Weirdhouse Cinema Rewind: The Warriors

In this classic episode of Weirdhouse Cinema, Rob and Joe take a street gang odyssey across New York City with 1979’s “The Warriors.” (originally published 8/23/2024)

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:04):
Hey, welcome to Weird House Cinema. Rewind it. This is
Rob Lamb.

Speaker 2 (00:08):
And this is Joe McCormick. And today we're bringing you
an older episode of Weird House Cinema. This one originally
published on August twenty third, twenty twenty four. It's our
feature on the Warriors.

Speaker 1 (00:19):
Yeah, this one's a lot of fun. I mean, this
movie is a lot of fun. And I remember this
one being a blast to talk about.

Speaker 3 (00:28):
Welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind, a production of iHeartRadio.

Speaker 1 (00:38):
Hey you, welcome to Weird House Cinema.

Speaker 2 (00:41):
This is Rob Lamb and this is Joe McCormick.

Speaker 1 (00:44):
And if you look at the various genres that we
cover here on Weird House Cinema, obviously there's a lot
of science fiction. There's a lot of horror, there's a
lot of fantasy. But obviously weird films don't necessarily need
space aliens or wizards or ghosts. Of our previous selections
reflect this. Three of them released in the same year

(01:04):
of nineteen sixty eight, Head, which you covered with Seth Danger,
Diabolic and Black Lizard, so a musical adventure, and two
stylized super criminal movies. A fourth nineteen sixty five faster.
Pussycat Kill Kill is also a crime movie, basically in
the exploitation genre, but it's also packed full of weirdness.

(01:26):
And so we're back with a fifth selection today that
contains no true speculative element. I mean, it's possibly set
in the future, but if so, the very near future,
it's you could make a case that this is an
alternate reality. There's a certain amount of surreal substance going
on with this film, but overall, yeah, no aliens, no wizards,

(01:47):
no ghost It concerns criminals, and it certainly stands tall
as a weird cult movie. It's Walter Hill's The Warriors
from nineteen seventy nine.

Speaker 2 (01:56):
I don't know how you're saying that it contains no
speculative element. And it has street gangs that are in
baseball uniforms with face paint.

Speaker 1 (02:04):
I mean that could happen. There's nothing in this film
that could not technically happen or have happened. But yeah,
it makes all of these and it's not just visual
choices that are strained. It's not like they had just
like a straightforward street crime plot and then just decided
to color up and gussie up the costumes there is

(02:27):
we'll get into. There are other aspects of the warriors
that make it stand out as well.

Speaker 2 (02:32):
That's true, But I think it is just straightforwardly fair
to say that this movie is set in an alternate universe.
The gangs of this movie are just much more theatrical
and circus like than any gangs I'm aware of in reality,
at least in the modern world.

Speaker 1 (02:49):
Yeah, And like, I always feel like this movie seems
to occupy the same cinematic universe as the nineteen seventy
three adaptation of the musical god Spell, you know, like
it it doesn't feel like it is it is actually
our reality. It's somewhere a little bit to the left,
a little bit to the right, Spock in a goatee territory.

Speaker 2 (03:10):
Well, you know, another movie it kind of reminds me
of in this regard is another Walter Hill movie, which
is Streets of Fire, a film set that has an
urban setting. It has mostly like it doesn't really have
magic or like science fiction technology in it, but still
it feels like a fantasy. It doesn't feel like the

(03:31):
real world, and the gangs in it and the heroes
in it are all just kind of mythical in a way.

Speaker 1 (03:38):
Yeah, yeah, I know, I know what you're talking about. Like,
similar things are often said about I don't know, Court
McCarthy comes to mind. You know, so many of most
of his books are not dealing with any kind of
speculative elopment. They're like to the you know, the average eye,
like straightforward Westerns, for example, but the way that he
writes them and the way that he approaches them it

(03:58):
ends up taking on all of these often overt mythical connotations.
So anyway, yeah, The Warriors. I was drawn to this
one in part, I think because I was like, maybe
we need a palate cleanser. You know, we've been doing
a lot of fantasy, a lot of sci fi. It's like,
take it down a little bit. And also I realized
we hadn't covered a seventies of film in several weeks,

(04:19):
and I'm like, okay, we need something from the nineteen seventies.
And then also, it's been rather hot recently. We were
kind of back into a cool spell now, but it's
been it's been kind of a hot summer of late,
and this is a movie that always screams summer in
the city. To me, it's just a very hot and
sweaty film. Most of the characters seem like they have

(04:39):
just been sweating for days, that patina of sweat on
them and most of the scenes. It's a grungey seventies
New York City film. And yeah, yeah, it's just as
part of the vibe. It's just this is a good
summer movie. In my opinion.

Speaker 2 (04:54):
I was quite surprised to hear you describe it as
a cleanser in any way, because this film is de
I did lye dirty.

Speaker 4 (05:01):
It needs a shower, it is.

Speaker 1 (05:03):
Yeah. It is also interesting in that I was kind
of looking for a quick breather from a lot of
the alien related content that I've been picking for Weird
House and for other portions of the podcast stream, and
of course this one ends up having a number of
alien and aliens connections as well, which we'll get into now.

