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1974: a great year for many filmmakers. This was the year Francis Ford Coppola released both “The Godfather: Part II” and “The Conversation”. Mel Brooks hit a prolific streak too with “Young Frankenstein” and “Blazing Saddles”. Over in West Germany, Rainer Werner Fassbinder continued his hot streak by directing Four feature films, including his most beloved work, “Ali: Fear Eats the Soul”. However, it was perhaps Shinichi ‘Sonny' Chiba who had the most iconic and significant year out of that roster, with a career-defining bumper year that contained an impressive amount of diversity for an actor nominally known as a martial arts star. Surrounding himself with the posse from his expert team ‘Japan Action Club' and with the backing of the Toei Company, Ltd., Chiba completed a full trilogy, a two-part crime caper saga, a spin-off to the aforementioned trilogy And a powerful anti-war drama all in one year.

In the climax of Shigehiro Ozawa’s The Street Fighter (1974), “hero” Terry Tsurugi (Shin’ichi “Sonny” Chiba) attempts to rescue a kidnapped heiress by boarding the enemy’s ship and fighting his way through a mob of henchmen. Within the ensuing smorgasbord of pain and grievous injury, two moments stand out. After vaulting over a railing and sticking a crunchy landing on a guy’s back, Terry blocks an incoming swing and plows his fist into the assailant’s stomach. A grimace or yell are to be expected, but the film gives us much more: in slow motion and close-up, we watch as the poor man’s mouth flops open and white-orange bile streams out, still chunky with foodstuffs reversing their prior course. A second thug lunges in, but this reckless charge leads to his ensnarement in an armlock. As Terry snaps the man’s limb not once but three times,...

Seeing that the time-off in between films was working nicely for the franchise, this fourth and final entry in the ‘Sister Street Fighter’ series now arrives with a full year break in between the releases, in a sequel in name-only since it was graced with a new creative team in director Shigehiro Ozawa and writers Isao Matsumoto and Motohiro Torii.

Trying to please her mother, young Kiku Nakagawa continually leaves their successful kimono shop business in order to take martial arts at a local dojo. Her friend at the dojo, Michi becomes concerned about her stepbrother Jim (Ken Wallace) going missing one day, eventually learning that he’s been in the employ of movie studio owner Fujiyama, who’s been using the studio as a base for a series of smuggling operations and the film shoots as a front for the activities. Taking the situation up with police detective Takagi,...

The Sister Street Fighter Special Edition Blu-ray Collector’s Set will be available From Arrow Video March 5th

After the massive success of The Street Fighter, the Toei Company decided to build a new karate series around a female lead, and cast a young actress who had appeared in a cameo role alongside her mentor Sonny Chiba. Still a teenager at the time, Etsuko Shihomi exploded onscreen in her first leading role and created a new character type: a tough fighter who was fierce, fearless, good-hearted, and decidedly non-sexualised, a departure from Toei s typical formula.

In 1974 s Sister Street Fighter, Shihomi is the half-Chinese, half-Japanese Li Koryu, who travels to Yokohama to investigate the disappearance of her brother, an undercover cop. Li discovers a smuggling ring run by a drug lord with his own personal army of deadly fighters, and must penetrate his evil lair with the help of...

Looking back over the year at what films moved and impressed us, it is clear that watching old films is a crucial part of making new films meaningful. Thus, the annual tradition of our end of year poll, which calls upon our writers to pick both a new and an old film: they were challenged to choose a new film they saw in 2013—in theaters or at a festival—and creatively pair it with an old film they also saw in 2013 to create a unique double feature.

All the contributors were given the option to write some text explaining their 2013 fantasy double feature. What's more, each writer was given the option to list more pairings, with or without explanation, as further imaginative film programming we'd be lucky to catch in that perfect world we know doesn't exist but can keep dreaming of every time we go to the movies.

How...

The release of The Raid: Redemption has made us revisit our favourite martial arts flicks and pick five favourite films to suggest for Sound on Sight readers.

Before I give my five picks though, I would like to turn the floor over to a man who has been a friend of mine since grade seven at Oxford Street Junior High School in Halifax. As the line editor for Steve Jackson Games’ “Generic Universal RolePlaying System”, Sean Punch aka Dr. Kromm has been directly or indirectly responsible for a number of source-books on the Martial Arts including writing and editing Gurps Martial Arts.

I asked him earlier this week what films he would put on his list. He named three.

You’re not looking for goofy, cinematic Asian martial arts are you? Because I tend to like stuff that is more realistic, more like what commandos would use. You mentioned Steven Seagal...