The Warriors

[Guest Johnny Dickshot]

Extendo version now available on DVD and coinciding with a popular video game release includes a documentary with interviews with director Walter Hill and actors who played Swan, Mercy, Ajax, Cochise, and Luther, the sound guy and the producer.

The re-cut movie seems to play up Hill's notion that the finished product would be more comic-book like, and includes an opening that draws attention to the Greek legend that inspired the novel (a group of Greek warriors have to travel 1,000 miles to their home at the sea, apparently "bopping" their way back).

The comic motif comes by replacing the "wipe" scene changes with still shots that morph into primary-color comic frames, then a pan along the page to the next frame, which morphs back into live action, sometimes with a comic style freehand captions like MEANWHILE... The "new" version also includes songs the original couldn't acquire the rights to, so the DJ woman plays "Nowhere to Run," while delivering updates to the city's boppers.

Anyway they work hard to make it seem like a real peice of art that was rushed out on the fly on a low budget and had all kinds of location, lighting, action, continuity and script challenges. The character Fox, for instance (the curly-haired Warrior), was played by a jerkoff actor who didn't get along with Hill. Initially the script called for Fox and Mercy to have the romantic connection while Swan gets captured and later escapes. Instead they write Fox out by having a cop throw him in front of a train and Swan hook up with Mercy.

The documentary doesn't explain why they cast such a hack to play Vermin, or why Cowboy basically has no role at all. It's hugely flawed by bad performances like that -- in contrast to Swan, Ajax and Luther who are quite good -- but that unintentional funniness is definitely part of the charm. So of course are gangs dressed up in face paint and baseball uniforms, roller skates and rugby shirts, orange jumpsuits and hockey sticks. Bad dialogue making for memorable lines, etc etc.

Fun, flawed and funny. Very much a unique movie about New York.

[soupcan]

Loved this movie when I saw it way back when.

The scene near the beginning when they have the 'gang conclave' and the leader of the Riffs(?) gets killed was filmed in a playground in Riverside Park in the low mid 90's (as in 'streets' not 'years').

I used to play there as a kid so I thought that was pretty neat.

[Edgy MD]

I remember little. The Orphans were described as something like "strictly low class." They weren't even invited to the summit.

[Vic Sage]

great, garish cartoon of a movie.

structured like a WWII film, where the platoon is caught behind enemy lines and has to fight its way back to the Allied troops.

The film is viceral and kinetic, and its iconic imagery is shot as if with day-glo paint. Though the script is laugable and performances pathetic, the story telling is mythic. The action is well choreographed and the story's payoff works.

Walter Hill made some more good movies before he totally lost his shit.

A Walter Hill filmography to follow...

[Vic Sage]

Walter Hill was a poet of machismo. his films glorified the mythology of the West... from depression-era boxers, to western outlaws, to weekend warriors, to cops and robbers. Influenced by Hollywood's classic westerns and the purplish pulp noirs of the 30s and 40s, Hill's films, at their best, trafficked in mythic archtypes... putting iconic characters in new times and places, while choreographing the mayhem like a minimalist Peckinpah.

At some point along the way, however, he became a 2nd rate hack and never came back.

Early period
Hard Times (1975)
The Driver (1978)
The Warriors (1979)
The Long Riders (1980)
Southern Comfort (1981)
48 Hrs. (1982)

Hill started as a screenwriter in the 60s (the GETAWAY for Peckinpah, amongst others). He finally got to direct with HARD TIMES, with Charles Bronson and James Coburn in a tale of bare-knuckled boxers and hucksters eking out an existence during the Depression. It was a great intro to Hill's world of men in conflict. Bronson is at the height of his powers. DRIVER is a failed existential tale about a getaway driver, but it still had some interesting things on its mind. WARRIORS is his breakthru hit movie, succeeding on critical and commercial terms.It has a dreamlike quality that stays with you. LONG RIDERS was his first actual western (though all of his films can be seen as westerns, despite the trappings of other genres). SOUTHERN COMFORT is a metaphor for our involvement in Vietnam, pitting incompetent national guard reservists in the Lousiana bayous against the local cajuns in a mysterious, pointless war. Then 48 HOURS came and solidified Hill's success as a director of men in conflict, getting a star-making performance from Eddie Murphy that gave Hill's mis-en-scene the necessary humor to leaven his self-seriousness.

There he was, at the pinnacle. Then Hill stepped into the abyss...

Streets of Fire (1984)
Brewster's Millions (1985)
Crossroads (1986)
Extreme Prejudice (1987)
Red Heat (1988)
Johnny Handsome (1989)
Another 48 Hrs. (1990)

During this time, Hill was co-writing and co-producing the ALIEN films, so he was still flourishing. But his directing career was heading south...