(05:24):
It's interesting. I was reading a little bit about the
production and the release so the Warriors of the movie
about street gangs, and even though it deals with them
in a manner that again feels very rather removed from reality,
it's worth noting that street gangs were an issue during
the filming and the release of the movie, so gangs
obviously have been a real issue around the world throughout
time and in urban and rural settings. So you know,

(05:47):
the film would seem to be removed enough from reality
to avoid controversy upon release, at least from our vantage point,
because especially as the decades set in, I think it
also takes on this additional air of otherness as we
have not only like the weirdness applied to the different
gangs in the way they're dressed, but also we're just
further and further from from the late nineteen seventies. But yeah,

(06:10):
at the time that they released it, apparently there were
various controversies. There were like gangs allegedly fighting in the theaters,
like the street gangs loved it. People who didn't like
the street gangs were very critical of the movie for
for highlighting street gang violence.

Speaker 2 (06:24):
The Warriors is going to make people join gangs?

Speaker 4 (06:26):
I don't know.

Speaker 1 (06:27):
I mean it was a real concern at the time.
I was reading in the Psychotronic video. Guy Michael Weldon,
who I believe at the time he wrote this was
a New Yorker before he became a Georgian like me.
He has a record store in Augusta now Psychotronic Records,
so if anyone's on a road trip through Augusta, that's
an interesting place to stop. But anyway, he pointed out

(06:49):
that it got a lot of negative buzz on release
that he qualifies as like good negative buzz, so like ultimately,
you know, uplifted the film and I guess helped cement
its cult status. And he does point out that this
is not a film that is true to life regarding
life in New York City, but he does point out
accurately that it makes use of a lot of great

(07:10):
New York City locations. I mean, this is definitely a
movie filmed in New York and even if you're used
to today's New York City, you feel at home in
this film.

Speaker 2 (07:22):
I know what you mean. There is something about the
use of New York locations in this movie. And I'm
not even in New Yorker myself. I've only been there
a few times. But something about it feels very familiar
and cozy to see all these shots in and references
to real places throughout New York, especially throughout the Bronx

(07:43):
and Manhattan and then Coney Island at the beginning in
the end, that it feels really cozy and familiar, and
at the same time, the setting, like the plot context
in which we encounter these locations is not at all familiar.
It's hostile territory where our main characters are in extreme danger,

(08:06):
but it just feels like it makes you want to
settle in with a cup of tea or something.

Speaker 4 (08:10):
Do you know what I'm talking about?

Speaker 1 (08:12):
Yeah, yeah, Yeah, it is weird how a film that
is you could, I guess roughly catalog in the sort
of the hell city world, you know, you know, sort
of like the post apocalyptic New York but without the apocalypse,
or more of like a slow apocalypse, and yet it
still feels like lovingly New York City in some strange way,

(08:32):
even though most of the scenes are about you know,
street gang members running from cops or karate kicking a cop,
or fighting each other as they flee in and out
of different subway stops.

Speaker 2 (08:45):
Yeah, if you're not familiar with the terminology we've used before,
the hell city cliche in the movies is that it
was especially common in movies of say the seventies through
the nineties early nineties that would depict American cities, especially
New York City. You know, it would take the worst
components of urban poverty or decay or something, and then

(09:08):
take it to an almost fantasy level, so you would
have these cities depicted as places full of flaming garbage
cans and trash blowing in the wind, and around every
corner where there was somebody with a knife.

Speaker 1 (09:19):
Yeah. Escape from New York is in many ways like
the prime example of this in which Manhattan has been
depopulated of everything, but criminals and extra criminals have been
added to establish a penal colony. So this movie doesn't
inspire to that level of hell city.

Speaker 2 (09:35):
New York does still feel like lived in in this movie.

Speaker 1 (09:38):
Yeah, like we have. It doesn't go to great pains
to establish this, but they did make sure that we
have the various shots where we see bystanders who seem
to be just normal folk. There is enough texture to
remind us that this is a place where normal people live.
This is just what happens in the contested street environment,
particularly at night.

Speaker 2 (09:59):
Now, one thing that was new to me upon this
revisit of The Warriors, because I'd seen the movie years ago,
but I hadn't watched it in quite some time, so
I never noticed this before. But coming back to it. Now,
The Warriors is obviously based on a work of classical
Greek literature, which is The Anibasis by Xenophon, and so

(10:22):
I looked it up. And this is not just a
cursory kind of illusion or you know, kind of a
little bit of a match on the book on which
The Warriors was based, called The Warriors by Saul Yurik
was explicitly based on Xenophon, And apparently earlier cuts of
the movie and some versions of the screenplay just say

(10:45):
that this is the story told by Xenophon, but in
the modern day. So what's the deal with the Anabasis?
The Anibassis is the story of a company of ten
thousand Greek mercenaries who are travel out to fight a
war but become stranded in Mesopotamia. So they're fighting for

(11:05):
a Persian prince, Cyrus, the younger. Cyrus tried to challenge
his brother Arctic Serxes the second for the throne of
the Achemenid Empire, but was killed in the campaign in
four oh one BCE, sort of leaving his armies adrift.
So the Anabasis narrates the ten thousand Greek warriors attempt

(11:25):
to travel back from this far distant hostile territory in Mesopotamia,
back to friendly lands, back to Greek cities along the
sea in Asia Minor, and so they have to travel
through Mesopotamia through Armenia through Asia Minor, having many fascinating
and thrilling adventures along the way. And The Warriors follows

(11:47):
this general shape by having the gang make a perilous
journey back to home territory through strange lands full of
hostile armies and relentless pursuers. But there are also more
specific nods, like the fact that they are initially assembled
in the park by a leader named Cyrus, the name
of the Prince. The Persian Prince, and other characters in

