85/2655. The Street Fighter's Last Revenge (1974)

I watched the English language dub of this 1974 Sonny Chiba martial arts film released in America by New Line Cinema in 1979. The dub has terrible line reading and worse editing. The plot summary on Wikipedia wasn't helping me make sense of what was going on, so I took the following notes. Read at your own risk.

In Tokyo "one of the largest chemical manufacturing plants in the East" is embroiled in a workers' revolt. The riot squad is called in, and a "known syndicate Boss" calls an answering service for Terry Sugury (pronounced soo-goo-ree), offering to pay 50,000 in exchange for Sugury helping his brother, Owada, escape the plant with an attache case holding two cassette tapes.

Owada is seen shooting through a window at police. The riot squad enters the plant, and one Officer arrests Owada and secures the case. Instead of delivering Owada to the jail with the other rioters, Officer swaps cars. He removes his mask and reveals he is Sugury. ("Some people call me… The Street Fighter.")

Sugury drives Owada to a meeting with the syndicate. Sugury swaps cases with the syndicate representative only to find they have paid him with cut-up newspaper. Sugury grabs Owada by the neck and demands they give him back the tapes. An Enforcer wearing sunglasses and a fedora attacks Sugury while everyone else escapes with the tapes. Sugury wins the fight and reveals the Enforcer to be a woman he recognizes as employed by the District Attorney. (She: "Fool! What I'd like to do right now is cut your goddamn balls off and then send them to you for a birthday present!") He lets her go.

Some days later, Sugury confronts DA about his "girly spy with Owada." DA warns Sugury away from the syndicate. (DA: "I think that they're going to try to kill you." Sugury: "Sure is scary." DA: "Sure is.")

At a private meeting, a Buyer offers Boss a check for ¥1,000,000 for "the tape and the formula." Boss plays Tape A which explains that the two tapes (A and B) must be played together to reveal a formula for the manufacturing of synthetic heroin (for $200/pound).

Sugury runs down a staircase to his car, where he is confronted by the Enforcer. He tells her she isn't going to stop him from getting the tape. She offers to help, but Sugury refuses and leaves. She insults him again.

Back at the meeting, Buyer complains to Boss that he needs Tape B or his money back. Before Boss can produce either, Sugury crashes through a wall, seizes Tape A, tells the syndicate this is their own fault for trying to pay him with newspaper, and flees.

At a different location, Boss and Owada (now wearing a neck brace) discuss how to respond. Their sister, Aya, suggests assassinating Sugury. The siblings watch a televised demonstration of Mr. Black, a Mexican who can cut steel with his "inner power."

An answering service Operator relays to Sugury that Aya wants to meet at a dance club. He is instructed to come in disguise and agrees. ("I don't have a very good costume wardrobe, but I'll try to trick her.") The Operator also goes to the club, and Sugury rescues her from a pushy date. She begs Sugury for one dance before Sugury scares her away with his disguise: a set of vampire teeth.

DA watches as Sugury meets and dances with Aya, who seduces him. They go back to Sugury's apartment for sex and are interrupted when DA calls and threatens to kill the Operator if Sugury doesn't bring Tape A to an immediate meeting at the fair grounds. While Aya tries to get Sugury to stay, Black and his crew attack, revealing his "inner power" to be a laser attached to his belt. Aya tries to steal Tape A, but Sugury grabs it and meets DA, who exchanges the Operator for the tape. The two men fight; DA wins and escapes.

Sugury visits the busy dojo of Matsuoka, a karate master, to learn DA's fighting style. ("That's an old form from Korea named Cosmic Wave.") They fight, Sugury loses, and Matsuoka encourages Sugury to build his spiritual strength. Sugury has a flashback to his traitor father's execution by firing squad. ("Be a number one man!")

Meanwhile, DA tells his Superiors that for three weeks he has made no progress toward recovering the formula. They threaten his job.

Outside an apartment building at night, a Little Boy finds Sugury standing by himself and offers to play, but Sugury leaves to ambush DA in an elevator, knocking him out before carrying him to his apartment and forcing his Mother to turn over Tape A. ("Your son has been playing both sides of the coin. Now he is in trouble with the police. And me.") Sugury calls the police to tell them he has the tape.

Later, DA instigates a meeting with Boss to reveal that the Enforcer has acquired Tape B from Aya. DA wants to form an alliance to get Tape A back from Sugury. ("We can call our partnership Good and Evil Incorporated.")

