Lady Street Fighter (1980 Video) User Reviews

Amazingly Incompetant Movie!

[mbs · 4/10 · 9 August 2018]

Really, really, really, really, really funny movie but man is it badly made. On the other hand its hard to make any movie good or bad so just the fact that anything gets onscreen is a downright miracle really...but seriously its not well made.

The lead actress is very Tommy Wisseau-esque tho--her accent, but also her outsize over-reaction to anything and everything that's also in the scene with her. She's a wee bit over the top you might say.

There's a grown woman playing a 5 year old girl here as well, as in she's actually supposed to be 5 and not a grown woman with the brain of a 5 year old...it doesn't make any sense, but i'm hoping it wasn't supposed to.

There's a sequence that's set at a party that turns into a drug laced freakout/orgy that seems to serve no purpose other than to give the people in the movie who aren't the main actress something to do.

Honestly nothing that happens in this movie makes any sense--it starts out trying to be a straight up revenge movie (this woman's sister gets killed and she comes to California to find the guys that did it) but somewhere around the lets say 20 minute mark, the movie turns into a woman on the run movie, and then it inexplicably becomes a love story--that part was actually the most believable because the actor who's playing against the lead actress is about as much an actor as she is--except where she goes completely and totally over the top, he's like underplaying every line--their love scene needs to be seen to be believed quite honestly.

How this hasn't been rediscovered as an object of cult fandom yet is a good question--its definitely every bit as nuts as The Room, but somehow The Room is still unquestionably the better movie! (At least The Room has some resolution at the end of its plot!)

James Bryan does it again

[latherzap · 3/10 · 14 September 2004]

If director James Bryan never makes another movie, that's OK. He can rest on his laurels, having brought his vision to the screen in Executioner Part 2 and also with Don't Go in the Woods. AND, he also apparently sacrificed years of his life so that the rest of us could experience Lady Street Fighter.

As was the case in EP2 and DGITW, the audio in Lady Street Fighter is dubbed, apparently having been shot with no sound. It's safe to say the actors were bad to begin with, but having recorded the audio afterwards seems to have helped make their performances even more atrocious.

Plot involves an undercover female agent (with THICK German accent) assigned to kill a dirty FBI agent. The FBI agent has also been assigned to kill her. Attracted to one another, they have an affair in between car chases and shoot outs. Plot specifics aren't explained well at all, but I *can* tell you the movie is hilarious in parts. It really is terrible. Kookie music, bad dialogue, a hit man who seems to say "Get it?" after every other sentence. Awful, I tell ya.

If you like bad movies, check this one out. It's hard to find, but hopefully it'll get a DVD release someday.

Inept and Boring

[boblipton · 2/10 · 11 November 2018]

Long after his movie career had dried up, Jody McCrea appeared in thsi direct-to-video opus, directed by James Bryan. The plot is a little obscure, but it seems to involve Renee Harmon (who also appeared in several Al Adamson movies) running around Brutalist architecture in Los Angeles, sucking on celery stalks, shooting at and being shot at by members of an assassin's organization which, as one character explains to another who already knows, has tens of thousands of members.

It seems to have been shot around 1975 and is a fine example of utter ineptness, given that the uncredited director of photography didn't bother to match light levels in the same scene even approximately, and the uncredited writer of the score seems to have used Morricone's theme for THE GOOD THE BAD AND THE UGLY, but played it on a synthesizer. Except for one Black woman, none of the performers seem to be able to give a line reading that makes sense.

On the plus side, Miss Harmon does show that it isn't easy to run in heels and there are several topless women.

A few movies are poor enough to be entertaining in their awfulness. This one doesn't even achieve that. the credits show that Miss Harmon is the producer. I guess she thought she was ready for the spotlight and willing to spend someone's money to prove it. She was wrong.

For celery stalk sucking fans only!

[udar55 · 1/10 · 11 October 2008]

Don't go into this one with visions of Sue Shihomi kicking in your head. This is a lame 70s action flick from James Bryan of DON'T GO IN THE WOODS infamy. Linda (Renee Harmon) arrives in Las Vegas and is immediately attacked by some thugs. She is searching for some list on microfilm that involves a pimp and everyone wants to kill her. Seriously, that is all I could make out of this film's plot. It runs a scant 76 minutes, but I often found myself thinking, "What is going on?" Harmon - looking like a low rent Chesty Morgan - has zee zickest Cher-man ackzent so at least her dialog delivery is entertaining. Oh, and she does throw some wild karate kicks, licks a phone, sucks on a celery stalk, and gets nude. Naturally, a film this bad demands I immediately dive into the rest of Bryan's work.

