BEFORE: Diane Lane carries over from "Paris Can Wait", and it's the start of Willem Dafoe week. Six films in a roe with one actor - why not seven? Well, I've miscalculated the date that I'll be able to watch "Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse", because I can't seem to find the Academy screener, so I have to wait for the iTunes rental period to start. Sure, I could move forward without watching that one, but then I'd have to reschedule it, and I spent so much time working it in thematically.
This one's been on the back-burner for an extremely long time, I mean, how am I supposed to link to something like this? Rick Moranis isn't making movies any more, and Michael Paré movies are few and far between. Amy Madigan pops up here and there, but hardly ever in a starring role. No, the only way to satisfy my curiosity about this film was to sandwich it between the Diane Lane movies and the Willem Dafoe movies, it seems.
Like "Desperately Seeking Susan", I had to wait for the right moment to dip back for a film from the 1980's, which is getting increasingly harder and harder to do. Thankfully actors like Diane Lane and Willem Dafoe have had very long careers, which made it possible to go from a 2016 film to one from 1984, and then back to one from 2017 for tomorrow.
THE PLOT: A mercenary is hired to rescue his ex-girlfriend, a singer who has been kidnapped by a motorcycle gang.
AFTER: All I really knew about this movie was that it featured the song "I Can Dream About You", which was a huge hit in 1984. Who doesn't remember THAT song? It was credited to Dan Hartman, the song's writer, only he didn't sing it, and he certainly didn't appear in the music video, which I think just featured footage from the film. Does anyone know what Dan Hartman looks like? Does he even exist if nobody has ever seen him? (Ah, there's a photo of him on Wikipedia, I forgot he died in 1994, and earlier in his career he co-wrote the song "Free Ride" for the Edgar Winter Group and later co-wrote "Living in America" for James Brown.). "I Can Dream About You" was his biggest hit, so it's weird that he wasn't front and center for it. Apparently he had a cameo as a bartender in one of the two music videos for the song.
But the song I want to talk about is the first one heard in the film, supposedly sung by the lead female character, Ellen Aim and her band, the Attackers (only not really, like every other music video made in the 1980's, they're only lip-synching to a track). I caught a few seconds of this song when I was trying (unsuccessfully) to dub this movie to DVD last summer - I'd just been forced to upgrade my DVR and hadn't yet figured out the work-around for that signal that some channels run with their movies to prevent piracy (though I maintain I only want to make ONE copy for my archives, not 10 copies to sell on the black market). Just a few seconds of this song was enough for me to realize it was produced by Jim Steinman, my favorite record producer from any decade.
You might know him as the writer and producer of Meat Loaf's biggest albums, especially the phenomenal "Bat Out of Hell" and its two sequels. But he also produced chart-topping hits for Air Supply ("Making Love Out of Nothing at All") and Bonnie Tyler ("Total Eclipse of the Heart") - and those are really the same song, if you listen to them back-to-back you'll see what I mean. But let's not forget Celine Dion's "It's All Coming Back to Me Now", Bonnie Tyler's "Holding Out for a Hero", and Barbra Streisand's "Left in the Dark". I've become a connoisseur of the man's work over the years, I even have his solo album "Bad for Good" and the album "Original Sin", credited to Pandora's Box, but his fingerprints are all over every song. So now it doesn't take much for me to spot his work when I hear it.
Generally, his songs follow the "Wall of Sound" rules of arranging, with full orchestrations, echo chamber effects, because Steinman probably grew up listening to Phil Spector records, thinking he could do better someday. Many of them start softly, then gradually build to an epic loudness, and there's the angelic choir that often kicks in halfway through the song, and sometimes sleigh bells, as on "Total Eclipse of the Heart" - once you hear them, you can't NOT hear them. And the structure of the songs are like tesseracts that fold in on themselves and repeat passages in odd ways - some songs have bridges, his also have tunnels and overpasses. The lyrics are usually about getting out of town on a fast motorcycle, if not then they're about being on a California beach when the wind picks up and the sun is burning and the earth is quaking and you're starting to sink into the sand. Plus there's usually a mention of "fallen angels" or "lost boys and golden girls" and how we were "born out of time", or similar metaphors.
Another key factor is that the titles are often long complicated, parenthetical or feature some form of wordplay, like "I'd Do Anything for Love (But I Won't Do That)" or "Good Girls Go to Heaven (But Bad Girls Go Everywhere)", or "The Future Ain't What It Used to Be". Let's not forget "Out of the Frying Pan (And Into the Fire)", "If It Aint' Broke, Break It" and "Objects in the Rear View Mirror May Appear Closer Than They Are". Steinman wrote produced two songs for "Streets of Fire", one's called "Nowhere Fast" and sounds, well, a bit like every other Steinman-produced song:
"You and me, we're goin' nowhere slowly / And we've gotta get away from the past /
There's nothin' wrong with goin' nowhere, baby / But we should be goin' nowhere fast"
Classic Steinman - but I'd never heard this one before, even though Meat Loaf later recorded it for his 1986 album "Bad Attitude". (That's another giveaway, all Steinman songs eventually get recorded by Meat Loaf, sooner or later, depending on whether he and Steinman are fighting or not...). The other Steinman song in "Streets of Fire" is "Tonight Is What It Means To Be Young", which is the last song before the credits. It's one of the lesser Steinman songs, but it still counts - the lyrics include the angel on the beach, the ground starting to shake, and rhymes "broken-hearted" with "let the fire be started", but that right there brings it a little too close to being a copy of the song "The Future Just Ain't What It Used to Be", which contains "Say a prayer for the falling angels, toll a bell for the broken-hearted".
