Gyakushû! Satsujin ken

Well to be fair, matters do at least get off to a cracking start in this, the final chapter in this infamous series of flicks. Sadly however, it has to be said that what follows is tedious at best and moronic at worst.

Fans of the violent excesses that these flicks are most notorious for will be in for a major disappointment here as the said scenes have been well nigh omitted entirely with our hero (the incomparable Sonny Chiba) adopting more of a subtle approach to matters. In fact, our protagonist is now shown adopting multiple disguises in order to accomplice his nefarious ends (a far cry from his head on brutality as displayed in the first two films!)

Easily the least of the series, there's really very little to recommend here other than the rather cool final fight between Chiba and his nemesis (in other words just fast forward to the end)

Overall then, this proves to be a somewhat sad way to end the series. Oh well, one can always re-watch the first two over again I suppose…..

In Tony Scott's True Romance, from a screenplay by Quentin Tarantino, Christian Slater's Clare Worley takes his date to the movies to see Sonny Chiba's Streetfighter trilogy. When he is questioned about Chiba's questionable 'heroics', Worley responds that, "he ain't so much a good guy as he is just a bad motherf****r." A long-time fan, Tarantino hits the nail on the head here (he would go on to cast his idol in the Kill Bill films). While Bruce Lee was wowing the world with the speed and agility of the martial arts, Sonny Chiba was demonstrating its brutal, more unforgiving side. In The Streetfighter's Last Revenge, Chiba's anti- hero Takuma Tsurugi is at his most sadistic. He may have punched a guy's eyeballs out of his head in the previous instalment, but here he calmly burns a thug alive in an incinerator.

Much of the appeal of Chiba's movies lies with his sneering approach to the ancient arts, where he is far more comfortable sadistically beating a bad guy to a bloody pulp than he is with finding inner peace. This trilogy-closer has upped his mean streak, and made things a hell of a long weirder. The Streetfighter was excellent, Return of the Streetfighter was passable, and The Streetfighter's Last Revenge comes across as a bunch of scenes discarded from the previous movies for being too bonkers. Not only is Tsurugi a near- unstoppable punch, kick and throw machine, but he now dons Mission: Impossible-esque face masks to disguise his identity, and at one point bears vampire fangs for unexplained reasons. There's also a villain even James Bond would chuckle at: A mafia hit-man who dresses like a mariachi with a giant sombrero and shoots invisible laser beams out of his hands.

The plot itself is incredibly simple. Tsurugi is hired to rescue Go Owada (Akira Shioji) from a police riot in exchange for a hefty payment. When he goes to collect his loot, he is handed a bag of cut-up newspaper and is attacked by the Owada family's men. Furious, he decides to take revenge on the gangsters. There's also a stolen tape and a master foe in Kunagami (Koji Wada). Noticeably less violent than the previous entries, this third feature shares more in common with a spy film than the martial arts genre. As a result, it's less fun, and only manages to pique the interest when at its most idiosyncratic and just plain daft. It's also nice to see exploitation icon Reiko Ike in a supporting role as Chiba's wannabe sidekick. But ultimately, Last Revenge stutters through a threadbare story, failing to deliver the sort of gory chopsocky that made the original so wonderful. Clearly the weakest of the trilogy.

Japan had its Bruce Lee craze just like everywhere else in the early seventies and Sonny Chiba was their answer to Bruce Lee. Along with the vicious action scenes there were some typically Japanese acts of misogyny which seem pretty bizarre to Western audiences when it's the "hero" doing it (When was the last time you saw Chuck Norris or Jackie Chan sell a woman off to a slave ring because she couldn't afford to pay for getting her brother out of jail?). STREET FIGHTER'S LAST REVENGE is somewhat tamer than the first entries into the series. This time around Chiba is more of a James Bond kinda character, donning rubber masks and vampire fangs(!) and is mixed up in a plot involving cassettes with top secret information. There's also some Gong Show-type freak (Who you see a lot of on Japanese TV) who can break chains (He actually uses a laser) who's heard to kill Chiba (Yeah, right!). Along with the awful dubbing there's also the same black and white footage where Chiba, as a kid, sees his father executed to the Chinese which turns up in all the STREET FIGHTER movies.

(1979) The Street Fighter's Last Revenge DUBBED MARTIAL ARTS ACTION

Third and final film of "The Street Fighter" movies starring karate actor Sonny Chiba as Terry retrieving a cassette tape involving the formula for heroin. It is then Terry gets double crossed by the people who hired him. He of course becomes motivated to retrieve the tape back from the people who double cross him but have to face obstacles such as a martial artist from Mexico and a corrupt DA who seems to be a better martial artist then him since he learned some of his techniques was derived from Korea. More bone cracklings and nudity than the first two installments as well the fights are slightly better even though it still looks fake in comparison to what we can get these days but it's still better than most Hong Kong chop sockey movies made in the 70's.

I don't know whether the terrible dubbing on my DVD is to blame, but the plot to this third and final film in The Streetfighter series made very little sense to me—some nonsense to do with a pair of cassette tapes containing the formula for synthetic heroin. Sonny Chiba's hard-as-nails mercenary Terry Tsurugi is double-crossed by the Yakuza over the sale of one of these tapes and consequently takes revenge, taking time out from the kicking and punching to get jiggy with sexy siren Aya Ôwada (Reiko Ike, who goes topless). Oh, and there's a mariachi in a big black sombrero who fires lasers from his fingers, and Terry dresses up like Dracula.

Clearly, it's all a far cry from the gritty brutality of the original film, with Terry more secret agent than anti-hero, complete with headquarters featuring sliding silver doors. Terry even dons latex masks, Mission Impossible style, to change his identity. Even though I usually welcome a healthy dollop of wackiness in my martial arts films, It simply doesn't suit this series, being too far removed from the previous films, both of which I thoroughly enjoyed. I wanted more of the same, but what I got was a whole load of silliness. Very disappointing.

3.5 out of 10, generously rounded up to 4 for Reiko Ike.