(12:11):
the movie also have the names of famous Greek heroes.
There are characters named Ajax and Cleon and so forth.
Another thing about The Warriors that feels very ancient Greek
to me is its alien morality. It's a very interesting
way to depict street gangs in storytelling. So the movie
is decidedly told from the gangs and the gang member's

(12:34):
point of view. It is not from the point of
view of like an outsider interacting with the gang, or
with a kind of sermonizing tone that you might get
in some seventies movies that deal with gangs as like, oh,
this is a kind of social blight. Look at the
crime and the destruction. We are with the Warriors in
the movie. We're on the ground level with them, and

(12:54):
we're seeing things from their point of view. So they
are structurally the protagonists of the story. And yet the
Warriors are really not good guys. Other than placing them
in a very unfair predicament where they're framed for a
crime they didn't commit, there is little effort made to
make them morally palatable or sympathetic. So the Warriors are

(13:17):
not Robin Hood's band of merry men. They're not nice,
they're not helpful or chivalrous. For the most part, they
do not have a heart of gold. They are a tough, violent,
self interested criminal gang, and some of the guys in
the gang come off as overtly evil. For example, the
character Ajax is portrayed as someone who just totally violent

(13:39):
to the core, will commit rape or murder on a whim,
and the rest of the gang, though mostly not as
bad as Ajax, they're generally just threatening and rough with
innocent people.

Speaker 1 (13:50):
Yeah, even Rembrandt, the most innocent seeming member of the
gang is just totally down to desecrate some tombstones. That's
his role in the gang. He's the artist. He's the
one that's supposed to, you know, throw up the tags
and all. And then you know, other members of the
gang casfully use homophobic or racist terms at times. And
on one hand, you know, perhaps they're going for that

(14:12):
sort of hard late seventies realism and so forth. But
I think, certainly to contemporary viewers, this also serves to
remind us the yeah, these are loudmouthed, troubled youth. Yes,
some of the youth are thirty. They are not good guys.

Speaker 2 (14:26):
But I think it falls in with the style of
characterization that was very popular in a lot of the
great movies of the seventies, which often focused not on like,
you know, sweet lovable characters, but on characters that were
troubled and complex and interesting in the ways that they
were very morally imperfect or flawed. And so the warriors

(14:47):
are they're not Luke Skywalker and Princess Leah. You know,
they're dangerous people in a dangerous situation.

Speaker 1 (14:55):
I like that you mentioned like nineteen fifties style street
gangs films and social problem works of previous decades, because yeah,
there's not a sense in this at all that there
is another way for these characters. We don't really know
anything about what their lives might consist, of, what their
home lives are like, Like this is just like this

(15:17):
is who they are. What else could they possibly be?
And in fact, one thing I was struck by in
this rewatch is that really, all the gang members there's
not a sense that they have homes or belongings of
any kind. There's no sense that the warriors themselves have
anything in their pockets, like if they have pockets on
those those tight fitting pants that most of them are wearing.

(15:40):
You know, it's like their only possession is their identity
as a warrior, and there's nothing else for them in
the world at all.

Speaker 2 (15:48):
All they have is the perception they can create in
others that they are tough and they shouldn't be messed with.

Speaker 1 (15:54):
Yeah, they don't even have weapons. They didn't be part
of it is plotting like where they've gone. It's kind
of like, I guess a weapon free zone or supposed
to be. Nobody else seems to obey this rule, but
like they didn't even come like strapped or whatever, so
so they have to improvise their weapons and or use
their fists and their kicks along the way, which you
know ultimately makes it a scrappier movie too.

Speaker 2 (16:16):
Another thing I was noting is a similarity with Xenophon
is of course, Xenophon is a journey from deep within
the Persian Empire down to Mesopotamia back up to they're
trying to reach the sea, the Greek friendly or Greek
colony cities along the coast, and the journey of the
warriors is much the same. They're starting up in the
Bronx and they're ending they end up back by the sea.

(16:37):
The return home is the return to the coastline at
Coney Island.

Speaker 1 (16:42):
Yeah yeah, Like, isn't it like a rallying cry in
the original work, like the Sea of the Sea, like
the Sea?

Speaker 4 (16:48):
Yeah exactly, yes.

Speaker 1 (16:49):
All right, Well, my elevator pitch for this one is
just street crime, but make it weird, and I think
they succeeded in making it weird. Occasionally I'll hear talk
of how they're looking to do a remake of this
or do a TV series of it, And at one
point I forget who was involved with. They were like, Yeah,
this time though, we're gonna make all the street gangs
super realistic. And I'm and I'm just instantly like like no, Like,

(17:11):
that's not what makes the Warriors special. I can't imagine
anyone wants that from the Warriors. If anything, make it weirder.
I want to see gangs based on I don't know
any s Jason Vorhez, you know things like that.

Speaker 2 (17:24):
Okay, in this one, we got a gang dressed up
like baseball players. What if instead we get a gang
that are all dressed up like baseball mascots?

Speaker 1 (17:32):
There you go, there, you go, Well, what would be.

Speaker 2 (17:34):
The best mascot? I know it's not baseball, but you
could have a whole gang of gritty is. You could
have a whole gang of wiffs.

