The Street Fighter Collection [Blu-ray]

Shout Factory as part of their Shout Select line brings the legendary Sonny Chiba films "The Street Fighter" (1974), "Return of the Street Fighter" (1974), and "The Street Fighter's Last Revenge" (1974) together in an excellent and long overdue blu-ray set that will make fans very happy. The original film was a surprise worldwide hit which spawned two quickly assembled sequels. It also initiated a spinoff series beginning with "Sister Street Fighter" in which Sonny Chiba appeared in that spawned three sequels. (Arrow Video has put out an excellent blu-ray collection of all four "Sister Street Fighter" films by the way.) "The Street Fighter" is notable for being the first film to garner an X rating in the U.S. purely for violence. The sequels while not as good still have their moments and are enjoyable in their own right. For years this series languished in poor DVD releases of dubious quality and it seemed that we might not ever get restored blu-ray releases of the films. Thankfully Shout Factory has come to the rescue with this three disc collection which presents the films in style.Each film is gets its own dual layer disc in their original 2.35:1 aspect ratios utilizing the AVC codec featuring average bit rates of 33 to 35 mbps. A disclaimer at the start of both "The Street Fighter" and "Return of the Street Fighter" states that Shout Factory's transfers "comes from two sources; a new 2K scan of the color reversal internegative of the shorter English language cut and an earlier HD master of the Japanese cut." They then add that they matched the color for both sources for a balanced presentation. Both films look positively stunning and it is truly like seeing them again for the first time. These are the unrated and uncut versions of each film by the way.The transfer for "The Street Fighter's Last Revenge" proved a little more interesting of a challenge for Shout Factory though. At the main menu you are given an option to watch either the censored U.S. R rated cut of the film which also got a brand new 2K transfer like the first two films or the uncut Japanese version. At the start of the Japanese cut a disclaimer states that they had to splice in about 4 minutes of standard definition footage due to those trims not being in the Warner Brothers vaults. Shout Factory did a great job upscaling and color matching the standard definition footage and it was not too jarring whenever they had to switch back and forth between the HD and SD sources. Some people online have complained that the SD footage looks terrible but I disagree. While it is disappointing that those original trims for the third film have been lost, at least we still got the complete version of the film to watch. The HD footage looks as spectacular as the first two films.Audio wise you can each film in dubbed English or the original Japanese language in master mono audio. The first film also gets an extra English option of the 90's re-release dub too which I thought was cool. The films sound very good overall.In terms of extras each film gets both U.S. and Japanese trailers as well as still galleries. The first film also gets a very recent and cool 27 minute interview with the legendary Sonny Chiba as well a 13 minute interview with trailer editor & filmmaker Jack Sholder who was responsible for cutting the brilliant U.S. trailer for "The Street Fighter".Sonny Chiba fans should pick up Shout Factory's "The Street Fighter Collection" without hesitation. All 3 films looks great even with the SD inserts used in the uncut version of the third film. I never thought we would see these films fully restored on blu-ray but Shout Factory comes to the rescue once again. Highly recommend!

This is a must watch for everybody

If you're like me, you never really "got" the whole Chinese kung fu movement. 70s Japanese cinema is much more similar to Italian exploitation and hence very dark, bloody, and psychedelic. There is also a lot more location shooting than cheap sets. When it comes to old school karate flicks, all of the Toei Company Chiba flicks are the only thing that satisfies. Buy this and the Sister Street Fighter bluray collection from Arrow. They perfectly complement each other and are highly entertaining. These are cheesy, exciting and brutal grindhouse flicks! Chiba rips out and rips off any body part he can get his hands on...and when he rips out his enemy's throat and shows it to the camera, smiling, I can't help but smile, too.

I have the VIDEO Box Set of this flim franchise with the Sister Street Fighter as well with a QUENTIN TARANTINO quote on the side of the box & was BLOW away of the raw uncut violence & mayhem that just surpass BRUCE LEE movies just a bit I'm glad to have this on Blu Ray I also enjoyed SONNY CHIBA interview as well as How the movie came to the States

Watch a pervert get his junk ripped off by Sonny Chiba.

