Street Fighter * (1994, Jean-Claude Van Damme, Raúl Juliá, Kylie Minogue) Bad Movie 4

Writer-director Steven E. de Souza’s 1994 American action film is risibly bad without actually being funny.

Based loosely on the Street Fighter video games produced by Capcom, it stars Jean-Claude Van Damme and Raúl Juliá, with supporting performances by Byron Mann, Damian Chapa, Kylie Minogue, Ming-Na and Wes Studi. Van Damme stars as Allied Nations regional commander, Colonel William F. Guile, with Minogue as his assistant, Cammy. They other martial arts heroes must fight against the tyranny of the dictator General M. Bison and his evil cohorts.

Astonishingly, it survived the strong antipathy of critics and fans of the video game series to be a hit, making three times its production costs.

It alters the plot of the original game and motives of the Street Fighter characters, and lightens the tone, inserting comical interludes, with one fight scene between E. Honda and Zangief referring to the old Godzilla films. Alas, this doesn’t make it actually fun or funny.

Raúl Juliá’s performance as General M. Bison is the one saving grace. Tragically, a pale and gaunt Juliá all too evidently had stomach cancer and took the role at the request of his two children. He died two months before the release of the film, which is dedicated to his memory – ‘For Raul – Vaya con Dios’.

Two video games based on the film used digitised footage of the actors performing fight moves, similar to the presentations in Pit-Fighter and the Mortal Kombat series of games.

In 2009, Time magazine listed the film on its list of top ten worst video games movies.

© Derek Winnert 2014 Bad Movie 4

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