Speaker 1 (17:39):
Yeah, gritty gang would work. I mean anything like, you know,
we could Witch of the East. Everybody's stressed like the
wicked Witch of the East. I mean, you name it.
As long as it's like uniform and and strange, it works.
Like not all the gangs and the Warriors are that strange,
but enough of them are that it pushes the pushes
us through the barrier into the salt dimension. All right,

(18:01):
let's go ahead and listen to a little trailer audio.

Speaker 5 (18:12):
These are the armies of the night.

Speaker 6 (18:15):
Where you dig itre you dig the Furies, the Boppers,
the High Hats, the Lizzies, the turnbul A Ses, the

(18:40):
Gramercy Riffs.

Speaker 5 (18:45):
And these are the Warriors. We know about the Warriors.
They're a heavy outfit. They're from Coney Island Warriors. You
guys are the big dudes.

Speaker 6 (18:54):
Huh.

Speaker 5 (18:55):
Now they're in the Bronx.

Speaker 6 (18:56):
We're going back twenty seven miles behind enemy lines.

Speaker 5 (19:00):
It's the only choice we get.

Speaker 6 (19:02):
Between them and safety. Stand twenty thousand cups and one
hundred thousand sworn enemies.

Speaker 5 (19:10):
I want them all. I want all the Warriors.

Speaker 7 (19:26):
They've got one way out, They've got one chance, They've
got one night the Warriors.

Speaker 1 (19:51):
Okay, So if you are looking to jump out and
watch or rewatch the Warriors for yourself before proceeding with
the rest of this episode, uh yeah, ahead and do it.
This movie is widely available again. Its cult status has
been assured for many, many years. So there have been
a number of nice editions that have come out, including
the Arrow limited Blu Ray, which looks really nice. All right,

(20:20):
let's get into the people who made this film, starting
at the top. The director also screenplay credit is Walter
Hill born nineteen forty two, a writer, director, and producer
with writing credits going back to nineteen seventy two, with
a couple of films that include the excellent Sam Peckinpack
crime thriller The Getaway starring Steve McQueen. He began directing

(20:42):
as well with nineteen seventy five's Hard Time starring Charles Bronson,
and in nineteen seventy nine he got into producing with
a little sci fi horror film called Alien, and he's
remained a producer on every Alien film since, including the
most recent Alien Romulus as part of Brandywine Productions.

Speaker 2 (21:00):
Now, Rob you might have read about this more recently
than me, so correct me if I'm wrong about the
process here. But from what I recall, the original script
for Alien was by Dan O'Bannon, based on a story
by Ronald Shusett or shuss It, and that was the
first script by Obannon I think was pitched at a

(21:21):
more B movie level. It was sort of supposed to
be a smart but lower budget, scrappy movie made made
by somebody in the Roger Korman Camp. But then somehow
Walter Hill and David Geiler got their hands on it
and did and they sort of had more ambitions for it.
They were like, this is an interesting idea. We could
make this into a bigger budget, more artful kind of movie,

(21:44):
and so they took a pass at the script. Is
that how you understand it?

Speaker 1 (21:47):
Yeah? Yeah, that's my understanding. So you know, Hill and Geler,
David Giler, who lived forty three through twenty twenty, they
did what I think is ultimately an uncredited rewrite on
the script, but you can find their rewrite on the script.
You shared it with me prior to our recording, and
we were both kind of looking through it and checking
out what their particular take on it was and how

(22:09):
it was written.

Speaker 2 (22:10):
We can come back to that in a minute, because
I do want to talk about Walter Hill's screenwriting style now.

Speaker 1 (22:15):
Outside of the Alien franchise, they also produced the Tales
from the Crypt TV series Demon Knight, the Tales from
the Crypt movie that we previously covered on Weird House Cinema,
and HBO's Deadwood. Walter Hill also scripted and directed three
different episodes of Tales from the Crypt, including the disturbingly
memorable Cutting Cards episode starring Lance Henrickson and Kevin Teege.

(22:38):
His other directing credits include nineteen eighty one Southern Comfort,
eighty two's forty eight Hours, eighty four Streets of Fire,
which we already mentioned, eighty five's Brewsters Millions, eighty eight's
Red Heat, ninety twoh Trespass, and his most recent directorial
effort was a twenty twenty two Western title Dead for
a Dollar.

Speaker 2 (22:57):
Oh my god, Walter Hill did Red Heat.

Speaker 1 (23:00):
I didn't know.

Speaker 2 (23:00):
That's the one with Schwarzenegger, right, or he plays a
Soviet cop.

Speaker 1 (23:05):
Yeah, I vaguely remember seeing this one back when I
was a kid.

Speaker 2 (23:08):
I've never seen the whole movie, but I've seen clips
on YouTube. There is one where Schwarzenegger infamously like pours
several pounds of cocaine out of someone's artificial leg.

Speaker 1 (23:20):
Yep Arnold and James Belushi quite as screenpairing.

Speaker 4 (23:24):
Wow, I can only imagine the chemistry. I'll have to
watch that one someday.

