Jon Calderas

I am just gonna keep assembling bits of the sequel movie until I get a full cut. It is totally bonkers this even exists. Ellen and Tom have a daughter (also named Ellen, also a rock star). She also returns home for a gig after hitting it big. Nuttiness. But Singer Roxy Gunn looks cool in the clips, she looks like she really could be their kid. http://youtu.be/lBeUhRHqvPw http://youtu.be/0TtudS18kwo

Nowhere Fast reworked by Meatloaf http://youtu.be/mnfrLVm5wVA

I continue to be fascinated that this was planned as a trilogy. Hoping Road to Hell gets released. In the clips on YouTube, Roxy Gunn looks uncannily like she could be Ellen Aim's daughter (she is billed as Ellen Dream and from the clips it sounds like she is the daughter of Tom and Ellen). They even have her perform the same two Steinman songs from Streets. The titles say "Albert Pyun's 50th film". Confusingly, another singer sings a song called "Streets of Fire" over the end credits. Kickstart it already...

g Diane Lane as Other Lady.

Fun podcast, I was surprised there wasn't more commentary on the music. It's not a musical (any more than Saturday Night Fever or Flashdance are musicals), but the music is a big part of it. How can you talk about this film and not bring up the epic overblown but awesome Jim Steinman bookend pieces? And stuff by The Blasters, Tom Petty, Stevie Nicks...pretty solid stuff. Some hipster needs to retool this as a modern musical. It's way better raw material than the original Corman Little Shop of Horrors.

More background if ya need it.

Guess you had to be there...

Nope. Still love it. Sorry you didn't like it. I can see why people wouldn't. Maybe it helps that I saw it when it came out. I can see how someone catching it 30 years later may not have the same feeling.

Wow, okay - Streets of Fire was supposed to be part 1 of a Tom Cody trilogy. Holy cow. I wanna see The Return of The Sorels. "According to Hill, Streets of Fire was to be the first film in a Tom Cody trilogy. When it tanked at the box office, The Bombers Strike Back and Return of the Sorels sank with it. (Paré claimed the sequels were abandoned because everyone involved left Universal, who owned the rights to the franchise and wouldn’t play nice.) For three decades, Streets of Fire fans waited patiently for someone to salvage the wreckage. Albert Pyun is their Argo." "Hell Valley, that is. That’s where we hook up with Cody again, returning from his precious war with a bad case of post traumatic stress disorder. He still has too many weapons. Hell, he is a weapon. Having had 29 years to reconsider his earlier poor decision, he’s now on his way back to The Richmond to reconnect with the hot girlfriend who got away. Along the way he meets two new characters: Caitlin (Clare Kramer) and Ash (Courtney Peldon), a pair of fetchingly underdressed misanthropes having car trouble on Route 666." Sadly, don't see this for rent or sale anywhere... https://sydneyschuster.wordpress.com/2013/12/06/film-review-road-to-hell/

What the what, I found this while looking for stuff on the film. A sequel?!!! Apparently continuing the story with Michael Pare and Deborah Van Valkenburgh. Okay, I gotta find this now...

Sure, but I'm just shocked anyone under the age of 40 even knew that song existed!

It's interesting, I saw this a while ago and was shocked anyone else know this song, especially young kids doing it as a choir performance!

Okay, I will say without any irony - I love this movie. I caught it when it came out in the 80s when I was in high school. I thought it was terrific. It as in the midst of MTV getting really popular and the music video was being explored as a new form. Film and TV directors took their cues from MTV and you can clearly see the influence here. Here's what I can tell you from watching it or what I remember over the years. I'm not gonna google this and then dig up obscure trivia, so I may get some of this wrong. There's a lot of great talent involved here. Walter Hill (48 Hrs. and The Warriors among other films) does a nifty job setting up a classic, economical story line. Hometown girl makes it big as a rock star, comes home to play a gig, girl gets in peril, hero saves girl. The set design is interesting - it blends visual elements from the 1930s up to the 1980s. It's never clear when or where this is set and I like that it looks like a mix of all those eras. Diane Lane is flat out gorgeous here. Michael Pare does a solid job as the hero - he looks the part and plays it fairly straightforward. Rick Moranis is also good as the nebbishy manager that wants Ellen Aim (Lane) back. Also nice to see Deborah Van Valkenburgh (who was in The Warriors) in a small role. Amy Madigan's role was originallly supposed to be played by a Hispanic man, but she convinced them to change the role for her. Hill does a good job keeping the story moving and interspersing music. I think you flagged this as a musical, it's not. It just uses music to drive the story. Jimmy Iovine (one of the most powerful guys in the music business today) pulled together a solid soundtrack. Jim Steinman contributes a couple key songs that would stand up pretty well on Bat Out of Hell, particularly "Tonight is What It Means to Be Young". They are epic and overblown and just perfect. You also get The Blasters, Maria Mckee, Ry Cooder, and the hit "I Can Dream About You" by Dan Hartman. I remember an interview where Iovine said he had to use three voices combined to make Ellen's voice. One of them was Laurie Sargent who was in the band Face to Face and had a minor hit with 10-9-8 in 1984. Lots of nifty cameos in this. Robert Townshend shows up as a singer in the soul group that they meet on the road. The girl dancing in the strip bar is Jennifer Beals' body double from Flashdance. Lee Ving (singer of Fear) is one of the baddies with Willem Dafoe. I haven't seen this in a few years, but I don't see a lot to pick on. Okay, fine - the conflict gets resolved with an overall wearing sledgehammer fight, but aside from that - 5 Stars :-).