Still as good as movie making gets.
In a piece titled ‘Still movies‘ some dozen years ago I extolled the exceptional cinematography in Walter Hill’s ‘Streets of Fire’.
The film was a huge flop when it was introduced, poor publicity and strong competition from another tedious, puerile Star Trek movie damning it quickly.
Since that time in 1984 ‘Streets of Fire’ has rightly acquired cult status and – finally! – has been released in BluRay format.
Few movies can hold a candle to Andrew Laszlo’s photography or William Hill’s direction, and most of those were made by Stanley Kubrick or David Lean.
Here are a few more images from this visual and musical masterpiece:
The atmosphere of late-50s industrial America is perfectly captured.
A perfect fade, reminiscent of the Russian cinema.
Beautiful Diane Lane was just 18 when the movie was made. Her pouty performance is perfect.
As Raven Shaddock, leader of the biker gang, Willem Dafoe stars in one of his first roles.
Hopefully he will get the Oscar he so deserves this year.
Nearly all the cars are Studebakers. Here the cops’ gets trashed.
The dynamism of the cinematography and the performances in the final concert number remain stunning.
The back-up group, The Sorels, mime their music like everyone else.
The beautiful number ‘I Can Dream About You’ was written and performed by Don Hartman.
As the tough good guy Michael Paré gives a splendid low key performance.
Here he is shooting up the bad guys’ Harleys in The Battery, a rough after hours joint.
Chicago’s El serves as backdrop in this rain soaked scene.
Some of my closest friends.
Dafoe does not know how to act badly, raven haircut and all.
His sidekick is Lee Ving, who is best known as the frontman for the L.A. hardcore punk band Fear.
In one of the best fight scenes ever staged, Raven Shaddock meets his match in Tom Cody.
Amazon has the movie in the BluRay version. Snap it up before Universal does something as dumb as its roll out of the movie over 30 years ago and pulls it from distribution.