Video Games To Film: Street Fighter

This is my first entry for this here blog, mainly because I really could not think of a subject worthy enough to make me want to lose my blogger virginity. I've never blogged before. I once got to second base with a "Sean Hannity Superfans" blog but I was too nervous to go any further. Yet when I was asked to share my views on the 1994 motion picture STREET FIGHTER I knew it was time to bust my blogger heiman.

We seem to be getting movies based on video games all of the time these days, in fact SILENT HILL will be added to the pile tomorrow. But there was an era when this wasn't so. It was a time of the O.J. Simpson trial, Michael Jordan's career in baseball, and when "New York Undercover" dominated the television landscape. The idea of video games being turned into films was still in the art house experimental phase with flicks such as SUPER MARIO BROS. and DOUBLE DRAGON coming and leaving in the blink of an eye. Who could we turn to to make sure such scripts as WING COMMANDER and HOUSE OF THE DEAD would someday find their way to the screen? The answer is simple: Jean-Claude Van Damme.

Van Damme, following the worldwide craze brought on by TIMECOP, teamed up with director Steven E. De Souza to craft a film that human eyes were not ready to view. One would expect that a movie based on the STREET FIGHTER video games would be full of great fight scenes, amazing stunts, and perhaps even some nifty chase sequences. This movie had none of that! Instead, in a bold move that would not be appreciated until years after the film's release, STREET FIGHTER chose to play it for laughs. STREET FIGHTER is a modern take on the Marx Brothers with Van Damme running the show in a way that only Groucho could have done better.

STREET FIGHTER is noteworthy for containing the last filmed performance of famed actor Raul Julia, who was given the difficult task of playing General M. Bison to Van Damme's Colonel Guile. Some might say this was not a fitting way for Julia, a highly respected stage and screen performer, to finish his career before dying. Hogwash to that! Do you think as the years go by that KISS OF THE SPIDER WOMAN is going to play on Spike TV at 2 in the morning? Hell no! Playing Bison insures Julia will maintain a legacy among insomniacs and those too impotent to be watching porno at that time of night.

If it has been a while since you have seen STREET FIGHTER, or if you've never had the pleasure even once, I urge you to rush right out and give it a fresh look. Raul Julia deserves that much.