Anyway, "Streets of Fire" has the thinnest of plots connecting the songs, with a motorcycle gang kidnapping the singer of the first song, then her current boyfriend hires her ex-boyfriend to get her back, so she can get up on stage and pretend to sing the second song. It's something of a long way to go, but if the songs are worth it, then it's justified. On the way back to town, the rescuers hijack a bus belonging to a soul group called the Sorels, and they're the ones who pretend to perform "I Can Dream About You" later on. Makes sense? But that was the 1980's in a nutshell, let's have just enough story to get to the next music video - hell, the entire run of NBC's "Miami Vice" show got by on that for years.
It's no surprise that this film was directed by Walter Hill, who also directed "The Warriors", and this seems to take place in a similar city, run by roving street gangs, and the plot is easily summed up by "we need to get across town, and avoid the gangs". Set up the problem, get across town, wrap it up with a song, and we're done in 90 minutes, instant classic. But everything I saw in this film seemed like a throwback to the 1950's - the motorcycle gangs, the classic cars, the elevated trains, and those retro microphones on stage - yet I've heard this film described as "futuristic", and I'm just not seeing that. With "The Warriors", it was easy to imagine a futuristic NYC that was controlled by gangs, in the style of "Escape From New York", but I'm just not getting that vibe here, so why do some people think this is set in the future?
The only thing that seemed like an innovation from the future was the gun that Tom Cody used, because it fired explosive bullets or something. Every time he shot a vehicle with it, the car or motorcycle would burst into flames - but I figured this was either a stylistic choice, like having a car explode after it falls off a cliff, or else maybe he was a crack shot and managed to hit the gas tank EVERY TIME, even though that might not be enough to cause an explosion. So from that, are we to assume that this film takes place on another planet, with advanced weaponry, where all the people are obsessed with 1950's American culture and have re-shaped their society to pay tribute to it? That seems like a bit of a stretch.
The climactic battle is beyond ridiculous, I don't even know where to start with it - like maybe the fact that the top police officer in town is thankful that Tom saved Ellen from the bikers, but is also willing to negotiate with Raven, the leader of the bikers, for the safety of the town. Umm, how about instead you nut up and do your job, maybe defend the town? Just saying. The cop's grand solution is to have Tom Cody skip town - yeah, sure, that'll put an end to things, because psychotic bikers are known for just going away quietly when they don't get what they want. But when Tom does show up, the biker gang leader of course consents to a fair, one-on-one battle with a couple of rock hammers, while the other 499 bikers just stand around and do nothing. Sure... Then the battle with the hammers is choreographed just like a lightsaber battle (well, this was filmed shortly after "Return of the Jedi"...) but give me a break.
I suppose this film could have qualified for the romance chain, since it involves an ex-boyfriend rescuing his ex-girlfriend, the love triangle with them and her manager, and the whole lost love thing, the question over whether they'll get back together. But that's really tangential to the main plot, which is sort of paper-thin as it is. This was originally supposed to be the first film in a trilogy, only it under-performed at the box office, and the sequel was not made...until 2008, that is. It's called "Road to Hell", and apparently was not released for another 9 years after that, in January 2017. I'm slightly curious, but given all that there's just no way that film can be any good...
"Streets of Fire" is not Willem Dafoe's first film, but it's pretty close to it. Lots more with Dafoe is coming my way this week...
Also starring Michael Paré (last seen in "Hope Floats"), Amy Madigan (last seen in "Winter Passing"), Rick Moranis (last seen in "The Flintstones"), Willem Dafoe (last seen in "The Florida Project"), Deborah Van Valkenburgh (last seen in "The Warriors"), Elizabeth Daily, Richard Lawson (last seen in "The Main Event"), Rick Rossovich, Bill Paxton (last seen in "Nightcrawler"), Lee Ving, Stoney Jackson, Grand Bush, Robert Townsend (also last seen in "The Warriors"), Mykelti Williamson (last seen in "Fences"), Ed Begley Jr. (last seen in "Girlfriend's Day"), John Dennis Johnston with cameos from Peter Jason (last seen in "Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom"), Lynne Thigpen (last seen in "Shaft"), Kathy Griffin (last seen in "Four Rooms").
RATING: 4 out of 10 switchblades
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