Musical Montage: Streets of Fire

Following up 48 Hours, director Walter Hill was basically given carte blanche based on the success of that film and decided to make a “Rock n Roll Fable” that he thought was the perfect movie dreamed up by his teenage self, Streets of Fire. In “another time, another place”, Ellen Aim (Diane Lane) and her band The Attackers are the hottest music act in the world but she’s kidnapped by Raven (Willem Dafoe), leader of the motorcycle gang The Bombers. Ellen’s ex, Tom Cody (Michael Pare) is called back to town by his sister to go rescue Ellen and he’s joined by Billy Fish (Rick Moranis), Ellen’s manager and boyfriend, and McCoy (Amy Madigan) a fellow ex-soldier like Tom. Although it’s not a musical per se, it does feature a ton of music, including it’s most famous song “I Can Dream About You” by Dan Hartman, which hit the Billboard Top 10 and Stevie Nicks, Ry Cooder and Jim Steinman contributed songs as well. Hill was hoping to get the Bruce Springsteen song that inspired the title but Springsteen pulled the rights to use the song after he found out it would be done with new vocals. Check out most of the songs from the soundtrack below.