Jumping 90 pound girl vs man with shovel, guess who's gonna win in Street Fighter: The Legend Of Chun Li.
There are movies that are bad. Then there are movies that are so epic in its awfulness that it actually is good. The latter is where Street Fighter: The Legend Of Chun Li falls, maybe the most expensive direct to video flick ever. At least it looks expensive, a cast of a thousand extras, multiple exotic locations and recently popular has beens kung fu, wire work flip and shoot guns while running in between ridiculous story line moments.
What's really weird about Street Fighter: The Legend Of Chunky isn't that it's based on a video game that was popular in 1993 but that it has very little to do with the actual game (other than character names). The silly Jean Claude Van Dammaged version (Street Fighter in 1994) is god awful too but at least it was faithful to the source material (and sadly contains one of the last performances of Raul Julia). No, what we have here is a slick, stylish martial arts revenge film that actually had a shot at B movie mediocrity if it wasn't for the hokey Street Fighter elements.
Street Sweeper: The Legend Of Bruce Li's Sister stars that girl from the makeup advertisements and Tv's Smallville Lana Lang as ass kickin' Chun Li (for those who played the video game, she was the girl in a blue dress and hair braids whose special move was an upside down helicopter spin kick). Lana Lang is sad and determined because her father was kidnapped in front of her face as a child and now her mother is dying of I think cancer. Oh yeah, she's a world class pianist too. So she walks with bug eyed determination everywhere she goes because she's sad and mad.
You see, her dad was kidnapped by Lt. Hawk from Star Trek: First Contact for his business contacts that was somehow maintained during the dad's decade plus captivity. Lt. Hawk is Bison, no longer a flying red jacketed muscleman but instead a business man who is pure evil because he killed his wife to put his good side into his newborn daughter (I totally don't remember any of this from the video game). He's assisted by the Kingpin from Daredevil and one of the Black Eyed Peas to carry out his dirty deeds done dirt cheap. Lana wants to rescue her daddy and gets told to find Liu Kang of Mortal Kombat for help. So she leaves her house in the rain wearing shorts to catch a plane. Why? Didn't she have any umbrellas in her house?
So yeah, there's no fight tournament, no Ken, Ryu, Guile or Honda, no "Chi Ru Chen!", just not a hell of a lot to make this Street Fighter except numerous street battles. There she Neutrogena's her enemies into submission including the Black Eyed Pea guy playing clawed adversary Vega. Who she ties up and hangs upside down but leaves his claw hand free. Why the guy didn't cut himself loose I have no idea. Meanwhile, the jock guy from American Pie and a detective girl in every wet tank top imaginable follow the action like they're gonna do something. Ooh, subplot!
It's all a build up to the usual wire work and stunt work fu leading to the showdown between Chun Lana and Lt Hawk. You've seen it all a thousand times and nothing new under the sun here.
To sum up, what we have here is a failure to communicate. A Street Fighter movie that has almost nothing to do with Street Fighter. We got a 90 pound girl thrashing 200+ pound men all day long, we got wire work fu, lesbian bathroom fu, fireball fu, bare hand C section fu, cleavage girl detective fu, Black Eyed Pea fu, upside down spinning handstand splits fu, steam pipe fu, best actor award for Chris Klein for trying to look grizzled but instead looking confused particularly when delivering lines like "I've been chasing this guy across four continents. He walks between rain drops". Bonus award for always having people sit down when they say "You taught me to stand up when it's not easy to." If you like bad movies, you'll love Street Fighter: The Legend Of Chun Li!
One, Two Dokken's after you...Three, Four better rock some more. In what had to be the best heavy metal / movie tie in since Maximum Overdrive, Dokken shreds and wails for the one clawed wonder.
"You need love so now I'm back!!!"
