Sonny Chiba is meaner than ever in his iconic role in THE STREET FIGHTER COLLECTION on Blu-ray as part of Shout! Factory's Shout Select line.

THE STREET FIGHTER is Terry Tsurugi (Chiba), a "half-breed" Japanese/Chinese orphan whose father was executed as a traitor after telling him to trust no one and be number one. Subscribing to no school of martial arts and no particular gang, he freelances for the highest bidder. His latest assignment is organizing the escape of karate killer Junjo (Masashi Ishibashi, KARATE BULLFIGHTER) who is awaiting execution. He visits the prison and puts Junjo in an "oxygen coma" and then ambushes the ambulance en route to the hospital for treatment. When Junjo flees to Hong Kong and his brother Gijun (Jirô Yabuki, KAGEMUSHA) and sister Nachi (Etsuko Shiomi, SISTER STREET FIGHTER) cannot pay Tsurugi for his services, Tsurugi kills him and sells her into prostitution. When procurer Mutaguchi (Fumio Watanabe, SCHOOL OF THE HOLY BEAST) tries to engage him in a kidnap for ransom plot of Hong Kong oil heiress Sarai (Yutaka Nakajima, KARATE BEAR FIGHTER) on behalf of gangsters Yang (Reiko Ike, GIRL BOSS GUERILLA) and Liang (Akira Shioji, SAMURAI WOLF), Tsuruji refuses upon discovering that the gangsters belong to a Hong Kong-based, mafia-backed triad. After Liang and his men make an attempt on the lives of Tsurugi and his sidekick Ratnose (Goichi Yamada, THE WOMAN GAMBLER), Tsurugi goes to Sarai's sensei uncle Masaoka (fight director Masafumi Suzuki, THE SOUL OF BRUCE LEE) and convinces him that his own men are not sufficient to protect Sarai and to hire him to escort her to Hong Kong. While Tsurugi has plans to profit from Sarai, he is unprepared for an ambush coordinated by Yang with oil executive Bayan (Tatsuo Endô, AUDITION) who has come in place of her late father's trusted associate Jadot (Tony Cetera, THE LAST HERO). The cat-and-mouse game to get Sarai back puts a target on his back from Yang's associate Dinsau (Rin'ichi Yamamoto, INVASION OF THE NEPTUNE MEN) who engages Junjo who has discovered his sister among Dinsau's prostitutes and learned of his brother's death at Tsurugi's hands (and feet).

THE RETURN OF THE STREET FIGHTER finds Tsurugi with a new sidekick in ditzy Pin Boke (Yôko Ichiji) and working for another Japanese gangster in Otaguro (Hiroshi Tanaka, THE NINJA WARS) who enlists him two accountants who have stolen from him and may talk to the police about his operation which has been extorting money from various martial arts chapters in the Asian countries and funneling it to the mafia through the smokescreen of building an Asian Martial Arts Center. When Masaoka comes to Otaguro with evidence of the shakedowns and orders him to return the money, Otaguro orders Tsurugi to kill him. When Tsurugi refuses, Otaguro of course sends his best men – who might have been better utilized to carry out the hit – after Tsurugi. Tsurugi, of course, makes mincemeat (sometimes literally) out of the competition but is unprepared for the return of Junjo who managed to survive the climax of the first film.

THE STREET FIGHTER'S LAST REVENGE: This time around Tsuguri is hired to bust out Owada (Akira Shioji, SAMURAI WOLF) by his older brother Seigen (Eizô Kitamura, COPS VS THUGS) who is cornered by the police during a standoff between some of his men and the police. Tsurugi is also asked to bring a retrieve a pair of tapes that when played together sync up to divulge a formula for synthetic heroin. Of course, the gangsters try to shortchange Tsurugi and his attempt to make off with the tapes is hindered by the gang's female fighter Huo-Feng (Sue Shiomi, who would become SISTER STREET FIGHTER the same year) who is actually an undercover agent for district attorney Kunigami (Kôji Wada, STRAY CAT ROCK: DELINQUENT GIRL BOSS). Tsurugi is able to get his hands on the tapes only to discover that Kunigami has less than honorable reasons for wanting to get ahold of them too. While Seigen sends his younger brother and his men after Tsurugi, their slinky sister Aya (Reiko Ike, GRAVEYARD OF HONOR) decides to paly both sides, sending sombrero-wearing American strongman gangster Frankie Black (Dorian Howard) after Tsurugi while also working his way into the Street Fighter's bed.

Already a star in his native Japan for fifteen years with a few of his films making stateside like TERROR BENEATH THE SEA, Chiba achieved iconic status internationally with THE STREET FIGHTER, owing as much to the film's legendary X-rated violence – including tongues, throats, and genitals ripped off as well as X-ray view of Tsurugi's fist crunching down an unfortunate henchman's skull, all seen in various forms of completeness domestically and abroad – as to the actor's onscreen charisma. While all three films were cut for an R-rating in America, the violent content of the second and third films is reduced; however, this has the effect of making their outbursts of graphic violence seem even more vicious. Although he is the film's "hero," it is really on a scale of vileness apart from the character of Masoaka, more concerned with honor than compassion with the American mobster Kingstone (Osman Yusuf, KING KONG VS GODZILLA) and the European executives – along with the film's Asian female villains – wanting to kill Tsurugi outright while Junjo wants to settle his score in a deathmatch and even pimp Dinsau turns sides when the others resort to "dirty tricks." The racial aspect of the film is pronounced with the Tsurugi hating the Japanese characters who collaborate with the Chinese who are backed by the mafia while the Chinese characters only respect their Japanese partners in so far as they are useful. The racial aspect of the first film is dropped in the second only for the English dub to add in various racist remarks from the mafia dawn who calls various characters "slant-eyed" and "yellow" (even throwing in "yellow-skinned dog" offscreen where there is no dialogue on the Japanese original).

