Blood Street (1988)

This is one that's been in the can for a while, because I watched it way back when I did the Leo Fong episode of the Comeuppance Reviews podcast. I had the review scheduled for this date, and didn't even realize that it was coming after my work trip out to San Francisco, so there's some fun synergy there. In addition to us, our friends at Comeuppance have done this too.

Blood Street is about two rival gangs in San Francisco that are in the midst of a bloody war, one side run by an Italian mob boss and his two enforcers, Stack Pierce and Chuck Jeffrys, the other run by DTVC Hall of Famer Richard Norton. When the Italian guy's wife is trying to track him down, she hires Leo Fong, reprising his Sam Spade role of Joe Wong from Low Blow. No ham sandwiches here, but when Fong's involved, all bets are off, and as he starts to unravel what's happening here between these two gangs, he's getting himself in deeper--but that's worse for the baddies, not Fong. He's cleaning up these blood streets, and when he's done with them they'll never be the same! (Totally didn't rip that off the box tagline...)

This is a fun Fong joint, especially as a companion to Low Blow. Fong knows how to get after it, and guys like Norton, Pierce, and Jeffreys deliver as well. It has the hallmarks of a Fong film, not just with the budget and one-liners, but great martial arts and action. It's a bit on the brutal side, with the rival gangs massacring each other in ways that could hurt our modern US mass shooting sensitivities, but in 1988 the idea of someone going into a room with an assault rifle and taking out everyone inside wasn't considered a natural occurrence like it is now, it was the cartoonish over-the-top violence it was meant to be. On top of that, the San Francisco backdrop does a nice job mitigating the low-quality film stock used to shoot the film. This is the fun 80s Fong actioner you came for.

After doing our mini Rothrock celebration for her joining the 40 Club, it's only fitting that the next review after would be of her longtime collaborator and fellow DTVC Hall of Famer Richard Norton. He's on the cover of this one, but it's really Fong's film, and the cover having Norton like that is deceptive. He's not a hero cleaning up the streets of San Francisco, he's a baddie making them worse. This is now 23 films for him at the DTVC, but our first of his since May of 2021's review of The Kick Fighter. How did it take so long between Norton flicks? To be fair, we had two podcast episodes in September on Cynthia Rothrock movies that also talked about him a bunch, since he was in all 4 films as well, but still, a guy like Norton should have reviews more frequently, at least until we can get him into the 30 Club. What we get from him here is that late 80s DTV action stalwart who was one of the names that truly made the late 80s to early 90s the golden age it was. One of the best to do it, and we just need to get more of his flicks on the site to show that.

 

With Fong we're at even less, as this is his fourth film on the site. For me it's been a matter of getting into more of his stuff, and with the episode of Comeuppace I did on his films, I was given that impetus to finally make that happen. Fong's films, especially his ones from this period, are the kind of fun low-budget actioners that just have all the elements you need to work. Funny dialog, great martial arts, shootings and explosions, and the periodic goofiness that just ties it all together. Him playing this Sam Spade detective, complete with the hat and voice-overs, works in a way that's difficult to describe unless you've watched his stuff and understand the vibe he goes for in his films. I've just scratched the surface of the Fong-ster, so it'll be a fun ride as we discover his stuff together.

We had a great team up here of two other 80s/90s DTV actioner mainstays, Stack Pierce and Chuck Jeffreys. I think Pierce is playing Jeffrey's father, which didn't seem right for their ages, but when I looked them up, Pierce was born in '33, and Jeffreys in '58, so it actually worked. These two are common in Fong films, and they're great in this one as the Italian gangster's two main hatchet men. I think as far as getting more of their stuff up, for Jeffreys it'll definitely be in more Fong films, but with Pierce, he wasn't just a mainstay in Fong films, but he also did some Williamson films as well, so as we continue our mission to get more Williamson on the site, we'll be seeing more Pierce as well. They're the kind of guys who enhance a film like this, which is why these kinds of movies worked better than their modern counterparts.

As I mentioned above, I'm just getting back from a quick work trip to San Francisco. Not only has the city changed a lot since this film was made, it's changed a lot since I was there for an anthropology convention as an undergrad in 2000. The tech boom came in and raised the cost of living to such a degree that only New York in the US is more expensive to live in. It would be interesting to see a Blood Streets remade in this new environment. Maybe rival tech start-up gangs massacring each other. Stack Pierce and Fong are no longer with us, but Norton and Jeffreys as the baddie leaders? It could be a great antidote to the standard streaming service mini-series on whatever tech start-up billionaire that eventually crashed "spectacularly" played by this or that actor that everyone on Twitter is buzzing about. Maybe the detective could be played by Mark Dacascos--he could be a Hawaiian making sense of modern San Francisco. The script writes itself.

While more Fong is making it to streaming services, this one is currently only available on YouTube. The quality isn't great, but you could do a lot worse for a Saturday night, and hopefully soon we'll get that Blu-ray we deserve. Also, if you go into the Comeuppance archives, episode 67, "The Fong Show," is the one where we discussed his films.

For more info: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0131979

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