“The Warriors” is a
film I can remember primary kids talking about in the playground back
in 1983, the sort of kids who’s parents weren’t too bothered
about allowing them to watch the dreaded “Video Nasties” or their
ilk. My memory might be playing tricks, but I reckon there were a
couple of rough kids who even had leather waistcoats to match the
films titular heroes.
I can’t believe it has
taken me so long to get around to watching it. Especially given that
the movie is full of classical allusions; characters called “Cyrus”
and “Cleon” and a storyline adapted from Xenophon’s “Anabasis”,
the true story of how that Greek historian and mercenary managed to
extricate himself and 10,000 others from way behind enemy lines
during the various Persian conflicts of the 5th century
BC.
Right from the opening
credits, the film is a hoot.
We start with some late
70s synth music, sounding vaguely like that used in “The
Equalizer”, backing a montage of various gangs heading for a mass
meeting in The Bronx. We see The Warriors, a mixed race gang of bare
chested waistcoat wearers who look like they’ve just wandered out
of rehearsals for a Village People video, setting out from Coney
Island, intercut with the other gangs heading down on the New York
subway, the graffitied and grimy setting for much of the film.
Some of these other gangs
make The Warriors look like a triumph of machismo. There are a bunch
of purple velour clad disco gousters, East Asian guys in Viet Cong
drag and funny conical hats, the “Electric Eiliminators” and
resembling tattooed gay sailor skinheads crossed with straight-edge
Minor Threat fans, the Turnbull ACs.
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| Later research indicates the mime artists are called "The Hi Hats" |
All these pale, however,
to the Marcel Marceau looking white faced bowler hat wearing group of
mime artist gangbangers who must have terrified the subway commuters
of NY out of their minds with their no doubt silent demands for money
with menaces. It is impossible to see them without a vocalised
chuckle, but remember that director Walter Hill had an awful lot of
gangs to differentiate and characterise for the camera. They are
still funny though.
Of course, the moot all
goes wrong, and some evilly sneering mass of dirty hair shoots the
charismatic Cyrus, leader of the head gang “The Gramercy Riffs”
(Mirror shades, martial arts wear). Naturally The Warriors are framed
for the murder for turf war ends, and they have to battle their way
through twenty miles of hostile territory, their movements relayed by
a late night female soul DJ who we only ever see the glossily painted
mouth of.
Their journey is a modern
day odyssey through the Underworld, a frantic run through cemeteries,
urban deprivation and a NY subway who’s rattling, spray tagged
trains are a mechanised character in their own right. On their way
they encounter minor gang The Orphans, seemingly led by David
Schwimmer, pick up a female follower for the writers to lob
misogynistic dialogue at (“You may as well have a mattress strapped
to your back”), dodge the cops, beat up the hysterical “Baseball
Furies” with their theatrically painted faces and New York Yankees
attire and in another nod to Neanderthal 1979 values, fall into a
trap set by Runways look-alikes and cliché tough girl dykes
“The Lizzies”.
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| A Baseball Fury. As seen in the Sensational Alex Harvey Band |
At all stages there is
choreographed, curiously non fatal violence, all slow motion camp
kicks and Rocky type punches that have the power to launch their
targets 10 feet through the air. There is a particularly memorable
rumble in the world’s grubbiest public lavatory, where doors
explode off their hinges as a bunch of roller skating dungaree
wearers crash through them.
Sadly, there is no
screwdriver fight with the mime artists.
The film ought to be too
silly for words, and in many ways it is, but it is still a gripping
watch. We never find out anything much the lives of these underclass
pussy obsessed ruffians, but we can tell that it is a tough one,
forged in crumbling tenements a million miles from Broadway and
Tribeca. No art school CBGBs punks here, these are just uneducated,
brutal men (and one woman. One!) struggling to survive in a New York
that at the time was bankrupt. In their way.s
The story is simple, but
it works. For if it gripped 2500 years ago, it will still grip now.
Copyright Bloody Mulberry 26.03.14s
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