Aya takes her Mercedes to a car wash. Sugury forces her inside the car where he explains that he heard "from the other girl" what Aya did with Tape B. Sugury claims to have real feelings for Aya and volunteers to sell Tape A back to Boss.

Sugury meets with the syndicate at their compound and sells Tape A for a gym bag of cash. As he leaves, the Enforcer argues that acquiring the tape was supposed to be her job. Despite being told she can keep it, she returns her fee. ("So it doesn't count what I say. You go around doing whatever you please and I get the shaft.") She follows Sugury to warn him that the syndicate is going to try and kill him. Their car is ambushed in a tunnel by syndicate gunmen and Black. The Enforcer charges Black, who shoots her and his own crew. She watches them blow up Sugury's car before dying.

The syndicate collects two large, heavy aluminum suitcases filled with money. A Motorcycle Cop intercepts their car and leads it to an auto wrecking yard where he removes his rubber mask and reveals he is really Sugury in disguise. Sugury proceeds to beat up the couriers while Aya watches from a distance.

Aya arrives to a meeting with Boss and DA just in time for one mortally injured syndicate Bodyguard to deliver the news that Sugury is alive and has stolen the money. DA warns that Sugury might next steal back the tapes, and Boss tasks Aya with recovering the cash.

Aya and Black confront Sugury at a mortuary. Black and Sugury fight. Sugury wins and incinerates Black in the crematorium. Aya begs Sugury for forgiveness, claiming not to know that Black was going to try and kill him. They take the money to a bedroom where Aya and Sugury have sex. The syndicate surreptitiously steals back the suitcases before Aya opens the door to Odawa who ambushes Sugury with a machine gun. Sugury steps on his neck brace, decapitating him. Aya and Boss escape by car, where Boss warns her not to double cross him. ("Why would I do anything to you?")

Boss plans to flee the country immediately by boat with all the money, cutting out the DA. But bad weather prevents departure, and DA arrives and fights the syndicate guards in the rain, ultimately killing Boss. He spares Aya. ("You're really a bitch. I'll give you one more chance.")

Sugury finds the boat and fights its crew. Then he puts something in Boss's car. Inside the mansion, DA and Aya have sex.

The next morning, Aya tries to poison DA but he is wise to her scheme. Just as he tries to make her drink the poison, Sugury breaks in and demands a rematch. They fight outside, down a cliff, across a field, under an airplane, through a wharf, to a pier. Sugury is knocked down, but when DA jumps for the kill, Sugury kills him with fingers to the gut.

Aya shoots Sugury in the shoulder, and he falls into the water. Aya tells him she never loved him. She loads the suitcases inro Boss's car. Sugury swims to shore and yells at her to stop, there's a bomb in the car. She starts the engine and the car blows up. Bits of money fly through the air, and Sugury watches it burn.

The end.

I have to admit that makes more sense than I was expecting.

Comments (0) | Leave a Comment | Permalink | Tags: movies

65/2635. Best Served Cold: A Hannah Swensen Mystery (2026)
Hallmark Mysteries have never recovered from the pandemic disruption, and maybe they never will. I'm sure many of the decisions behind the scenes about which actors are available and which aren't must significantly hamper development of this series, but at this point, with the films being reduced to completely formulaic exercises in exploitable familiarity, even Mom is losing enthusiasm for this series.

66/2636. International House (1933)
The frame story of this madcap comedy, in which a convention of international buyers assemble in China to compete for rights to an improbable television-like device, is only an excuse for a bunch of famous comedy vaudeville acts to do their thing. It's actually quite amusing.

67/2637. Gumshoe (1971)
Critical guides as a comedy, though it's neither really cynical enough to be a black comedy nor does it exactly match the Shakespearean sense of the word. Though it does begin as a case of mistaken identity, and Albert Finney lends it his usual world-weary humor, the film is executed as a serious neo noir, in a style typical of its era, about a novice hardboiled detective learning on the fly. I liked it a lot.

68/2638. The Last Voyage (1960)
This disaster picture, presented in an almost documentary matter-of-fact style, squeezes a lot of drama out of the real-time sinking of an ocean liner following a boiler accident. Very suspenseful.

69/2639. Target (1952)
Actor Tim Holt plays cowboy Tim Holt, the only competent man in a West populated by misogynists, racists, and murderers. I watched it because John Hamilton, television's Perry White, plays the rancher who hires — and fires — Holt. The best thing I can say about it is that its short run time keeps it from wearing out its welcome.

More to come.

