Retro Spectacles closes out its inaugural YANST (You Ain’t Never See This) pairing with Mitcz’s pick, Walter Hill’s 1984 “rock & roll fable” Streets of Fire. What begins like a lost cult classic in the making quickly turns into something stranger: a movie with an incredible soundtrack, striking imagery, and enormous ambition that never quite becomes the film its opening promises.

Michael Paré stars as Tom Cody, a mercenary who returns home to rescue his ex-girlfriend, rock singer Ellen Aim, played by Diane Lane, after she is kidnapped by Willem Dafoe’s biker-gang leader Raven Shaddock. Rick Moranis, Amy Madigan, and a young Bill Paxton round out a movie that mixes 1950s greaser iconography, 1980s music-video energy, comic-book fantasy, and a soundtrack that produced the hit “I Can Dream About You.”

Mitcz and Teddy get into the killer soundtrack, Walter Hill’s abandoned trilogy plans, the casting of Tom Cody, the infamous pickaxe showdown, and the film’s influence on games like Double Dragon and Final Fight.

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