Can You Dig It?
I recently attended a packed midnight showing of The Warriors (1979). Hadn't seen it in a theatre in a long time. Fascinating.
The film, about a gang stuck in the Bronx, trying to get back home to Coney Island, was directed by Walter Hill and written by Hill and David Shaber. Its roots go way back--it's an adaptation of a Sol Yurick novel, but the novel itself was based on Xenophon's Anabasis, a true story of Greek soldiers stuck behind enemy lines.
In the movie, the Warriors are falsely accused of assassinating top gang leader Cyrus. From that point, they must use their wits and fighting skills to get past ever-more dangerous gangs. They don't all make it.
What I found fascinating was, compared to what you see today, the film, though tense, is told at an almost leisurely pace. At its time it was considered violent, but the big action scenes don't feature major explosions, or outrageous stunts (by today's standards), and happen rather quickly. Hill gives the film room to breathe. The man most responsible for changing expectations, the man who created the explosion-every-ten-minutes type of action film, Joel Silver, happens to be The Warriors' associate producer.
The film was highly controversial when released. There was serious violence at some theatres--people were killed. After that, Paramount pulled back on its promotion and some places wouldn't book it. A few legislators even tried to ban it. I guess they didn't like the vision of gangs taking over New York City. You might think controversy sells, but all this probably hurt the film--it wasn't the major hit many were predicting.
The critics didn't really go for it. They didn't see the style or poetry, or if they did, didn't like the theme. A few loved it, such as Pauline Kael (a Hill fan), who went nuts in The New Yorker.
The dialogue isn't much, but there's some humor and a fair amount of humanity. Even a little time for romance. Michael Beck is Swan, the leader. Just as the film underperformed, he didn't go on to the big career some were expecting.
All the Warriors have their own characters and are easy enough to tell apart. (It helps they're one of those Hollywood mixed race gangs.) James Remar probably registers the most, as the tough guy who challenges Beck for leadership. I'd also forgotten Mercedes Ruehl has a small part as the woman on the bench.
The most memorable character is Detroiter David Patrick Kelly's Luther, the real killer. The Warriors was his film debut. Since then, he's best known for playing psychos. It doesn't really matter what else he does, he'll always be remembered for the most famous line in the film, which was improvised on the set:
posted by LAGuy @ 12:02 AM
4 Comments:
As I recall, the violence in theaters had much more to do with how the film was promoted than with the actual content. I read something some time ago (maybe back in 1979) that a lot of the actual violence happened when gang members or wannabes, stoked for confrontation showed up in the ticket lines to jostle with others similarly inclined.
I saw it when it came and couple of times on cable in the last 30 years. The film contained lots of menace but I think only 2 deaths (Cyrus and and wimpy hairy Warrior who falls in front of a subway train). It may have have great antecedents in classical literature but I though it came off as a paean to moody violent teenagers whose silence & incoherence was meant to suggest depth. I thought it could have been way more fun.
You mention David Patrick Kelly's great creepy character who was great but I also liked the various subcultures represented by the various gangs- the hopeless Orphans who don't get invited to the big powwow, the sexual & dangerous girl gang the Lizzies ("the chicks are loaded"), the Baseball Furies New York Yankees and wore Godspell-like facepaint and the uber-gang (Gramercy Riffs?) who I think were sort of meant to reference the Crips or Bloods and I think they choreography of movement are later echoed in Michael Jackson's "Beat It" (and of course Weird Al's "Eat It" too)
NEG
According to imdb, its "the chicks are packed!"
The violence in the theatres never has anything to do with what's on the screen. It's almost always about the expectations of the people there, especially those who come "packed."
In the neat little imdb note section, they in fact indicated that the marketing (picture of a huge shadowed crowd of menacing gangbangers with the tag line- they outnumber the cops 5 to 1, they could take over New York) was blamed for inciting the theater violence and that official calls for the film's banning were based upon the ad alone. They toned down the ad and then the film didn't do well- interesting lesson in marketing but I'm not sure what it is. The early ads were so good, they scared away the larger audience and the revised oned down ones were so dull they didn't encourage anyone else to come.
In Max Barry's Jennifer Government- in a dystopia run by commercial types, sneakers are marketed by having gang-related killings occur a shoe stores so that the product has more cool street cred with rich young suburbanites who will buy them.
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