If you remember the 1990s with great clarity, you might remember the action movie Street Fighter, starring a certain Jean-Claude van Damme.

Nobody is calling it a cinematic work of art, but to some, it remains a “cringeworthy masterpiece”.

Based on the popular video game, it consists mainly of fighting scenes and one-liners, which is probably about as much dialogue as the actor could remember.

According to director Steven de Souza, Van Damme was high as a kite during the filming. Here’s VICE:

…de Souza revealed in an oral history of Street Fighter that his star was pretty much always “coked out of his mind.” Jean-Claude Van Damme starred as the all-American Colonel Guile—which didn’t really make sense considering he’s super Belgian—but he was the biggest action star around back then, and apparently Street Fighter had to have him. At the time he was struggling with a pretty serious cocaine addiction, snorting an estimated $10,000 worth of coke a day, and it allegedly made filming a nightmare…

“The studio had hired a wrangler to take care of him, but unfortunately the wrangler himself was a bad influence. Jean-Claude was calling in sick so much I had to keep looking through the script to find something else to film; I couldn’t just sit around for hours waiting for him. On two occasions, the producers allowed him to go to Hong Kong, and both occasions he came back late—on Mondays he just wasn’t there at all.”

With the benefit of hindsight, let’s revisit the film’s trailer:

Despite being panned by critics, Street Fighter made a solid $105 million at the box office, managing to deal with JC’s cocaine habit and a number of other potential roadblocks:

…they were filming in Thailand during talk of what an assistant director described as a “possible coup.” They’d also blown a huge chunk of the film’s budget on hiring Van Damme and Raúl Juliá—who honestly crushed it as the villain, General Bison—which meant they didn’t have the time or money to train everyone properly before their fight scenes. And the whole thing was shot out of sequence, making it hard for a lot of people on set to know what was going on.

Good thing nobody was watching it for the dialogue.

At least Van Damme seems to have developed a sense of perspective about being past his wildest days. Check out the trailer for Jean-Claude Van Johnson for proof:

[source:vice]