Speaker 2 (23:30):
But yeah, I wanted to come back to Walter Hill's
screenwriting style because occasionally I look up screenplays and read them,
and you know, compare what's on the page to what's
in the movie. And I have always found Walter Hill's
style to be very interesting and something that I like

(23:50):
a lot. So, just as one example, I'm going to
read some descriptive passages from opening shots of his Alien
screenplay with David Geiler. Interior engine room, empty cavernous interior
engine cubicle, circular jammed with instruments, all of them, idle

(24:10):
console chairs for two empty interior oily corridor, sea level
long dark, empty, turbose, throbbing, no other movement. Interior bridge vacant,
two space helmets resting on chairs. Electrical hum. Lights on

(24:30):
the helmets begin to signal one another. Moments of silence.
A yellow light goes on, data mind in the background,
electronic hum. A green light goes on in front of
one helmet, electronic pulsing sounds, A red light goes on
in front of other helmet. An electronic conversation ensues, reaches

(24:51):
a crescendo, then silence. The lights go off, save the yellow.
So maybe that'll give you a kind of idea. But
Walter Hill has a very terse, sparse, vertical screenwriting style,
and it especially comes through in physically descriptive passages where

(25:11):
he will sometimes describe a whole scene that he wants
to show you visually in a few words, just like
you know, a two word sentence on one line, return
next line, a three word sentence period. He often leaves
out the subject of the sentence in screenwriting if the
subject is the same as the previous sentence. So it's

(25:33):
just very tight writing that I think is extremely effective
as screenwriting because I cannot help but picture the scene
in my head when I read it. It just leaps
right into the mind's eye. And especially having seen the
movies that are made from these scripts, you can absolutely
see exactly from these short descriptive passages on the page

(25:56):
into what happened in the actual film.

Speaker 1 (26:00):
Yeah, and just reading through some of these examples, it
feels like it flows on the page at the exact
same pace as it will flow on the screen. You know,
it doesn't get bogged down in a bunch of descriptions.

Speaker 2 (26:11):
You're right that it doesn't get bogged down in overly
wordy description. But it is very descriptive. It's like very
visually evocative. It just uses as few words as possible.
And so anyway, I found the Warriors screenplay online as well,
we'll come back to this because there are some funny
things from it that we can talk about. It is
very different from the final film, and I think there

(26:31):
might be different cuts of the Warriors available. I watched
the theatrical cut, so maybe some of the stuff in
the screenplay that's not in the film is restored in
the director's cut. But for example, the screenplay has a
lot of stuff in the opening that we never get
in the movie, scenes with the Warriors on their home
turf in Coney Island before going off to the conclave

(26:54):
and having their dangerous adventure. And I don't know, it's
kind of interesting because I think these opening scenes really
soften the Warriors characters and make them more relatable to
see them at home first, just kind of being themselves
before they're in danger and out of their element. And

(27:15):
obviously we get a very little bit of that in
the movie, but it's mostly just the scenes where they're
being summoned and then they depart. So in the in
the script we have them say there's like a scene
where they're on the beach and Ajax, the character played
by James Ramar, who will talk about in a minute,
he's like working out on some exercise equipment, you know,

(27:37):
showing off his muscles, being a total jerk to the
other guys in the in the gang. And so for example,
we get this description beach Ajax pumps twice on the bars,
does a flying dismount, smiles wall Swan holding his knife,
just looking at the blade, Coney Island, the sun visible

(27:59):
over the amusement park, horizon line, and so again, very tight,
very evocative description, very few words, but it conjures a
strong feeling, and that feeling is eventually what's there on
the screen in the movie.

Speaker 1 (28:13):
Yeah, yeah, this is This is interesting because because the
actual films we'll discuss, it has a very tight funnel
at the beginning. It really draws you in. Is highly
highly effective. I wouldn't change anything. But at the same time, yeah,
we don't really go into it with a sense of
what normal life is like for these guys, or indeed
what gang life consists of. And part of that also

(28:34):
works very well with the structure of the plot and
the sort of the mythic qualities of it, because you know,
again they are essentially like ancient mercenaries in a strange world,
and the less you know about what actual street level
gang day to day consists of like maybe the better
in this overall structure of the film.

Speaker 2 (28:52):
H But now is it the case that Hill also
had a writing partner on this script?

Speaker 1 (28:57):
Yes. David Shaber, who lived ineteen twenty nine through nineteen
ninety nine, American screenwriter and theater producer. His other screenplay
credits include nineteen eighty one's Nighthawks, nineteen ninety's The Hunt
for Red October, and ninety one's Flight of the Intruder.
And then, as we already mentioned, this is all based
on the novel by Saul Urick, who of nineteen twenty
five through twenty thirteen American novelist who was apparently partially

(29:22):
inspired not only by the classics, but partially inspired in
writing this nineteen sixty five novel by the unrealistic romanticism
of street gangs in West Side Story. I believe he
had worked with troubled youth to some extent, and so
he had a little insight into what the world consisted of,
and he's like, it's not that glamorous, I'm going to

(29:42):
write it. His other books include sixty eight's The Bag,
seventy five's In Island Death, and nineteen eighty one's Richard A.
The nineteen ninety nine film The Confession was an adaptation
of his nineteen sixty six novel Fertig. All right, let's
get into the cast here. So we may may not
mention all the warriors, but a lot of them are

(30:03):
played by actors who, you know, first time actors and
maybe went on to great things, or maybe you know,
ended up having a career shift pretty early on, but
starting at the top. Really, our central character is Swan.
Swan is played by Michael Beck. This is our handsome
and ultimately ends up being the de facto warlord of

(30:24):
the Warriors after some stuff goes down very early in
the plot. His Beck's TV and film credits go back
to nineteen seventy one, and apparently Hill discovered him for
this film while they were scouting an actor by the
name of Sigourney Weaver for a little science fiction film
they were involved in. The movie they were looking at

(30:44):
to scout Weaver was nineteen seventy eight mad Man, which
also features Beck as well as f Marie Abraham. So
Beck's subsequent credits included nineteen eighty Xanadu eighty two's Battle
Truck and Mega Force, the nineteen eighty three TV movie
The Last Ninja, the eighty five thriller Blackout, in various

(31:04):
TV and film projects.

