Why is this movie so appealing?

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There are movies that just grab you, sometimes for reasons hard to define. For me, this is one of them. It is very much a Western, think Clint Eastwood in Pale Rider. The music, which I was fortunately able to enjoy before I lost my hearing, was powerful, moving stuff. I think Michael Pare did his best work in Eddie and the Cruisers and SOF, and am sorry he did not appear to have the range to do more. And Diane Lane was, to me, at her most gorgeous in this film. Moranis and Dafoe and Madigan were all great too. Again, this was a FABLE. Clearly labeled as such. And to me, overwhelmingly successful as that. I never tire of watching it, even though now it is with subtitles. And that final scene is one of the all time barn-burners. Just magnificent.

The simplest answer is that it was one of those movies that captured the moment of the times when it came out. I was in my 20s back in the mid 1980s. The clubs had mostly either the spandex, neon colors, spiked hair, Prince's "Purple Rain" look. Or a mixed/updated/leather/punk 1950s look. Mainly depended which club you hung around. I first saw the movie on this new-fangled pay channel called "H-B-O," and watch it every time it comes on to bring back the memories1

Because it's a unique movie that makes you wonder what time period it's set in. The beginning says that it happens in another time and another place.

Michael Pare, Diane Lane, Willem Dafoe, Amy Madigan, and Rick Moranis were convincing in their roles.

Although Diane Lane was lip syncing, she put so much emotion in the music performances.

I like how the dancer named Marin (who did most of the dancing in "Flashdance") got to do a brief dance during the club scene.

The first and last songs were my favorite ones on this soundtrack. I also love "I Can Dream About You." The first song "Going Nowhere Fast" was the song that my favorite aerobics instructor would sometimes play.

The soundtrack. Like others I bought the film on VHS, I bought the soundtrack on cassette, then CD, now I want the film on DVD. I remember the big deal they made about this movie when it came out. I thought it would do better at the box office but I'll always love it because of the great music. the wonderful sets and costumes. Along with a diverse casts. I had a video copy of the interviews some of the cast did while making the film. The McCoy character was supposed to be male but Amy Madigan asks if she could audition for it and Walter Hill let her. I think that change made the film better.

Just for the record, I'm not a Dude, I'm a Dudette!

Not to be too terribly shallow, but I wanted every girl to look like Diane Lane did in this movie. I still do.

I agree with the general tenor of the replies: though it wasn't as deep a coming-of-age movie as The Breakfast Club, a notable contemporary, it still hits deep with we who were coming of age at that time. It's been years since I've seen it, but the soundtrack is effin' EPIC, though a number of the tunes owe their style to earlier eras. The look is timeless as well. Very 1950s, but they don't hit you over the head with it, some of the music is very '80s, and the dark, moody atmosphere keeps it from being pigeon-holed to one time or another. As the tagline says, it's a rock 'n roll fable, so it works like that, but it does owe some of its structure to classic westerns. Lots of bits and pieces to it, but it was very well assembled by folks who cared enough to make it great. A cult classic, to be sure, but with great emphasis on "classic!"

I saw this movie when I was fourteen at a late showing on a Friday night. I still remember walking out of the theatre, it had been raining all day and finally stopped, there was a full moon out and the streets had that black glistening sheen to them after a long spell of rain with the light reflecting off. It felt like I was still in that world that Streets of Fire created for me for a minute or two.

Being the age I was, the film re-enforced all my youthful imaginations on what romance meant, the power of music in a person's life, what manhood meant, all very fantastical but it had such a powerful effect, evoked such powerful emotions...I was completed engrossed the whole way through the way I would be by a good music video at the time. My "suspension of disbelief" was complete.

The music played a huge role for me as well, I was too young to have had much exposure to any of Steinman's music before other than Total Eclipse of the Heart, so those booming Wagnerian anthems touched and stroked a flame of youthful rebellion and an optimism and innocence that a person only has at that tender age of idealized love, romance, heroism, etc. At 44, I still get that same old stirring watching this film...it let's me remember thirty years on what it was to be young, and it's a helluva nice place to go back and visit after having thirty years of the realities of life disillusion those youthful ideals we all once had.

I've introduced the movie to people over the years who never saw it when they were young, and they think it's terrible. Maybe this is one of those that you had to experience when you still had a bright-eyed optimism to really be a fan of; if at first exposure you are already too jaded by life, it won't connect with you the way it has with so many dreamers; ; it was like an old western if written by the Grimm Brother's in some alternate Rock 'n' Roll reality where the men were men, the women were women, and you settled your problems with sledge hammers and kissing. Ah, to be 14 again.