So begins awesome intro to the song "Back For The Attack", a killer rocker that inexplicably does not appear on Dokken's 1987 album Back For The Attack. Instead it was relegated to a B Side on the cassingle to their soundtrack song "Dream Warriors". I know this because I owned that cassingle, that's how big a Dokken fan I was in the hair spray raising 80's. George Lynch was the shit on the guitar and Don Dokken had one of those "ultimate" metal voices. Dokken (the band and the man) was coming off the Under Lock And Key album, one of my favorite discs of all time. They were favorites of mine throughout high school and now that I was in college they were poised to do something even bigger. Unfortunately, despite the disc selling well it didn't do what they were poised to do so Back For The Attack ended up being the closing chapter to the peak period of their career.
Back For The Attack was released just as the CD format started to take off and so the sticker made a big deal out of there being 62 minutes on this album. Oh wow really, 62 minutes? Remember when they used to make albums 46 or 62 minutes long to keep you from recording the full album on a tape? That's all that was. Still, at an hour plus change Back For The Attack was the longest set the band had recorded up to that point (I stopped after the live album Beast From The East so I have no idea how long the albums that came after were). Here we go, Dokken's magnum opus, Back For The Attack!!
1. Kiss Of Death
The album gets off to a strong start with this fast paced rocker anchored by a racing George Lynch guitar riff. Backed by the steady beat of drummer Mick Brown and bassist Jeff Pilson, vocalist Don Dokken wails like a banshee about that "Kiss Of Death". In interviews, Dokken alluded to the song being about AIDS as the epidemic of that deadly disease was getting national attention by '86-'87. More specifically, the song is about fear of getting AIDS from a groupie. Making this one of the most magnificently shallow songs in mainstream metal history.
I won't go so far to say they followed a formula, but there were certain grooves Dokken liked. This is the "Just Got Lucky" / "It's Not Love" groove. A midtempo beat, gang shouted chorus and dramatic "tortured soul" vocals (a Don Dokken specialty!) leading up to a spine tingling guitar solo from Lynch. Killer stuff.
A decent filler track, I tended to block this song out back in the day. Very repetitive song but of course the performance of the band itself is a cut above.
When walking on campus between classes listening to this on a walkman (for you young folks, a walkman is like an Ipod but bigger and required what we used to call a cassette tape to play music. I've included a picture in case this ancient technology is too confusing) the sketchy guitar part stood out. Very cool song to listen to while watching people move all around you between classes, like we're all...standing in the shadows!
5. Heaven Sent
Track five, it's power ballad time! Despite their best efforts, Dokken was never able to cross over to a pop audience while scores of arguably lesser talented pop metal bands did so with ease. A big factor in this in my opinion (or in internet speak IMHO aka I'm a Ho...er, In My Honest Opinion) was that Dokken was too dark sounding to appeal to pop fans. Dokken is very metal in that sense, singing weighty songs in a dark tone with guitars firing all around. So "Heaven Sent" and it's predecessors like "Jaded Heart" and "Alone Again" made for killer ballads that only Rock fans knew about. Too bad, with some pop success maybe they would have kept going.
George Lynch is a freakin artist with his six string sting, here he gets a full instrumental to showcase his stuff. An award winning guitarist (at least I seem to remember him winning Guitar Player awards in magazines and what not), "Mr Scary" is indeed frightening with its burgeoning riff and screaming guitar soloing. That steady rhythm section gets more room to move particularly Mick Brown's percussion. A sort of precursor of things to come, shredmeister guitar player Lynch would form his own band Lynch Mob a few years later.
After all that thunderous metal, the band shows its more melodic side on "So Many Tears". Not quite as strong as the two songs that precede it yet still satisfying. Sort of like "In My Dreams" with the emphasis on the ghostly group chorus vocals. To underscore the band's invisibility to the pop audience, years ago at work the video for "In My Dreams" came on which I watched closely until my co-worker insisted on knowing what I was watching. This person knew pop music pretty well, when I said "It's Dokken" she said "Who the hell is that?" For an interesting twist, while looking for song links a cover from some band in Japan popped up performed in what looks like a backyard. Metal lives! In Japan! With heavily accented English!
