The video game adaptation Street Fighter – The Decisive Battle from 1994 made neither gamers nor action fans happy. The main person behind it was Die Hard author Steven E. de Souza, which starred then-Haudrauf superstar Jean-Claude Van Damme.
What went wrong? The Filming in Thailand was a complete disaster and Van Damme spiraled completely out of control due to a drug problem.
Action disaster Street Fighter: That’s how bad filming with Jean-Claude Van Damme was
In the film adaptation of the popular Capcom fighting game, Van Damme was cast in the lead role of the American Colonel Guile, whose unit takes on the dictator Bison (Raúl Juliá in his final role) and his henchmen. Filming in Southeast Asia was unbearably hot, the stars were hardly prepared for the fights and stunts and how the main actor behaved, filmmaker De Souza revealed to the Guardian over 20 years later:
I couldn’t talk about it then, but I can now: Jean-Claude was completely coked up. The studio hired a Wrangler to look after him, but unfortunately the Wrangler himself was a bad influence on him. Jean-Claude called in sick so often that I had to look for something else to film in the script; I couldn’t just sit around and wait for him for hours.
Street Fighter first assistant director Keith Heygate had similar things to say about the difficult filming with Van Damme:
He was an interesting man, but he was extremely difficult to work with – There are many stories I can’t tell. One time he was sitting in the trailer and was pretty angry. My assistant couldn’t get him out, I couldn’t get him out, so I had to call producer Chad Rosen. Then he came out with a bottle of champagne. I told him that it was against health and safety rules to drink alcohol on set. From then on he hated me.Jean-Claude van Damme: then and now
The Belgian film star, nicknamed The Muscles from Brussels, got his start in the 80s with action films like Bloodsport – A True Story and became a superstar with titles like Karate Tiger 3 – The Kickboxer and Timecop.
Years later, Van Damme, who enjoyed a career revival with JCVD and Jean-Claude Van Johnson in the 2000s and 2010s, spoke on the show Van Damme – Against the Rest of the World about his problems and said:
Sometimes you will like me and sometimes you will hate me. But what can I do? I’m not perfect… I am extremely bipolar and take medication for it.
We are currently waiting for the official release of his directorial work
Frenchywhich was filmed back in 2008 (also in Thailand) with some of his family members. After a screening in Cannes, he couldn’t find a distributor for it.
A similar article was previously published by our Mexican sister site SensaCine.