28-04-2005, 01:54
Most martial artists are renowned for the grace they display, but not Sonny Chiba. Unlike most of his Chinese counterparts, the Japanese Chiba tended to be more brutish than balletic: The star's fighting style resembled nothing more than down-and-dirty back-alley scrapping. His "Street Fighter" Terry, a bruiser-for-hire, will do anything for money... except kidnap an heiress for the Mafia. When the mob ends up holding her for ransom regardless, Terry decides to wage a one-man war the only way he knows how -- by breaking bones, gouging eyes, ripping out throats and, in a scene that earned the film an X rating, splitting an opponent's skull as filmed through an X-ray. The movie was so popular that it spawned three sequels and countless rip-offs that traded in on the star's animalistic rage (one movie, "Karate Bullfighter" (1975), actually paired him against a live bull!). It also earned Sonny a gaggle of fans like the young Quentin Tarantino, who would cast Chiba in his own two-volume "Kill Bill" epic.
There's no stoppin' what can't be stopped, no killin' what can't be killed. You can't see the eyes of the demon, until him come callin'...