Speaker 2 (31:06):
Wow Xanadu, Megaforce, The Last Ninja. That is it is
is The Warriors generally considered Beck's like peak peak performance.

Speaker 1 (31:17):
I think it might be. Yeah, I think this is
this is the shining gem in his filmography. And I
have to say, like, I think he he There was
some criticism leveled at him for some of his performances
in these, like you know, obviously probably not good action films,
but I have to say, I think he's really good
in this. I think, you know, he has a great look,
but he also is able to to bring the appropriate

(31:41):
presence as well. Like I have absolutely no problem with
Michael Beck's performance in The Warriors. Does he look a
little too old? Well, okay maybe, but I mean that
that's also kind of like a hallmark of like troubled
youth movies, So I mean even more likely to forgive
it because you know, you know, thirty year old youths
is a common occurrence in films such as these. All right,

(32:04):
So that's Swan. One of the other key Warriors of
note is Ajax who have already mentioned, played by James
Ramar born nineteen fifty three. We recently mentioned him on
the show before as well, because out of the one
hundred and eighty plus roles he's played over his I
think six decades of work, one of them is Lord
Rayden from nineteen ninety seven's Mortal Kombat Annihilation. Who so

(32:29):
this is the guy who's been in tons of stuff.
The Warriors, however, was only his second film role, following
his debut I think, just in a bit part the
year before in the prison movie on the Yard. Prior
to this, he'd done some stage work. He followed this
up with roles in nineteen eighties Cruising the Long Riders
forty eight Hours and nineteen eighty six's Clan of the
Cave Bear. He's done a ton of TV and film

(32:51):
work over the decades, often playing heavies and villains. He's
been in everything from two thousand's Hell Raiser Inferno to
twenty twenty three's Oppenheimer EV Viewers might know him best
from Dexter What He played Dexter's dad on that Yeah
So Yeah. Solid character actor. His stage work includes a
nineteen seventy nine Broadway production of Bent alongside Richard Gear

(33:13):
and Michael Gross.

Speaker 2 (33:15):
I just had to look up who he played in
Oppenheimer because I forgot, But he played Henry Stimson, the
Secretary of War under Truman.

Speaker 1 (33:22):
Is it a substantial role or kind of like a
bit part.

Speaker 2 (33:26):
I think it must be a fairly short appearance, But
I don't know. The cast of Oppenheimer is so huge
it's easy to forget a lot of even quite familiar
actors when they show up.

Speaker 1 (33:36):
James Ramar is one of those character actors who can
be really good in very small doses or can have
a more robust role in a picture. Like he just
has a great look, a very like Stern appearance, especially
you know as he aged and became this older actor, like,
you know, you can put him in anywhere in a
picture and he'll do well.

Speaker 4 (33:54):
Yeah.

Speaker 1 (33:55):
Now, interesting Aliens connection. This is one I hadn't I
wasn't familiar with. He originally had the role of Hicks
in nineteen eighty six is Aliens. But I believe the
story is that he ended up facing some drug charges
in the UK at the time. I'm not sure what
the full details on this were. It sounds like whatever

(34:17):
the particulars of the situation were it got worked out.
Things turned out out all right for James Ramar, but
due to the time schedule for the shooting of Aliens,
they had to pivot and cast someone else in the role.
And that is one of the reasons that the Hicks
in the movie. In some scenes especially, it looks like
his armor is a little too big because he was

(34:39):
cut size for him.

Speaker 2 (34:40):
It was sized for James Ramar. Oh that's funny. Yeah,
I think I've read that. In some shots in Aliens,
when you're looking at Hicks's back, it's still James Ramar
in there, but they just didn't you know, it's him
from behind.

Speaker 1 (34:53):
Yeah, all right, let's see who else do we have here. Oh,
we mentioned that Swan becomes the de facto leader of
the Warriors, but he's not the leader the beginning. The
leader is Cleon played by Dorsey Wright born nineteen fifty seven.

(35:15):
Not a ton of credits for this actor, but he
was in Hair the same year and has done some
assistant directing. Yeah, he is the initial leader of the Warriors,
but he does not last very long. Then we have
Snow played by Brian Tyler born nineteen fifty three, very
few acting credits, said to I believe have moved on
from acting to become a New York State trooper after
this picture. But he's loyal soldier in the Warriors, all right.

(35:40):
Next we have Coaches played by David Harris born nineteen
fifty nine, actor and producer who went on to peer
in a number of TV and film productions, including NYPD Blue,
in which he played Officer Donnie Simons. So very deadly
serious tone by Coachies here, he's often there's a lot
of dialogue back and forth between the warriors is so

(36:01):
they discuss what to do and what their objective should be.
And he's generally a very serious, sort of middle of
the road voice. Then we have this character Cowboy in
the Warriors. His main thing is he wears a cowboy
hat and he also wears a T shirt under his vest.
Most of them are wearing just the vest and a
patina of sweat. Yes, a Cowboy is played by Tom

(36:23):
mcketderick born nineteen forty eight. This is his only film
acting credit, but he went on to have a career,
apparently as a photojournalist, and is currently a theater producer.
Somewhere I read I have no idea if there's anything
to this at all. They're also you know, you run
a lot across a lot of facts about these films.
But I saw somewhere it was mentioned. It's like, oh,
they wanted Robert de Niro for this role, and I

(36:44):
was thinking, really, you have a small role for him,
a very small role, virtually unimportant. Like the only character
attribute to this guy is again basically the cowboy hat.
I heavily doubt that, but I don't know. Maybe it's
the case. I mean, you can shoot for the stars,
why not Brando?

