Strangely, there are almost no guns, which means, as it did in "The Road Warrior," that the gangs must come up with more ingenious weapons with which to create mayhem. And the unstated reason there are no guns points to the biggest difference between the real New York of 1979 and the New York of "The Warriors": In the latter there are no drugs. That seems like a comforting thought until you realize that this is a world capable of nurturing such characters without the use of artificial stimulants. In one of the many weird visual details that dot the film, a pinball machine stands in a subway station. In the real Brooklyn, that pinball machine would stand as much chance of surviving a night as "The Warriors" had of winning an Academy Award.

There's something else about the film that's quickly apparent to first-time viewers. Frightening as the Warriors' world is, the violence isn't a fraction as graphic as even routine teen-action movies of the present day. In fact, the entire movie doesn't contain as much graphic violence as the first 15 minutes of Rockstar's "Warriors" video game, which places the film's characters in new scenarios.

The most puzzling aspect of "The Warriors" is why none of its actors ever attained stardom. James Remar (as ultra-macho Ajax) and David Patrick Kelly became familiar faces in character parts (both were featured in Hill's Nick Nolte-Eddie Murphy vehicle, "48 Hours"). Lynne Thigpen, the underground deejay who tips off the various gangs to the Warriors' progress, died two years ago after a successful career on stage and film, and as one of the stars of the TV show "Where in the World Is Carmen Sandiego?" Marcelino Sanchez, who played Rembrandt, died of cancer in 1986. And Tom McKitterick, who played Cowboy, has never been tracked down even by the film's ardent fans. The only actor in "The Warriors" to reach something approaching fame is Mercedes Ruehl, who appeared in a short but effective bit as a plainclothes policewoman.

But the leads, Michael Beck as the War Chief, Swan, and Deborah Van Valkenburgh as Merci, a street girl who takes up with the Warriors, should have been stars. Van Valkenburgh, who bore a striking resemblance to Angelina Jolie, was a New York stage actress when she was cast in "The Warriors" and later costarred with Ted Knight on a TV sitcom, "Too Close for Comfort." Beck, as chiseled and enigmatic as a young Viggo Mortensen, had the misfortune to be cast, in his next film, with Olivia Newton John in the musical "Xanadu" and afterward appeared mostly in television roles. The only explanation I can offer for the failure of Beck and Van Valkenburgh to land more starring parts is the stigma that was attached to the film for years after its release.

Next year, "The Warriors'" strange story will get another chapter with Tony Scott's new film version set in Los Angeles (how Scott can pull it off without subways will be interesting to see). Will the new film be greeted with the same horror and derision as the original? Or will a legion of critics step forward and denounce the remake in the name of a film that had so few champions on its release? We'll see. But, meanwhile, it's reassuring to find that on watching it again after all these years "The Warriors" remains a bona fide guilty pleasure, still not everyone's cup of tea.

There are those who will simply never get it. For instance, Sol Yurick, who, in the introduction to the reprint of his novel, writes that, "on the whole, the movie was trashy, although beautifully filmed." Correct. But, "I looked for my novel on the screen. I found a skeleton of it intact. Its revolutionary content was missing."

"What is astonishing to me," he says, "is the durability of the movie ... I have to admit that I didn't and still don't understand the phenomenon ... 'The Warriors' is not the best of my books." The appeal of the film, I think, is that it dumps the sociopolitical baggage of the lives of street gangs and the conditions that produce them. Yurick meant for the title of his book to be taken ironically; Hill's movie takes the title literally. Hill really has no interest in the psychology of street gangs (and what psychologist could explain Kelly's Luther?). The movie tells you what the kid reading the Classics Illustrated comic understood even if his creator didn't, namely, that anyone's life, no matter how squalid, can include an element of heroism.

Recent Stories