Dis­cov­er this ​’80s cult clas­sic that has to be seen to be believed

After grad­u­at­ing from UCLA Film School in the late 1960s, direc­tor James Bryan launched his career at indie cinema’s low­est end – a strange, psy­chotron­ic zone where exploita­tion reigns, sleaze flows and cult emerges. His tra­jec­to­ry and taste is typ­i­fied by films like the pro-mar­i­jua­na polit­i­cal satire The Dirt­i­est Game, the Video Nasty Don’t Go in the Woods and the adult sci-fi Sex Aliens.

Oper­at­ing in the same paracin­e­mat­ic uni­verse, Ger­man-born actress Renee Har­mon debuted on screen in 1975, in Frank Roach’s zom­bie sh(l)ocker Frozen Scream, which she also pro­duced and helped write (and on which Bryan served as uncred­it­ed sound super­vi­sor). That same year, Har­mon starred in Bryan’s Dead­ly Games, although the film would not be released until 1981; straight to video as Lady Street Fighter.

It has no actu­al con­nec­tion either to Son­ny Chiba’s The Street Fight­er or to Kazuhiko Yamaguchi’s spin-off Sis­ter Street Fight­er, but its new title was designed to cash in on the mar­tial arts movie craze sweep­ing Amer­i­ca at the time. Har­mon also pro­duced the film (as Renate Har­mon), and wrote the screen­play, for which she received no cred­it. Like­wise no director’s cred­it appears for Bryan either, whether in his own name or even under one of his reg­u­lar pseu­do­nyms (Mor­ris Deal, Emil High­tow­er). Any­one watch­ing the title sequence might imag­ine that this film had no writer or direc­tor at all. Unchar­i­ta­ble view­ers of the entire fea­ture might reach the same conclusion.

Open­ing ​‘some­where in East Los Ange­les’ with scenes of a woman named Bil­lie being tor­tured to death by men who keep ask­ing her, ​“Where is the dog?”, Lady Street Fight­er is a tale of revenge (set to an upbeat synth remix of themes from The Good, the Bad and the Ugly). The dead woman’s iden­ti­cal twin sis­ter Lin­da Allen (Har­mon) flies in from Europe to find Billie’s killers, and gets caught between a league of killers – the hilar­i­ous­ly named ​‘Assas­sins Incor­po­rat­ed’ – des­per­ate not to have their cov­er blown, and FBI agents keen to close the cut­throat oper­a­tion down. She will join forces with the sim­i­lar­ly con­flict­ed dou­ble agent Rick Pol­lard (Jody McCrea) in tak­ing out the trash.

Try­ing to seduce Rick over the phone, Lin­da lit­er­al­ly licks the receiv­er, in a visu­al ges­ture that makes no sense and is for the ben­e­fit of the view­er more than of her inter­locu­tor (who can­not see her). Then again, in keep­ing with its exploita­tion cre­den­tials. Lady Street Fight­er is full of gra­tu­itous nudi­ty and erot­ic sug­ges­tion, none of it remote­ly sexy. As she is beat­en and bru­talised in the open­ing sequence, Bil­lie is top­less through­out, while lat­er scenes are set in a tit­ty bar and at a BDSM par­ty, and tough-as-nails Lin­da keeps hav­ing show­ers, and is shown (twice!) grotesque­ly lick­ing and fel­lat­ing a cel­ery stalk.

Along the way there are also car chas­es, shootouts, rooftop dash­es and karate fights, all crammed into one hour and 13 min­utes of non-stop, not always inco­her­ent, sub-Bond spy action. The act­ing and dia­logue are tru­ly ter­ri­ble – and much of the lat­ter is ren­dered impen­e­tra­ble any­way by Harmon’s heav­i­ly accent­ed deliv­ery. The real star here is the (sim­i­lar­ly uncred­it­ed) edi­tor Eric Jenk­ins – also an assist­ing cam­era­man – who chops up the action, con­stant­ly cut­ting with­in and between scenes to a wild­ly deliri­ous effect that might be described as art­ful, and that always keeps the view­er engaged even when the play­ers do not.

Har­mon and Bryan would work togeth­er again on the nev­er-released sequel Revenge of Lady Street Fight­er – includ­ed in this Blu-ray set – as well as on the metacin­e­mat­ic com­e­dy Boo­gievi­sion, slash­er sequel-in-title-only The Exe­cu­tion­er, Part II, bik­er siege B‑movie Hell Rid­ers, super­nat­ur­al action­er Run Coy­ote Run, and hotel ghost sto­ry Jun­gle Trap. It was a pecu­liar col­lab­o­ra­tion that yield­ed some true out­sider odd­i­ties, per­fect­ly illus­trat­ed by the adher­ence of Lady Street Fight­er to the rhymes more than to the rea­sons of genre cin­e­ma. Now unleashed from the Amer­i­can Genre Film Archive, this eccen­tric UFO is avail­able for the first time in the UK. You will not quite believe – let alone under­stand – what you are watching.

Lady Street Fight­er is released on Blu-ray and dig­i­tal by 101 Films on 10 January.