Walter Hill's Hard Times Will Punch It's Way Into A Masters Of CInema Release

Blu-Ray Review - Streets Of Fire (1984)

Genre:
Action, Crime
Distributor:
Second Sight
Release Date:
18th November 2013 (UK)
Director:
Walter Hill
Cast:
Michael Paré, Diane Lane, Rick Moranis, Willem Dafoe
Buy:
Streets of Fire [Blu-ray]

Streets of Fire is directed by Walter Hill and is one of the most absurdly 80s films ever made. It was described as “ a rock n’ roll fantasy” in it’s marketing and I guess it is. It’s kind of like The Wanderers but as a dumb 80s action film with horrible musical numbers and none of the substance of The Wanderers. It was a mega flop but has grown to have a cult fan base so much an unofficial sequel was made.

The whole thing is set in this 80s drenched future that is partly 1950s which gives it an interesting aesthetic. The plot is basically this singer Ellen Aim (Diane Lane) gets kidnapped by the Bombers gang lead by Raven Shaddock (Willem Dafoe) and Tom Cody (Michael Paré) must rescue her. The musical numbers are wretchedly 80s that start and bookmark the film that really ruins the good comic book aesthetic of the rest of the film.

Walter Hill is a very fine director who made films like The Warriors, The Driver, Southern Comfort among others. Streets of Fire is certainly one of his lesser films and owes a lot to his previous film The Warriors. It lacks what made that film so good was your cared about the The Warriors gang and wanted them to get back to Coney Island but in this the performance by Michael Paré lacks any real humanity. The film however features a fun campy performance by Willem Dafoe as the main villain and a amusing cameo from the lead singer of seminal L.A punk band Fear Lee Ving as one of Dafoe’s main cronies.

Streets of Fire is perfectly watchable but Walter Hill has made numerous better films but it has a strange 80s charm at times which saves it from being a total disaster. It’s clear to see why it bombed though because it’s simply not that good and to off kilter at times for a mainstream audience. It was suppose to start a franchise but naturally that didn’t happen until recently with the unauthorized sequel with Paré reprising his role. Second Sight as usual has pull out all the stops with the bonus features including a feature length doc and the original EPK.

★★★☆☆

Ian Schultz

The Long Riders (1980) Blu Ray Review

The Long Riders is a film by Walter Hill, who is perhaps one of the more under appreciated directors of the “New Hollywood” generation. He started out writing screenplays for Sam Peckinpah (The Getaway) and John Huston (The Machintosh Man) and eventually starting directing films starting with Hard Times. His next film was The Driver (which shared many similarities with the modern classic Drive) and the bonafide classic The Warriors. He has also been involved with the Alien franchise from the beginning. He also wanted to make a western and finally got his chance with The Long Riders and since it’s release he has many some more and he was involved with the tv show Deadwood.

The Long Riders is in a long lineage of films about Jesse-Younger Gang. There have been many better films made about Jesse James such as The Assassination of Jesse James By the Coward Robert Ford and I Shot Jesse James. Both of those films however deal more with the difficult relationship between Jesse and his assassinator Robert Ford and because of this it’s interesting to see a film about his and his gang’s exploits. The film features real life brothers as the 4 groups of brothers… The Keaches play the James, The Carradines play the Youngers, The Quaids play the Millers and lastly The Guests play The Ford (yes…. Christopher Guest of Spinal Tap fame). This gives the film a extra authenticity other films on the subject lack and all them give very fine performances with David Carradine and Stacy Keach being the standouts.

Walter Hill has said, “Every film I've done has been a Western" and there is certainly some truth in that and he has elaborated "The Western is ultimately a stripped down moral universe that is, whatever the dramatic problems are, beyond the normal avenues of social control and social alleviation of the problem, and I like to do that even within contemporary stories.". It’s interesting to see him tackle a “real western” and his take is very much influenced to his mentor Sam Peckinpah despites his claims he wasn’t with this film. The slow motion scenes certainly recall Peckinpah’s masterpiece The Wild Bunch. It’s a very romanticized version of the west which Peckinpah dealt with often in his western but the difference is Peckinpah was much more cynical.

Overall it’s a very fine western by one of 70s/80s more underrated autuers with beautiful cinematography and very fine acting. Second Sight has released it blu-ray and marks their second release of a Walter Hill film, the first being the superior Southern Comfort. They are planning to release his later film Streets of Fire later in the year.

★★★★☆

Ian Schultz

Rating: 15
BD Release Date: 3rd June 2013 (UK)
Director: Walter Hill
Cast: David Carradine, Keith Carradine, Stacy Keach

Buy: The Long Riders On Blu-Ray

Southern Comfort Blu-Ray Review

Southern Comfort (1981) is a film directed by Walter Hill, best known for The Warriors, The Driver and his long-lasting involvement in the Alien series. The film is very influenced by Deliverance (1972), which is not unsurprising since Hill has said numerous times that John Boorman’s earlier film Point Blank (1967) and especially its screenplay was a revelation for him—so obviously he had also seen Boorman’s Deliverance.

In a nutshell, the story is about patrol of the Louisiana Army National Guard who are out on training maneuvers in the swamps. They deeply upset the local Cajun population, so badly that eventually the swap-dwellers want to kill the Guardsmen, who then need to evade capture (in other words, not dissimilar to the rafters versus hillbillies plot in Deliverance). It stars Keith Carradine, Powers Booth and Fred Ward, and also features Peter Coyote. Southern Comfort is one of the last American films of that era to touch on the post-Vietnam conflict.  Co-screenwriter David Giler said he knew from the get-go that it would be seen as a metaphor for Vietnam. Giler has worked continuously with Hill, most notably on Alien.

It is a well-shot film, and also notable for its good score by Ry Cooder. Cooder has collaborated with Hill several times, and is also well-known for his score for Paris, Texas (1985). The cinematography of the Louisiana bayou is excellent, making you feel that you are actually there.

Southern Comfort is a solid man-against-nature and man-against-man thriller with obvious political undertones. When it came out it was not very successful, much like most of Walter Hill’s films with the obvious exception of his work on the Alien franchise, but over the years it has grown in stature. Many people consider it a superior film to Deliverance. Although I would not put it above Deliverance, it is well worth watching, especially for a very good early performance by Powers Boothe, who later starred in Guyana Tragedy: The Story of Jim Jones (1980: another little-seen film that deserved to be better known.) Hill remains an underrated director whose early films should be re-evaluated (The Driver, for example, was obviously a major inspiration for last year’s Drive). This is one of his very finest films, and is certainly better to watch in its new Blu-Ray format release from Second Sight Films, which includes a good-quality interview with Walter Hill.

Ian Schultz

★★★★☆

Rating:15
BD/DVD Release Date: 26th November 2012 (uk)
Directed By:Walter Hill
Cast:Keith Carradine, Powers Boothe, Fred Ward, Peter Coyote,
Buy Southern Comfort: (Limited Edition packaging) [Bluray] / DVD