This is so amazingly bad

[AlsExGal · 1/10 · 2 October 2021]

The plot is about Lady Street Fighter maybe trying to figure out what happened to her sister? And some crooks trying to recover a cassette tape of their misdeeds in a stuffed animal she has. She also has a romance with an FBI agent among some fighting of what I think is kung-fu that somehow gets worse as it goes on. She gets tangled in webs of lies, 70s sleazy cats, assassins from Assassins Inc and sleazy dives. It's baffling, but it suits it, as does its conclusion.

Just about everything short of the music and restoration is bad. To start somewhere, I don't know if this is "acting" or not. A lot of the actors are just saying their lines, as if they're reading from a script that only they can see; devoid of emotion, heart and life itself, even in moments of mortal peril. I'm not one that notices bad acting from half-competent acting but this is just so bad, past the point of cheese that exploitation movies should have. Especially this one guy, I think he was the FBI agent, but his delivery is so awful. I was begging for him to stop talking. He stood out, among thick accents, sleazy 70s Bee Gees gangsters, hookers and drunken stoned togas.

I almost forgot to mention a comical stealthy, sneaky guy sneaking into Lady Street Fighter's room to steal the previously mentioned stuffed animal. He could hear the shower but didn't look into the bathroom at all where she saw him sneaking around. Sneakily.

Painful to watch

[leona-5 · 1/10 · 14 November 2018]

At one point, the main character says 'what's going on? I don't understand.' All the audience can say to that is 'me too gurl, me too.' Poorly scripted, poorly acted, poorly edited, poorly choreographed fight scenes.

Huh?

[Wizard-8 · 2/10 · 11 November 2018]

Apparently this movie was lost for a long time until being recently rediscovered. After watching it, it's clear why apparently nobody was keeping a close eye on it. While it isn't the worst movie I have seen, it is all the same a really amateurish effort in every department you can think of. The story makes absolutely no sense, almost as if it was being made up as the shoot was going on. The production values are rock bottom. The acting is pretty pitiful as well. Still, I will admit that there are a few small pleasures to be found here. A few action sequences, as crude as they are directed, do contain a little zip. And there are some touches of unintentional humor that are genuinely hilarious, from some really dopey dialogue to music that rips off Ennio Morricone's music for the movie "The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly". But most of the movie is a really confusing slog to sit through, so I don't think it's worth watching the whole package just to get a few tiny nuggets of entertaining material. Why Turner Classic Movies thought this crudely made obscurity was worth broadcasting on their network, I cannot say.

Oh Hai Linda

[zzz05 · 2/10 · 10 November 2018]

This movie is so reminiscent of The Room; but it makes The Room look like a slick Hollywood production. Female hero has unplaceable accent. Pointless senseless romance. Pointless senseless plot. Not only gratuitous nudity, violence, and car chases; in fact, every single scene seems gratuitous.

WTF Did I just watch?

[thedrunkenrabbit · 3/10 · 23 March 2022]

The main character "Linda" is out for revenge after her sister is Murdered. If what followed was pure non stop action (even on a low budget) with decent fight choreography.. then we might have a pretty good trash cinema movie, but when the movie slows down to dialogue it's extremely noticeable how bad most of the actors are, including the star, who has a heavy accent and talks like she is coldly reading instructions off a paper. The insanity will keep you watching just to see how ludicrous the film is. The fight scenes are hilarious, no one knows how to throw a punch or block it especially Linda. I recommend you play this movie on mute while you listen to music and it will Be more captivating.

Good grief, who made this film and for what audience was it made?

[cougarblue-696-806128 · 1/10 · 10 November 2018]

I'm not sure how Lady Street Fighter missed being named on the Ten Worst lists along with Planet 9, it deserves a top worst ranking. It's somply dreadful, the acting terrible, even the audio is beyond redemption. Bad Ass Lady flies from Amsterdam to LA to find out about her sisters murder, that's it.

