“Nowhere to run to baby,
Got nowhere to hide…”
Here’s another cult classic from the seventies—people in weird costumes skulking around in the night, having to roam the shadows of a slightly surreal city? Yeah, I’ll call it appropriate for the season. Let’s come out and play with The Warriors, and see if we can still dig it!
This one came to us from Walter Hill, based on a 60s novel by Sol Yurick. The novel by most accounts was a more serious look from the perspective of big city gangs, though the movie went for a rather more stylized approach. Here we follow the titular gang as they travel up from their hangout on Coney Island to a major gathering of fellow ne’er do wells deep in the Bronx, with a popular underground leader Cyrus (Roger Hill) hoping to unite them all. Cyrus gets killed, the Warriors take the heat, and it’s down to them to travel through New York back home—a simple enough premise, and one done pretty well.
The fairly sympathetic look at these young people forced into this life was pretty new at the time, and it did strike a chord with some disaffected people with its ideas of them having to stick together to survive in an urban hellscape lacking any authority willing to help them. What makes The Warriors work the most is that balance between the serious and the over the top—with gangs themed around baseball players, all-women, and more, yet it’s all taken with enough sincerity that hey you still buy it.
At the same time, it was close enough to reality for some at the time—in a period where yeah, there were actually gangs with fanciful names swanning around New York City, some with their own uniforms and all. Art reflects reality and all that, and all this did was take that reality and add a little spin on it—and everyone involved, from Michael Beck to David Harris, gives it their all.
And as a result, yeah, most people watching will want to see how many Warriors make it all home—and of course, when they do get there, it still ain’t over. It all works because it’s over the top enough to be interesting, but still down to earth to feel relatable, if that makes any sense.
Walter Hill went on a few years later to make Streets of Fire, which definitely leaned more into the over the top comic book feel of things, with lots of hammy dialogue and a lot more explosions—it’s cheesy fun but not considered quite a classic like this one. Still, it definitely might just make you feel like taking a few extra looks the next time you make you way home through streets in the dead of night…
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