Starring: Gary Daniels, Ian Jacklin, Gerald Okamura, Tracy Dali

THE STORY:  This movie started off with a strong chance of getting three demons on its side at the beginning...then that tricklled down to maybe two....and then it just plummetted into the depths of the Inferno.

Jake Tanner is a young man on the wrong side of the law. With his friend Ito he goes to torch some bar, for reasons unknown at the start of the flick. Jake manages to get away from a brawl alive, but Ito gets killed. Jake then decides to disappear for ten years.

Huh? You might say. We don't know why or who sent Ito to torch the place for a long while. I'll save you some time. It was Ogawa, a japanese crimelord. And Ito was his son. Jake fled because he was afraid that Ogawa would take revenge on him and harm his family. Jake's family consists of his mom and young brother Randy.

Ten years later Jake returns. He looks up Rose, his old girlfriend and she has a young ten year old son, Billy. Billy tells Jake that his father just left them and he must never have loved him. Yep, I'll save you the trouble...by the end of the movie we find out that Jake is Billy's dad. Big surprise, huh?

Rose's father is a one-eyed dude that runs the local karate school, and he trained Jake and Randy. Thats all we really get to learn about him, and honestly I can't recall if he had a name. Randy isn't too pleased to see Jake. After all, he feels that Jake ran out on the family ten years ago. But Jake comes back to mend things and he's obviously been successful in some business venture. That too, is not explained. We don't even find out where Jake went! He says he left the country but its never told to exactly where. My guess is the UK since Jake has a really good accent...in fact he had it before he left!. (It might not be a brit accent though...I'm not sure and it doesn't matter)

Randy has signed up weith Ogawa to fight in ...what else...illegal martial arts fights! He won't listen to Jake and his advice. In order to try and save his little brother, Jake agrees to fight in his stead...and gets his ass handed to him by Viper, a vicious fighter. Now, up until now the movie has made a little sense...its not a particularly original or even good story, but its linear. Up until now.

Jake manages to make it home beaten and bloody. Rose nurses him back to health and Billy helps him train. I don't even want to elabortate on that part. It sucked. Jake eventually heals and then nothing makes any sense. He has flashbacks about things that happened after Viper kicked the turtle shit out of him, but its not explained til near the end. Basically, Ogawa uses his beaten and dead fighters by hiding drugs and other things in their bodies and sending them overseas. This makes less sense...if these guys are american citizens why are the bodies being sent overseas. My friend Iron Annie is German-American but I'm sure she has no great desire to buried in Dusseldorf. Theres also a fight scene when Ogawa send his minions after Jake and we never know why....really.

It gets even more confusing. The one eyed guy is seen being dragged by Ogawa's man on a motorcycle...yet he shows up in Ogawa's home unhurt. He also delivers the line that helped junk this movie. He fights Ogawa's femme fatale daughter and tells her "From now on this is just like 'Nam. No mercy." I'm getting a bit sick of 'nam references in movies and this line seemed kind of racist to me. Especially since she was Japanese, not Vietnamese. Make of it what you will, it just turned my stomach. Then we see Jake held behind some kind of barrier helplessly watching as Viper kills his brother. But in the next scanee Jake is free fighting Viper. What? How'd he get free? How'd he get captured for that matter? We don't see anything to explain it and theres no dialogue to do so either. To make it even worse, Jake tells Ogawa that he was the one that was with Ito when he was killed. Wouldn't Ogawa know that? If he didn't why did Jake leave the country?

AAARGH! Droogies, this movie sucked really bad. I can't think of anything that could redeem it. I don't know who Greg Daniels is. He's the guy that played Jake...but he's not an American by the accent. You'ds think that a movie called American Streetfighter they could have found an American to play the lead. He certainly couldn't have been a crappier actor. Or they just could have rename the movie and kept Daniels. It doesn't matter since you should avoid this turd.

Best Lines: "Well, you're no Ninja turtle."-Billy to Jake.

ARE YOU KIDDING ME?:

1.) How can anyone get hit in the face so many times and not even have a bloody nose? Throuhout this movie people get battered in ways that would leave a regular person bleeding in agony but the fighters seem to have impervious skin. I wish I had that. I bit my lip the other day and I damn near bled to death.

2.) Hey I know its the great melting pot but its hilarious when Jake says "I'm an American!" with his strong british accent. With the accent and his somewhat passing resemblance to Julian Sands I half expected him to turn into the Warlock.

3.) This movie isn't a real testimony to anyone's writing skills but it might have helped if they hired actors that could actually....well, act. Rose couldn't have been any worse if they showed a guy holding her cue cards on the side.

4.) Waitamminnit! he was standing right next to the guy he doused in gasoline when he lit him up! FOUL! I CRY FOUL! Did the filmmmakers realize how flammable gas is? They both would have gone up like the Human Torch!

5.) If I had any doubts about whether or not to buy another motorcycle when I get back to the states they're gone now. After watching this flick I assume that having an impact with another vehicle while riding a bike at about 60 MPH will only result in a few bruises.

NUDITY AND SEX:  Jake has sex with Rose in a shower. Brief nudity is seen.

HUH?:  So Jake's mom called Rose instead of an ambulance when he came home beaten and bloody and passed out on the floor. Does anyone have a mother that would actually do that? If you do, fire her.

Having Randy make Bruce Lee faces and scream like him does not make him seem tough at all. It only makes him look stupid and it pisses me off.

It might be unkind to say but Jake and Randy look like two guys that you'd find in a metal band like Danzig or something. Only I'm sure they would suck at that too.

THE FINAL JUDGMENT: This flick doesn't deserve your attention. There are plenty of bad martial arts flicks that are better than this bowl of turd soup.

American Street Fighter is now consigned to walk forever on Sinister Street, the Avenue of the Inferno where roving bands of hooligans will beat the crap out of it daily for being an utter waste of time and effort. This judgment is final and cannot be revoked!