With title cards reading “A Rock & Roll Fable” and then “Another Time, Another Place,” singer Ellen Aim (Diane Lane) and her band The Attackers perform a gig in a urban center referred to only as “the Richmond District.” A motorcycle gang led by Raven Shaddock (Willem Dafoe) let her get through one song before bum rushing the show and kidnapping the star.

War hero and “juvenile delinquent” Tom Cody (Michael Pare) is wired by his sister Reva (Debra Van Valkenburgh), who works in the local diner, to come home. Cody arrives in time to knock sense into some turkeys making trouble in the diner, taking a butterfly knife and a chopped up ‘51 Mercury for his trouble.

Cody befriends a fellow ex-soldier, a motorhead played by Amy Madigan, and though Ellen Aim is the ex-flame he never got over, asks for $10,000 from her weasel manager Billy Fish (Rick Moranis) to venture into “the Battery District” to rescue her.

Directed by Walter Hill, from a screenplay by Hill & Larry Gross, Streets of Fire was Universal Pictures’ intended big event for the summer of ‘84. An ambitious blend of action and MTV rock musical, it likely confused fans of both, and bombed amid competition from better movies. Two proposed sequels – The Far City and The Return of Tom Cody – never got off the ground, but the film has retained a certain cult aura with kids of the ’80s.

The world in this rock n’ roll comic book might be described as a post-World War II dystopia if Germany had won, but musically and technologically, America was in the 1980s already. The cars reflect the ’50s, the hairstyles the ’80s, and a motorcycle gang run the streets like an AIP version of the Wild West.

I appreciate what the filmmakers were going for here, but don’t think any of it worked. Hill & Gross, riding high with the box office success of 48 HRS., were given an instant green light by the studio for a script they banged out in a couple of days. And man, does that show.

While Hill successfully mined comic books for The Warriors , Streets of Fire aspired to full blown cartoon. There isn’t one conversation in the movie, not one natural or unforced moment. Everyone talks in one-liners, like “Well, it looks like I finally ran into someone who likes to play as rough as I do!”, or responds with wit like “Yeah, this looks like your lucky night.” That looks great in a comic book panel, but put it in an actor’s mouth, and it sounds like garbage.

Neither the filmmakers nor Diane Lane had any idea who Ellen Aim was supposed to be, so anything having to do with her character, or her status as a rock icon, feels completely phony. Kids know the real deal when they see it, and in the summer of ‘84, it was all about Prince, starring in and composing the music for Purple Rain.

Jimmy Iovine produced the soundtrack, and while Tom Petty, Stevie Nicks and Jim Steinman were brought in to write some of the songs, the music is mostly forgettable. Dan Hartman became a one-hit wonder with “I Can Dream About You”, but Ellen Aim’s numbers – sung by Holly Sherwood – are pure ’80s cheese by way of Bonnie Tyler. Some of you can live with that. I was looking for the remote.

The “Walter Hill” moments are money. The opening smackdown – where Cody swipes a punk’s butterfly knife, slaps him, hands him the knife back and tells him to try again – is terrific. The scene where Pare goes to a garage of “specialty items” and picks up a Winchester pump action rifle and a .50 caliber chrome plated six shooter is awesome, while the two big action sequences, though silly, are well edited. Hill also brought in Ry Cooder at the eleventh hour to perform a blues guitar score that’s bad ass.

The film is also notable for giving us first glimpses of Willem Dafoe, Bill Paxton (as the dickweed bartender Clyde), and Robert Townsend, Grand Bush & Mykelti Williamson as the three background members of a doo-wop quartet.

This is a total love it or leave it proposition, and while I went back to wanting to enjoy it, it’s pretty bad.