A gloriously ghastly gut-buster

[Woodyanders · 8/10 · 7 April 2009]

Cunning and deadly foreign beauty Linda Allen (a hilariously atrocious performance by Rene Harmon, who sports an adorable heavy German accent) arrives in Los Angeles to track down the evil mobsters who tortured and murdered her sister. Meanwhile, the mobsters try to find a tape with incriminating information on it. Plus Linda has to deal with both a nasty pimp and a crooked FBI agent who intends on killing her. Boy, does this deliciously dreadful doozy possess all the right wrong stuff to qualify as a real four star stinkeroonie: exceptionally inept (mis)direction by James Bryan (the same cinematic genius who blessed us with the similarly shoddy "Don't Go in the Woods" and "The Executioner, Part II"), uniformly terrible acting from a lame no-name cast, clumsily staged action scenes (the car chases, shoot outs, and especially the rough'n'tumble martial arts fights are all uproariously awful), a hopelessly muddled and meandering narrative, a simply astounding kinky swinging sex party (Rene suggestively sucks on celery stalks with a certain remarkably sensuous aplomb), poorly recorded post-sync dialogue, and a handy helping of gratuitous female nudity that's largely provided by dumpy and unattractive ladies with a few too many miles (and pounds) on them. The legendary Liz Renay, looking aged, pasty and chubby, pops up in all her sexy and uninhibited fortysomethingish splendor as a stripper who bumps and grinds for all its worth in a seedy nightclub. Max Reed's shaky'n'scratchy cinematography gives this tacky flick an appropriately ratty look. An absolute cruddy hoot.

Harmon was a true action trailblazer!

[tarbosh22000 · 6/10 · 5 March 2015]

Linda Allen (Harmon) travels from somewhere in Europe to Los Angeles to get to the bottom of the torture/murder of her sister. She becomes embroiled in a tangled web of evil gangsters, killer pimps, shady FBI agents, and downright strange partygoers. But who can Linda trust? Luckily, her wits and Martial Arts skill (?) should get her to the bottom of things. Will Linda ever casually wear a gold jumpsuit again? Find out today! Like most people who have ever seen her in anything, I am a confirmed Renee Harmon fan. She's impossible not to like. Her thick German accent isn't unintelligible; it says "I'm not going to let this stop me from achieving my dream of being in American movies". There's something charming and likable about her, as I've witnessed in Frozen Scream (1975) and the must-see Night of Terror (1986). So imagine my delight when I saw her in Lady Street Fighter - AS the lady street fighter in question - punching and kicking the bad guys and getting into a bunch of highly silly shootouts, car chases, love scenes and fights.

Adding to the fun are some hilariously abrupt film and sound edits, some wonderfully wooden line readings, and inexplicable dubbing. On top of that are two main musical themes: one Spaghetti Western-influenced, the other positively Kraftwerkian. And there's even a "sexy" undercurrent to it all. Apparently the film was shot in 1975 and not released on VHS until a full decade later. Interestingly, Frozen Scream is also from '75 and that was the first year Harmon appeared on the scene. She really exploded out of the starting gate with these two films. While the Kung Fu movie craze was in full effect then, with plenty of aspiring Bruce Lee's out there, it may seem somewhat counterintuitive to make the heroine of such a film a 48-year-old German lady. But that's all part of the fun. Plus, it's better than Policewomen (1974) or the Ginger series.

Besides, Harmon was a true trailblazer in that respect. Now we fully accept heavily-accented action stars such as Schwarzenegger and Van Damme. But Harmon did it first. And backwards and in high heels, as the saying goes. Her accent, while charming, does seem to get worse as the movie goes along. Is that possible? But she also wears a lot of great outfits and gives it her all. And she really loves celery, as we see in the centerpiece of the film, the party scene. It's here she meets a girl named Inez, and gives her highly sensitive and medically-accurate diagnosis of her mental state. Interestingly, the spectral character in Night of Terror, one that is very important plotwise to that film, is also named Inez. Could that possibly be a coincidence? Not to be confused with being a part of the Sonny Chiba Streetfighter series, Lady Streetfighter is distinct in its own right. And at only 73 minutes, you can't afford not to watch it. After the end credits, it promises, "watch out for the return of Lady Streetfighter!" Sadly, this never came to pass, as this was director Bryan's last film. (And third collaboration with Harmon, after Hell Riders and The Executioner, Part II). He also directed Don't Go in the Woods, for those that don't know).

So have as much fun as the partygoers in the film that are continually shouting "Toga!" and see Lady Streetfighter soon.

A Few Entertaining Moments

[Michael_Elliott · 11 June 2017]

Lady Street Fighter (1981)

** (out of 4)

Linda Allen (Renee Harmon) travels to Los Angeles after her sister was tortured and murdered by some mobsters. Before long she is killing one right after another but getting to the top guy is going to be challenging.

LADY STREET FIGHTER comes from director James Bryan who is best remembered for his 1981 slasher DON'T GO IN THE WOODS. This film here was apparently shot in the 70s but didn't get a release until the following decade. This film has no connection to the Sonny Chiba movies as the title was clearly added on just to try and attract people who might be interested in martial arts movies.