8. Burning Like A Flame
Like I said, Dokken tried every trick in the book to cross over. The power ballad, the movie soundtrack tie-in, even this: the happy rock song. Maybe the only happy sounding Dokken tune in their canon. And like a man that never smiles, "Burning Like A Flame" is a little awkward sounding. Never been my favorite track because of that, it's all well played but feels odd. And it was all for naught, "Burning Like A Flame" was the lead single and failed to dent the pop charts.
Taking off with the sound of a jet leading into a heavy bass line from Pilson, this is classic 80s metal. Just like Accept's "Balls To The Wall" this is about struttin down the street ready to take on THE MAN. Even though the lyrics are about being trapped behind THE WALL, the spirit of the track is YOU'RE NOT GONNA TAKE IT!!!
As much as I love 80s Dokken, at this point in the album I usually got a little tired. 62 minutes of Dokken I guess is just too much for me. Back in the day I often fast forwarded to the last song after "Lost Behind The Wall". Not much to say on this song so I'll take this space to mention how interesting it is that Don Dokken and George Lynch often sound tight on recordings but in real life have a reputation for carrying a blood feud that rivals the Hatfields and McCoys. In rock mags of the time, Dokken was better known for their infighting than actual music.
Between bonus tracks if you bought the CD or cassette over the record and the expansion of album run times with the new technology, the art of quality control went out the window. If Back For The Attack didn't have tracks 10 thru 12 on it the album would be stronger as a whole. Then again, if it wasn't on the album I'd probably have to track these songs down as B sides or something because I love me some 80s Dokken. As it is, we have a mediocre cut highlighted with Lynch's flashy guitar fills.
Ooh yeah! Well, that's what Don Dokken shouts at the start of this track. "Sleepless Nights" is the classic hair band album track move aka the blues strutter. The groove is a little more bluesy on the gui-tar as it struts behind the "I'm a party God" vocals. Not bad, a bit more memorable than the songs preceding it.
13. Dream Warriors
The fact that this song is as good as it is is a testiment to Dokken's talent. I mean think about it, if you were commissioned to write a song for a Freddy Kruger movie titled A Nightmare On Elm Street 3: Dream Warriors what would you do? Most people would come up with a big hanging piece of crap, like when J. Geils Band came up with a theme song for Fright Night that had a campy ghost sound at the end of the chorus ("Fright Night / Ooh"). Dokken's song has more drama and power than the movie it's from, enough to make me buy the hokey lyrics tied to the flick ("We're the Dream Warriors / Don't Wanna Dream No More / 'Cause Maybe Tonight You'll Be Gone!"). That reminds me, whatever happened to that girl Heather Lagenkamp (probably mangled her name there)? Lost track of her after the sitcom Just The Ten Of Us (and I'm doin' it the best I can / Doin' it for nobody but meeee...) And are they still going to remake A Nightmare On Elm Street with new actors? Wasn't the ten or twelve original ones they made enough already? Watching this video, I totally forgot Patricia Arquette was in the movie. Medium alert!
After Back For The Attack the group wouldn't release a new studio disc until the mid 90s. From what I've read online, they never recaptured their magic although reviewers have said their most recent effort Lightning Strikes Again gets close. For me, Dokken ended with the 80s so I haven't checked on them since. But in the context of 80s rock, they were totally rad. Keep on rockin' Dokken!
While listening to REO Speedwagon I was reminded of the He Man Woman Haters Club and the Little Rascals (thanks to the song "Tough Guys" from Hi Infidelity, also the first song I owned that had a swear word. The danger!). I grew up watching Little Rascals reruns which I don't see on tv anymore as I guess because its old as hell. Even though I was insultingly nicknamed "Alfalfa" in grade school because my hair was uncontrollable, he was my favorite character. I even imitated his "Oh my darling Clementine" song. In life, I guess Alfalfa had a reputation for not being the nicest person sorta like the Dustin Diamond of his day. But whatchagonnado? On with the madness!
Wind Of Change - long time German metalheads The Scorpions are calling it quits after a farewell album and tour. Gotta give it up to the Scorps, they were old even before hitting it big in the 80s. It's a well deserved retirement for Klaus Meine and gang. My favorite Scorpions memory? I had a friend in college who would replace the word "City" with "Titty" when singing "Big City Nights". Ah the memories...