Speaker 2 (37:02):
Yeah, yeah, in nineteen seventy nine, Yeah, you know, de
Niro would have been interesting a swan.

Speaker 1 (37:10):
Yeah, all right. We mentioned rim Brant already. He's the
artist of the crew and also the most innocent seeming.
You know, there's a boyish innocence to this character. Played
by Marcelino Sanchez, who lived nineteen fifty seven through nineteen
eighty six. This was the third film role for this actor.
He went on to appear in Chips in seventy seven,

(37:30):
forty eight Hours in eighty two, in Hill Street Blues
in eighty one. Diet tragically young as a result of
the AIDS epidemic. Now, if rim Brandt is there, I
guess to show us like this ounce of innocence and
youth that is still in the Warriors. The next character,
Vermin is just there for laughs. Clearly Vermin is It's

(37:51):
probably like the greenest feeling actor in the bunch, has
some of the dorkiest lines, but is clearly there, leaning
into this element of comic relief.

Speaker 4 (38:01):
Oh yeah, I can see that, yeah.

Speaker 1 (38:03):
Played by Terry Mikos, who was born in fifty three.
I think this was his first screen credit, following some
Broadway work, and I've read that he went on to
get into TV journalism and later politics. I don't think
as a politician, but it's sort of political infrastructure stuff,
and then sometime as a pastor as well, I believe. Oh,

(38:26):
and then we have a female character who is not
a member of the Warriors, at least when we first
encounter her, and that is Deborah van Valkenberg born nineteen
fifty two. She plays Mercy. This was her first screen credit,
followed by King of the Mountain in eighty one Streets
of Fire in eighty four. A lot of TV and
screenwork followed these pictures, including episodes of Monsters star Trek,

(38:48):
Deep Space nine and more. But Joe, I was about
to just go on to the next one. But then
when we were conversing back and forth online, you mentioned
another key credit, and that is Brain Smasher, A Love Story,
written and directed by Albert Pyne, starring Andrew dice Clay
and Terry Hatcher.

Speaker 2 (39:06):
I can't even begin to imagine what this movie is.
It's an Andrew dice Clay movie where he fights Ninja's
and it has Terry Hatcher and Debora van Valkenberg. Directed
by the director of the nineteen ninety Captain America movie
and various other B action movies from the eighties such

(39:27):
as Cyborg starring Jean Claude van dam So. Brain Smasher
A Love Story. Just ponder that. I'm not even saying
you should necessarily see it, just consider it as an idea.
But I want to come back to Debora van Valkenberg
in The Warriors. I think she's the most interesting actor
in the movie. A lot of the performances of the

(39:48):
gang leaders are very good, but the kinds of characters
that they are portraying are by nature emotionally constrained on screen,
so they are guys who have to project a self
image that's strong, tough, dangerous, and uncaring, and they rarely,

(40:09):
if ever let this posture relax. So we see even
in Swan, the leader of the protagonists of the story,
he's often just he's a brick wall, and that's the
way his character is supposed to be. He's not letting
anything out and he's not letting anybody in. On the
other hand, Van Wolkenberg's character is complicated and paradoxical. There

(40:29):
are these interesting ways that she is both strong and weak.
She comes off as tough, experienced, almost fearless, and scenes
involving risk and physical danger, but in other scenes her
character is powerless, vulnerable and even kind of adject, and
scenes like the scenes later where she wants Swan's approval

(40:50):
and affection and he is just totally cold and even
emotionally cruel to her. And so she's very interesting. And
the way she bonds with Swan over the course of
the movie, especially leading up to an interesting wordless scene
on the subway later on, is very good and I
like her a lot.

Speaker 1 (41:11):
Yes, I absolutely agree, great presence, and again, like so
many of these other characters, they are cold, They are.
They're putting out this macho image and that's it's key
to who they are. And in many ways, as far
as the film is concerned, that's all they are. That's
all that's going to ever be let out.

Speaker 4 (41:27):
You know.

Speaker 1 (41:27):
They have this huge wall up and she is this
character where we get to see a lot more, We
get i guess, a wider sense of like what her
hopes and dreams might be and who she is underneath
all of this. All right, some other characters involved in
the film. Here we have the character Cyrus, who will
largely come back to This is the man who would

(41:48):
be King of New York Street Gangs, played by Roger
Hill no relation, who have nineteen forty nine through twenty fourteen.
This is his most well known role, a small one,
but undeniably iconic. And then we have the picture's villain
is Luther, the leader of the rogues, played by David
Patrick Kelly born nineteen fifty one. Just an undeniable chaos

(42:11):
goblin in this picture. This was Kelly's first film and
TV role, but he had a background in music and
theater and apparently mime work under Marcel Marceau. I don't
know how much we see like the mime influences in
his performance. But I mean, I guess that's the thing
about mime, like serious mime work, is that you can

(42:32):
use it and apply it to like actual mime work,
but you can also use it just to fuel, you know,
a traditional performance.