Although Tsurugi remains underhanded in the sequels, it is obvious that the sequels see him as the more heroic or least evil of the films' principals with Suzuki's Masoaka having less to do apart from dispensing wisdom by the third film and the second film's cop Yamagami (Naoki Shima) brought in ostensibly as opposition to Tsurugi before being unceremoniously killed off without presenting much of a challenge to Tsurugi or their common enemies. While the second film felt like a lose retread of the first, THE STREET FIGHTER'S LAST REVENGE takes off in different directions and is less predictable but not much of an improvement. Gone are the sidekicks in favor of a potential love interest in a ditzy switchboard operator that goes absolutely nowhere but eats up a lot of time early on, and his dalliances with Aya who Tsurugi seems to believe whenever she proclaims her loyalty to him after trying to kill him. Shiomi is wasted and the American gangster is even more ridiculous than the first and second films' mafia dons. The English versions of all three films were post-produced stateside by New Line and the East Coast English dubs are truly travesties with plenty of Brooklyn accents coming from Mafia members and Asian characters alike. Chiba's character is called Tsuguri in the first and third film and Tsurugi in the second while being billed onscreen as "Sugury" in the credits of all three. The dub of the third film is particularly excruciating as if the voice actors were not even trying to take it seriously regardless of the quality of the Japanese original. THE STREET FIGHTER COLLECTION may be a series of films of diminishing returns, but they manage to entertain and amuse as a triple bill of mindless and sadistic yet juvenile violence.

THE STREET FIGHTER was distributed theatrically in the United States by New Line Cinema in an R-rated edition that was released on panned-and-scanned VHS and laserdisc by CBS in 1982. Fortunately, New Line took an interest in the film again in the 1990s, issuing a widescreen laserdisc with Image Entertainment featuring a uncut version that restored the cut violence and gore while also redubbing Chiba's voice. This widescreen transfer was the source for subsequent multiple unauthorized DVD editions from the usual suspects. Through Shout! Factory's licensing agreement with Warner Bros. who purchased New Line, THE STREET FIGHTER comes to 1080p24 MPEG-4 AVC 2.35:1 widescreen Blu-ray from a new 2K scan of New Line's color reversal internegative with the cut bits restored from an older HD master of the Japanese version with efforts to balance the color between the two. The differences are not particularly distracting, although skintones appear to fluctuate slightly throughout the film with Chiba seeming to be blushing in some close-ups. While the film opens pleasingly with both the vintage "From New Line Cinema" logo and the one for Toei, only Sholder's English-language credits are included. Audio options, on the other hand, are comprehensive with the original seventies English dub, the nineties redub, and the original Japanese track, all in DTS-HD Master Audio 2.0 mono. Although only one English subtitle track is listed in the set-up menu, there are actually English SDH tracks for both dubs and an English subtitle translation of the Japanese track that appear based on the chosen audio track (you cannot toggle between the three audio or subtitle tracks with your remote).

RETURN OF THE STREET FIGHTER was also distributed theatrically by New Line in an R-rated version and to panned-and-scanned VHS and laserdisc by CBS in the early 1980s. New Line and Image did not give quite the same treatment to their widescreen laserdisc, restoring the cut violence but only featuring the original English mono dub which repeated sound effects to cover up jumps in the soundtrack made by the MPAA edits. This version was once again the source of many PD DVDs. Shout!'s 1080p24 MPEG-4 AVC 2.35:1 widescreen Blu-ray is also restored from a 2K scan of the American color reversal internegative and an older HD master of the Japanese original, but the differences are more apparent here with the restored bits looking darker and grainer (it would be tempting to blame the master on the climax but that is just photographed with terribly inadequate lighting). The English dub is included with its repeated sound effects along with the Japanese track, both in DTS-HD Master Audio 2.0 mono with optional English SDH subtitles for the former and English subtitles for the latter. The title sequence is once again in English only, and the body of the feature coming from the American CRI means that people watching the film with the Japanese track must contend with the English intertitles added to the American version.

THE STREET FIGHTER'S LAST REVENGE was distributed by New Line in its R-rated version and to panned-and-scanned VHS through Charles Band's Wizard Video – Band's various video labels handling much of New Line's seventies genre titles including THE LEGEND OF SPIDER FOREST and the earliest editions of THE TEXAS CHAIN SAW MASSACRE – and the New Line/Image Entertainment nineties laserdisc featured only the R-rated version. Shout!'s 1080p24 MPEG-4 AVC 2.35:1 widescreen Blu-ray is sourced from a 2K scan of the American color reversal internegative for the American version (79:16) but New Line apparently did not source an HD master of the Japanese original, and neither did Warner, so Shout! had to recreate the Japanese version (83:23) – which is a separate viewing option here – using the American version and four minutes of standard definition insert footage, including the Japanese title sequence. The English and Japanese tracks are in DTS-HD Master Audio 2.0 mono with English SDH for the American version and English for the Japanese version. While not sterling restorations from the original Japanese materials, they do present the uncut Japanese versions while also showing reverence for the American versions responsible for their popularity.