movie. Sure, it's a ripoff of Ennio Morricone, but what isn't? In all seriousness, this movie has its own unique version of the theme from The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly, plus a weird Don't Go in the Woods-style Casio ditty that plays near the beginning which will be in your head for years to come. The music from this movie overlaps with those of Don't Go in the Woods or Frozen Scream to form a master soundtrack that I would pay good money to hear on CD.
Fun fact: this movie was followed up with a remake called Run Coyote Run, made available only recently. Run Coyote Run is sometimes noted as being a sequel to Lady Street Fighter as well as a remake, but I don't see it. I'm not overly psyched about Run Coyote Run because it's largely the same movie as Lady Street Fighter, being entire scenes pasted over from the latter film and strung together with '87-era video segments. But if I ever feel like getting really meta, maybe someday I'll take a look at that one too.
If you're a fan of the other movies James Bryan and Renee Harmon made, and you want to see them take a crack at a crime film, you are well-covered. Hell, this is one to try even if you like your crime films, y'know, good. It will probably just be a little surreal in places, but if you like crime films and you're not used to a little surrealism, you can just get out of my face.
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