The best these films have ever looked or sounded, bar none. A 5.1 DTS remix would have been much appreciated and warranted, but DTS has been engaging their "DTS Master Audio-mono" BS. It's not DTS, it's friggin' MONO. lol Anyhow, The image quality is very good, they did a great job on them. Shout Factory is always top notch. Not a lot of extra's, but I wasn't expecting a bunch. Definitely worth the purchase if you a fan of the films, despite the lost star for no 5.1 audio.

Perfect blu rays to add to the collection

These are just great Kung fu flicks to watch on a rainy day and the restoration of this set is amazing the best in quality I’ve ever seen I will be buying more movies from Shout Factory in the forseeing future!!

Firstly, I have punched so many things as a result of watching this series of movies. I won't lie to you...It's been overwhelming to be fair. I punched the air when the movie ended (out of sheer joy), I punched a cushion (out of sheer excitement) and then I punched myself, because that is what Terry would have wanted!Anyway, I have momentarily stopped punching things to write this review about the first film in the series.Sonny Chiba plays this geezer called Terry. Now, Terry is always up for a fight. He likes to put five down and get proper stuck in. After we get introduced, we find out this top business bloke has snuffed it and left a tasty sum of money to his daughter. These underworld types get wise to the situation and want the cash.So, they look Terry up in the old Yellow Pages and give him a bell.The villainous types want Terry to lend a hand and kidnap her, but his price for the deed is astronomical and the underworld lot are having none of it. So they get Lemon about the whole ordeal and try to do Terry in. So he doesn't go into business for himself.Terry catches on to this sharpish and he ain't having even a slice of that pie, so he vows to protect the daughter and fight back.GO ON TERRY MY SON!GET STUCK IN MATE!!Needless to say he knocks seven bells out of the lot of them. Terry is tasty and he doesn't mind who knows it! There is much kicking, punching, face pulling, dubbing and a fair amount of Street fighting.It's cushty.To put it plainly, if you like punching stuff and seeing other people do likewise and you don't mind a bit of the old ultra-violence, then have a butchers at this. It's incredible. The sequels aren't bad either.It's worth the money to own these movies. Sonny Chiba is top drawer, the action is great and it's a classic series.Cheers.

15年ぶりにこの「殺人拳」シリーズ海外版に出会って即購入してしまいました。以前に購入したDVD版は英語吹替えだけで日本語への切り替えが出来ませんでしたが、今回は日本語版もありました。英語字幕が消せないのはすこしウザったいですが、海外版では珍しいことではありません。画質も一枚一番組なので良好です。前回もそうでしたがパッケージはイラスト、写真を使用したポスターは日本だけらしいです。珍しいことに剣琢磨とやられる悪漢（１作目の川谷拓三さん？似てないけど）以外の３作全員のキャラは写真。裏側の映画ポスターも「逆襲！…」は日本のポスターの転用。高速拳の千葉さんがカッコいいです。なぜか東映は「逆襲！殺人拳」、「子連れ殺人拳」、「空手バカ一代」、「若い貴族たち・十三階段のマキ」ついでに「ボディガード牙」２部作をまったくソフト化してくれません。仕方なくみんな海外版DVDで購入しましたが、それぞれ一長一短あるんですよね。プライムビデオでは見られるようなので、頑張れ！東映。

The films were, different, very well remastered I would say as I'm sure the originals were filmed on low quality cameras. As I say the films were different though, would not be suitable for most audiences, not because of the martial arts or over the top gore, but because the story follows one of the most interesting anti-heroes I've ever seen. Even the term anti-hero is not really appropriate, as I'm pretty sure Sonny Chiba was the bad guy, but also the protagonist so hey he gets to win. Overall I enjoyed the films, and I would recommend this collection to anyone who is a fan of these types of movies

Having this on BluRay with strong (but not perfect) video transfers, Japanese language tracks & Uncut is a godsend. Shout is an amazing company & this is a new high for them. The only issue is that this set is shockingly light on bonus features.