Comments (0) | Leave a Comment | Permalink | Tags: movies

Comments (0) | Leave a Comment | Permalink | Tags: comic strip havanese strip poodle strip soccer

I interviewed Vince Sullivan at Comic-Con back in, I believe, 1993. I don't recall him saying he wanted a character that had unearthly powers. I think he just wanted one as colorful [as Superman] and able to do amazing things.

—Mark Evanier, newsfromme.com, July 6, 2026

If you don't know, Vince Sullivan was the first editor of National Allied Publications' Action Comics and Detective Comics when they both sold for 10¢. By all accounts (including Bob Kane's, right at the start of chapter 4, "A Vision Inspired by Da Vinci," in his notoriously inaccurate autobiography, Batman & Me), it was Sullivan who in early 1939 encouraged a young Kane to create a character that eventually became The Batman.

The point here is that by 1993, when Detective Comics cost $1.25, I had already been collecting Batman comic books for years. I eventually acquired most of the Batman comics that had been published during my lifetime, but I never seriously considered trying to own a complete run because the early issues seemed impossibly distant. Fifty-four years was a long time! No one could ever catch up on that many comics!

However, as the anecdote above about Batman's literary origin indicates, the man who ordered his creation was still very much alive and attending comic conventions at the time. (He died at age 87 in 1999 when Detective Comics cost $2.25.) Five decades probably didn't seem so long ago to someone who lived through them. And now that an additional 33 years have passed, I have to admit that 1939 is starting to feel closer than ever to me, too.

Which is not to say that I'm harboring any rekindled urge to collect 'em all. I quit collecting Batman when DC "killed" him off in 2009 when Detective Comics regularly cost $2.99 (though Batman's death was marked up to an opportunistic $3.99). Add that a copy of Batman's first Detective Comics appearance sold at auction in May for $1,525,000, and I think we can all agree that the best time to buy one has long passed me by. I wonder how long Sullivan held on to his?

Comments (0) | Leave a Comment | Permalink | Tags: batman comic books dear diary superman

I had though I found a "news" item that fit perfectly within the Venn Diagram of several topics I like to blog about (video games, comic books, sex), but on further research, I decided that I didn't fully trust the sources and have chosen to refrain. I'm sure that in years prior — and past posts on this blog will bear this out — I would have posted it anyway, facts be damned. But I find I'm getting a little squeamish about engaging in such behavior as I grow smarter and wiser.

I'd like to drop the "-er"s and say that I'm growing smart [full stop] and wise [full stop], but, like perfection, I suspect that both of those absolute conditions are probably beyond my grasp. I strongly believe that one can never be smart or wise enough (especially as regards one's ass), and even though I like to think of myself as smarter than the average bear, I'm still plenty stupid in many respects. For example, after accidentally slicing open the tip of my ring finger on Independence Day (you celebrate your way, I'll celebrate mine) while replacing an air filter in the HVAC (I have a terrible track record with sheet metal), I put a Band-Aid® over it mostly to remind me to be careful with that finger as it heals. But today I hid that reminder inside a work glove while recycling aluminum cans (which are just sheet metal rolled into tubes for your mouth). Out of sight, out of mind. The uncomfortable sensation I felt as I used the finger to push a heavy bin into a dumpster painfully reminded me that I am definitely not as smart as I like to think I am.

Although, I suppose if I want to be pedantic, I should accuse myself not of being stupid but being unwise. Smart is a synonym for acquired knowledge or the ability to recall and process information quickly. Wise, on the other hand, is the practical understanding of how and when to apply that knowledge/processing. Knowing I should protect my finger is smart; failing to do so is not wise.

Or, in another example from earlier today, being smart is knowing that in case I die suddenly, I should leave nothing in my possessions that would embarrass me if my mother found it. Being wise would have been not to mention that to my mother. She responded with a giggle and the unembarrassed confession that one day I'm going to find a bunch of old vibrators in her room.

I'm smarter after that conversation. Wiser, too.

Comments (0) | Leave a Comment | Permalink | Tags: family mom sex walter

William Daniels, the man who played John Adams in 1776 on Broadway in 1969 (and in the movies in 1972), was born in 1927, which means he's 99 years old as the United States celebrates its 250th anniversary. We think of 250 years as a very long time, but Daniels has personally witnessed nearly 40% of the United States' entire history. The actual Adams himself lived to 91, famously dying on the America's 50th birthday. Between the two men, there's only 101 years of American history that neither man saw. Maybe 250 years isn't as long as we think it is.

Comments (0) | Leave a Comment | Permalink | Tags: history holidays independence day john adams william dianels