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Monday, Nov 9, 2009
At least one gang, the Highhats, in black pants, long-sleeved red striped pullover shirts, suspenders, corpse-white makeup, and black top hats, reveals the influence of a source for the film version of "The Warriors" that has gone curiously unmentioned, Herbert Asbury's highly fictionalized book about 19th century New York street thugs, "The Gangs of New York." Much of the time the film seems less inspired by Yurick's novel than by Asbury's book. At times, "The Warriors," the movie, is "Gangs of New York" on amphetamines.
Following Yurick's plot, the Warriors go to the Bronx to the meeting called by the enigmatic leader of the biggest gang in the city. In one of the many classical allusions ingeniously inserted by Hill in the script, the gang leader's name is Cyrus. His plan is simple: The gangs, if they maintain a truce, could unite and outnumber the city's police by five to one. In short, led by a man of vision, they could rule the city. Cyrus (played by an unknown actor named Roger Hill, who died a few years after the movie was shot) enthralls the delegates (many fans of "The Warriors" can recite his entire speech by heart). But Cyrus is murdered for kicks by Luther, the leader of the Rogues, a gang that rides around in a graffiti-strewn hearse. Luther is played by veteran Walter Hill character actor David Patrick Kelly, who looks like the illegitimate son of Cagney's Cody Jarrett in "White Heat."
Kelly's exuberance at the chaos he causes is infectious. "What are you so happy about?" snarls one of the Rogues. "I'm havin' a good time!" Kelly shrieks in reply. Late in the movie, when asked why he did it, Kelly responds with my all-time favorite explanation for psychotic behavior: "No reason. I just like doin' things like that." The Warriors are blamed for the murder, and after dodging police nightsticks in the ensuing riot, must fight their way back to Coney Island, facing annihilation from different gangs at every subway stop. And -- horror of horrors -- all the trains in this movie are locals. Scorned and reviled by the mainstream media upon its release, "The Warriors" picked up such unlikely fans as Pauline Kael (whose rave review in the New Yorker stunned the magazine's more genteel-minded readers) and, a few months after its release, President Ronald Reagan (who phoned the film's lead actor, Michael Beck, to tell him that he had screened the movie at Camp David and enjoyed it immensely).
In the 26 years since its release, the film has evolved into a cult phenomenon, the subject of international Web sites, including the U.K.-based Warriors Movie Site (which, according to its Webmaster, Gareth Jones, gets nearly 50,000 hits a month) and an Italian site dedicated to "I Guerrieri della Notte." DeVorzon's soundtrack has been reissued, and, in addition to the video game, there is a set of action figures. You can even purchase a replica of the Warriors' vest. One of the film's gangs, the Baseball Furies, itself inspired partly by the band Kiss, has spawned a punk band of the same name. In the Diplomats' recent video "Crunk Musik," the group members appear in Furies' face paint.
With the possible exception of "Scarface," no film has been quoted so many times by hip-hop artists, from Ol' Dirty Bastard on "Enter the 36 Chambers" to Craig Mack's "Flava in Your Ear (Remix)," in which Puff Daddy, at the beginning of the clip, reprises the film's best known lines: To the beat of clinking bottles, he imitates the wail of the movie's psychotic Luther: "War-ri-ors, come out to pla-ay. War-ri-ors, come out to plaa-ay!" There are reports that the line has now worked its way into the patter of NBA players; Commissioner David Stern, who recently launched a campaign to clean up the league's image, would probably not be amused to know the source of the chant.
Let's hope Stern doesn't remember some of the editorials from 1979 written by conservative spokesmen, particularly the late Max Rafferty, a nationally syndicated columnist who wrote that "The Warriors" was "violence purely for the sake of violence," citing several reports -- some real, some exaggerated -- inspired by the gang violence in the film.
