Movie Review: Return of the Street Fighter (1974)

I’ll just be clear right upfront. This is no The Street Fighter. It came out the same year, and it definitely feels like it was rushed into production. While it doesn’t quite reach Silent Night, Deadly Night Part 2 levels, it does feature a lot of flashbacks, and even more filler elements of nameless karatekas training and using weapons.

But even more so than all of that, the biggest disappointment of the movie is that Terry (I am watching the English dub) is not nearly the asshole he was in the original.

He still kills people in horrible ways, of course, including one moment that genuinely rivals the x-ray skull punch from the original.

But he never sells anyone into sex slavery or anything like that. Sure, that makes him a more traditional protagonist, since his honour is never really worth questioning in this film. But him being just as awful as the villains was part of what made the original so special to me.

Where this movie does shine (kind of) is some of the fight sequences.

I feel like the fights are actually better choregraphed in this movie than in the original, but they’re also not shot as well. The camera seems too tight on a lot of things, and we just needed more space to let things breathe. This could be an issue with the version that’s on Tubi, though, so I’ll reserve my full judgment for when I inevitably get the Shout Factory blu-ray 3-disc Street Fighter collection (yes, I’ll buy a blu-ray player just for this).

It’s entertaining, but not nearly as much so as the original. I enjoyed watching it, but was hoping for more.

Rating: 6/10