Conan The Destroyer - So Conan O'Brien got booted off the Tonight Show to the tune of a $44 million severance package. The real prize in entertainment terms was with nothing to lose, Conan was sharper and funnier. That bit with Steve Carell and the exit interview was classic. Watching Conan thumb his nose at NBC was great fun.
Anyway, Anyhow, Anywhere - The Who are prepping a greatest hits set for their Super Bowl performance. To make up some drama, will Daltry nail the screaming in "Won't Get Fooled Again"? Big game pressure on that one.
Helping Haiti - A telethon, Radiohead concert and a charity CD have been put together to help the extremely poor country with their recent disaster. Very sad to see the large scale tragedy in Haiti.
I Know What I Like - And it's not a Genesis reunion. Peter Gabriel nixed that despite their induction in the Rock and Roll Hall Of Fame. With Phil Collins on the disabled list, Genesis may need to have their music performed by someone else come ceremony. Mike and the Mechanics?
Clap For The Wolfman - The overexposed movie commercial this week is The Wolfman. I can't bring myself to totally trash this since they got Benicio Del Toro and Anthony Hopkins slumming at the same time. Looks like Twilight is going to spark a reboot of all the classic monsters. However, I can rip on From Paris With Love for running a close second. First, stealing a James Bond title is not cool (I know Bond is From Russia With Love, but same diff). And while I sympathize with John Travolta's personal misfortune, didn't he already make this movie? Wasn't it called Swordfish? Oh well, up your nose with a rubber hose.
Last Off The Ponderosa - Pernell Roberts of Bonanza and Trapper John MD fame passed away from cancer. Roberts was the last of the Cartwright clan and beloved for his performance as brainy Adam. I knew him more from Trapper John M.D., a show I watched because I thought it was cool to live in a trailer just outside of your work and the blonde beauty with a boys name (Christopher Norris).
It Takes Diff'rent Strokes - Gary Coleman in trouble again.
Extreme Measures - Whenever the advertisement for this movie comes on and Brendan Fraser asks if Harrison Ford can save his children, I shout "Of course he can! He's Harrison Fucking Ford!!".
Straight Up- A series of female guest judges have been brought in to fill the spot Paula Abdul had on the American Idol audition trail. Of them, the one I like the most so far is Katy Perry for her willingness to stick it to everyone, particularly fellow judge Kara Dioguardi. Their bickering was almost as entertaining as the bad singing. When Kara mocked Perry's hit by singing "I Kissed A Dolphin And I Liked It..." Perry's reaction was priceless.
Mini DVD Reviews:
Man On Wire (2008) - Fascinating documentary of a French wire walker who with a team of people infiltrated the Twin Towers to wire walk between them in 1974. An interesting tale of obsession and innocence not just for the wire walker, but for recalling a time when the Twin Towers stood and building security didn't have to be invasive.
Sunshine Cleaning (2009) - It's indie film paint by numbers with a story about a dysfunctional family which includes a downtroden lead, a burn out, a flim flam daddy and an eccentric precocious little kid. Despite these faults, the actors kick ass (Amy Adams and Emily Blunt are believeable in their characters and draw you into their pathos) and the modest production quality work in their favor. A cut above Lifetime movie of the week thanks to these traits.
I Have Dreams - Brandi Carlisle's single "Dreams" has been popping up in tv commercials and shopping intercoms lately and has become a flavor of the month for me. So here's Carlisle with "Dreams"!
Jumping 90 pound girl vs man with shovel, guess who's gonna win in Street Fighter: The Legend Of Chun Li.
When walking on campus between classes listening to this on a walkman (for you young folks, a walkman is like an Ipod but bigger and required what we used to call a cassette tape to play music. I've included a picture in case this ancient technology is too confusing) the sketchy guitar part stood out. Very cool song to listen to while watching people move all around you between classes, like we're all...standing in the shadows!
