The Big Gouge

By J.C.

THE STREET FIGHTER

Directed by S. OZAWA Screenplay by KOJITAKADA and STEVE AUTRY

This might have passed for just another ramshackle kung-fu import if it were not for the ad campaign, which promised "the first X-rated fight scenes in screen history." The M.P.A.A. is usually stern about sexual content, but almost carefree about violence. What about The Street Fighter could have raised the organization's ire?

Well, it could have been the sounds of dozens of bones crunching as the hero (Sonny Chiba) dispatched platoons of hoodlums, or the blood that spurted into the camera from mouths and noses. Maybe the eye gougings did it. Certainly, by the time Chiba attacked a would-be rapist--leveling him with a flying fist and tearing his privates off, decorum and community standards had been sufficiently outraged so that a swift X was bestowed. Even more swiftly, the American distributors seized on this dubious honor and tried to turn it to their advantage.

Indeed, The Street Fighter has little else to offer in the way of novelty, save perhaps for Sonny Chiba, a stepchild of Jack Palance and Magog. The movie is Japanese in origin, not Chinese, as is customary, and contains some comic relief in the person of Chiba's chuckleheaded pal, called Ratnose. Connoisseurs of the etiquette of male affection in films will notice the hero's farewell to the dying Ratnose--giving his nostrils a hearty but melancholy pull--with some guarded delight. sbJ.C.

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