STREETS OF FIRE was going to be Hill's apocalyptic Rock-n-Roll fantasy, upping the ante on THE WARRIORS. But it failed catastrophically, on every level. He followed it up with a commercial comedy, cashing in on Richard Pryor with a remake of BREWSTER'S MILLIONS, but unlike Eddie Murphy, Pryor didn't have much to work with and wasn't able to lift the myrthless, elephantine comedy out of mediocrity. Hill returned to more familiar ground with the mythic CROSSROADS, with a guitarist and a battle with the devil, but he seems to have lost his way. His work was now sluggish and dull, unable to tap into its Campbellian material. So he returned to his beloved westerns with EXTREME PREJUDICE, trying to make a modern one with Nick Nolte. But he failed again. Hill zigzagged back to comedic crime-actioners with RED HEAT, JOHNNY HANDSOME and ANOTHER 48 HOURS, but they all failed (to a greater or lesser degree) with the sequel to his most popular film showing how far he'd fallen.

One would think this marked his nadir, but one would be wrong. Worse was yet to come...

Trespass (1992)
Geronimo: An American Legend (1993)
Wild Bill (1995)
Last Man Standing (1996)
Supernova (2000) (as Thomas Lee)
Undisputed (2002)

Hill started doing TV with TALES FROM THE CRYPT episodes. He returned to features with TRESPASS, a vague remake of TREASURE OF THE SIERRA MADRE, that was as stupid a movie as one is likely to see. He then tries 2 more westerns, with WILD BILL even more disastrous than GERONIMO. Then, with LAST MAN STANDING, Hill tried an adaptation of Dashel Hammett's "Red Harvest" (already made as a western in A FISTFUL OF DOLLARS, and a Kurasawa samurai film, YOJIMBO), with mega-star Bruce Willis. He threw in all the essential elements of the 40s-era noir and western genres... but it just doesn't work at all.

He bottomed out with a SF thriller SUPERNOVA that he, ultimately, took his name off of, and is now reduced to doing TV and direct-to-video/cable shlock. His last, UNDISPUTED, is a decent prison/boxing movie, but a pale version of his earlier work. He's also done some work on the excellent HBO series, DEADWOOD.

But "dead wood" is also the current state of his originally promising career.

I'm guessing it was drugs, but who knows how many ways Hollywood can corrupt an artist?

[Edgy MD]

We finally watched this after renting it two or three times. I'll give a thumbs up to the comic-book editing they tacked on, and a big thumbs down to the wanky prologue (read out loud by Hill!). I'd only caught snatches of it in the past. It was more coherent than I thought it'd be.

Ultimate director's cut, my ass.

I agree with Dickshot, in finding some of the performances were pretty polished and engaging. Pretty funny that, in the end, an Oscar-winner and a Tony-winner came out of the cast.

"You see, Warriors?! You see what you get when you go up against the Orphans?!"

[Edgy MD]

The kook who headed up the Rogues was also Luther from 48 Hours, wasn't he?

[Vic Sage]

THE WARRIORS was David Patrick Kelly's first movie. http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0446314/

Kelly was later in Walter Hill's 48 HOURS, too. He's generally a psychotic bad guy. The last i saw him doing his whacked out villain/henchman shtick was in THE CROW, which is (for my money) one of the top 5 comicbook adaptations ever made.

[Guest Johnny Dickshot]

You've got to be good to be cast as a guy named Luther twice.

[Batty31]

Vic Sage wrote: THE WARRIORS was David Patrick Kelly's first movie. http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0446314/ Kelly was later in Walter Hill's 48 HOURS, too. He's generally a psychotic bad guy. The last i saw him doing his whacked out villain/henchman shtick was in THE CROW, which is (for my money) one of the top 5 comicbook adaptations ever made.

The Warriors is one of my all time favorite movies. I was lucky enough to
meet several of the cast members last year at the horror convention.

David Patrick Kelly was amazing in The Crow...and I agree with you about that move, Vic!

The one Eagles song I like is "In the City" since I always remember that song rolling over the credits during the final scene on the beach in The Warriors.

[Vic Sage]

Hill talks about WARRIORS and THE DRIVER in the Village Voice...
http://www.villagevoice.com/2011-10-26/film/night-and-the-city-walter-hill-on-the-warriors-and-the-driver/

[Guest John Cougar Lunchbucket]

I like [crossout]Swan[/crossout] Ajax as Dexter's dad, the real maniac in that show.


Then


Now

Still tightly wound, decisive but foolish.

[Edgy MD]

How is this thread still alive. Excellent.