As far as the film goes, it's actually not too bad as long as you don't go in expecting something that the film isn't. If you're looking for great action and a tight, suspenseful plot then you're in the wrong movie. This here has a very low-budget and it's clear that the production was running out of money and probably various times. The film's first part works because of what the director was able to do with such a low-budget. The action scenes aren't special but they're at least fun and they keep you glued to what's going on. Bryan throws in plenty of nude scenes that are here for no other reason than people watching this film would want to see them.

The biggest issue with the film is the middle portion where the action stops and we're given a bunch of dialogue scenes that are both boring and make very little sense. I'm not sure why the action just stops but it just kills the film. Thankfully the action picks back up towards the end but by then it's too late. The film features a really annoying music score, which adds some camp value. The performances are pretty much what you'd expect from a film like this.

Lady Street Fighter Is No Spring Chicken

[mikecanmaybee · 3/10 · 29 August 2021]

I wonder if director James Bryan tried to talk Writer, Producer (Renee Harmon) out of playing the leading lady Linda Allen. He may have said " Renee, Doll, this part is not right for you. Even though your beautiful you are still fifty two years old and your German accent is so strong it will be hard for your millions of fans to understand you. Renee may have responded "I ville play zee part". Against all odds she actually pulled it off to a degree with a boat load of natural charisma she sets out to avenge her sisters death with burning , whipping, stabbing, and acting like a an old fashion female sex fiend. The first half of Lady Street fighter is pretty good with an occasional topless scene in order to move the non existent plot along. Then comes the Toga party and things get really lurid and creepy with lady Street Fighter having a good laugh with foot fetishes and beating a guy with a bull whip. The momentum never quite picks up after that with leading man Jody McCrea as FBI agent (Rick Pollard) not doing the film any favors with a very flat performance. I can only wonder how much better the film would have been if the beautiful Ms. Harmon had a little better handle on the English Language and was twenty years younger while throwing the bad guys around. That all being said; yes, it is worth a watch.

Entertaining in spite of itself

[kamikaze-4 · 4/10 · 22 May 2021]

I realize I might be dating myself, but to paraphrase a line then-President Nixon said, I am not easily amused.

I don't know what made me enjoy Lady Street Fighter, but I did. It's so bad it becomes entertaining despite how bad the movie is.

Could any of the reasons I enjoyed this be because of the fake Morricone theme playing out through the film? No!

Maybe it's the badly choreographed Martial Arts fight scenes the female lead displays no more than twice in the film. Uh-no!

Is it the fact Beach Party star Jody McCrea may have come out of semi-retirement to play the male lead? No!

Was it the acting that alternates from inspired to just plain bad? No!

Then again, it could be the unnecessary nudity from the leading lady and stripper Liz Renay, and extras at a party scene? Maybe. Then again, I have been there and done that.

I think it all boils down to the leading lady, Renee Harmon. A German Haus Frau with a thicker accent than Zsa-Zsa Gabor.

Frau Harmon has made a series of successful, though rather lame, action and horror films that got released to theaters or went to video. Hey if that's the case, more power to her!

In her later years, Renee Harmon taught screenplay writing and wrote a series of critically acclaimed books on producing, directing, acting and, screenplay writing. Good for her.

I liked Lady Street Fighter for what it was. A no-frills action flick with an abundance of nudity, bad acting, and a plot that is juvenile. The movie becomes entertaining in spite of itself.

A 1970's kung fu THE ROOM

[jellopuke · 2/10 · 25 May 2020]

This chick is worse than Tommy Wiseau, but will remind you in a lot of ways of him. She can't act, fight, or even talk english BUT she's incredible in her BAD-ness. This movie must be seen to be believed. Despite being 70 minutes, it's nearly incompressible and totally inept in all ways. Truly one of those must watch awful pieces of trash.

What did I just watch?

[Agent10 · 1/10 · 6 January 2024]

In all honesty, I would only recommend this movie if you are a glutton for punishment. It's bizarre, weirdly kinky and full of bad film making tropes. I have a hard time really saying anything about this film because in reality, the whole thing feels like a long running joke. Our protagonist is a woman that is clinging to the idea that she is still a sex symbol (and nailing it) while taking on bad guys that really present no danger to her. Plus, for a movie called Lady Street Fighter, she doesn't do a whole lot of fighting.

If anything, if you love the trashy B-movies of the 1970s that were equal parts midnight movie and equal parts grindhouse, then you might get a kick out of this. Beyond that, just stay away.

The guy flipping off the audience/good guy while burning to death is quite apropos.