Speaker 2 (42:40):
Interesting, they didn't cast him as the leader of the
mimes guest, which yes is in the movie. One of
the gang are mimes.

Speaker 1 (42:47):
We do not see anywhere near enough of the mime
gang though, But anyway, Kelly has yet such delicious villain
energy here that it should not come as a shock
that he went on to be in tons of projects
over the years, including forty eight Hours, nineteen eighty four's Dreamscape.
He's the villain in that, as I recall nineteen eighty

(43:08):
five's Commando. Do you remember who he played in Commando?

Speaker 2 (43:10):
He's one of the subordinate villains in Commando. He's like
a schemy, weaseley guy who's working with the bad guys
against Arnold Schwarzenegger and his family. And there's some quip
where I think his character's name is Benny or something,
and Arnold Schwarzenegger says to him like Benny, I'll kill
you last and then not long after that, Schwarzenegger chases

(43:34):
him down and is like dangling him off a cliff
and says, when I said I'd kill you last I lied.

Speaker 1 (43:40):
Oh, yes, I remember. I don't remember his performance, but
remember those lines for sure. Yeah. Kelly was also in
nineteen nineties The Adventures of Ford Fairlane. Getting back into
Andrew dice clay cinematic universe. He was in Twin Peaks,
nineteen ninety two's Malcolm X ninety four is the Crow,
twenty fourteen's John Wick It's twenty seven venteene sequel, and

(44:00):
he also had a role on Secession.

Speaker 4 (44:02):
Oh who was he in Succession? I remember that he.

Speaker 1 (44:05):
Was he a therapist? I didn't. I've only watched like
half of one episode of it. It looked really good,
but I need to press on with Succession. But yeah,
I don't know who he played. For some reason, I'm
thinking therapist is something I read, but that might be
another movie where he plays a therapist.

Speaker 2 (44:23):
Well, I don't remember who he was in Succession. But
I'm pretty sure in Twin Peaks, which you mentioned, isn't
he the guy who shows up from France with Bagett
and Brie for Audrey Horn's dad.

Speaker 1 (44:34):
I looked up some stills and I have one for you.
Here he is eating some bread, so I guess that
is correct.

Speaker 2 (44:40):
They're like he shows up with the food and they're
in his office and they're going like, Brie.

Speaker 1 (44:48):
Yeah. So this is a great role. We'll get into
a little bit of it later. But if you don't
remember much else from the film, you might remember warriors
come out to play a this is that guy. Let's
see who else is in this while we have Mercedes
Rule playing a character we'll come back to because I
don't want to spoil anything. Born nineteen forty eight, Academy
Award winning actress for her role in nineteen ninety two

(45:10):
is the Fisher King. Her other credits include nineteen eighty eight,
s Big and Married to the Mob, but this was
only her second film credit. Now. Also of note Lynn
thigpen is in this she lived nineteen forty eight through
two thousand and three. Do we ever see her whole
face or no her lips?

Speaker 3 (45:26):
No.

Speaker 2 (45:26):
She plays the radio DJ in the movie, who plays
an important role in the plot because somehow she is
receiving information to coordinate all of the gangs who are
trying to hunt down the Warriors. So I don't know
why a radio DJ is sort of on the payroll
of the Grammercy Riffs, but I guess she is. And

(45:47):
she like cues up songs that are thematically appropriate, so
she's like, hey, Warriors, if you're listening, and then puts
on Nowhere to Run.

Speaker 1 (45:56):
Yeah. Yeah, it's a great way to incorporate the music.
And I guess this is just part of the riffs
like mass communication system, Like they're very organized and this
is part of their organization.

Speaker 2 (46:06):
So like they communicate through commercial radio, which is great.
But as soon as I heard her voice, I was like,
wait a minute, I recognize her voice. Now she's actually
done a lot of things, so I think I recognized
her from multiple places. But I know the main thing
because it took me to childhood. There was a childhood
tie in for me, and I realized, like, oh, she's

(46:28):
the chief on Where in the world is Carmen San
Diego the geography trivia game show? I remember from when
I was a kid. She's the chief who likes all right,
gum shoes. You know, you got to chase Carmen San
Diego to wherever she is. This time Uruguay or whatever.

Speaker 1 (46:47):
Oh, that's awesome. I don't think I ever watched Carmen
san Diego, but just looking over her filmography as she's
been in tons. She was in Godspell in seventy three.
I think she was also in the stage adaptation, but
she was having the original State version. But then she
was also in the film adaptation, so that's pretty cool.
But she's been in tons of stuff like Tootsie back

(47:08):
in eighty two, you know, on up through far more
I mean eighty nine's Lean on Me, and then far
more recently towards the end of her career. You know,
she was popping up on things like The District on TV.
She's in The Bicentennial Man in nineteen ninety nine, so
a load of credits here. You know, great voice obviously.

Speaker 2 (47:28):
Yeah, And because she's just a voice, a voice going
through the airwaves in the story, we'd never actually see
her full face.

Speaker 4 (47:36):
It's just a tight shot.

Speaker 2 (47:37):
On her mouth while she's talking and saying kind of
ominous things to the warriors. In fact, strange tie in
she almost speaks the way Walter Hill writes screenplays. You know,
it's very like short sentences with a period and then
a pause.

Speaker 1 (47:56):
All right, Let's see what one last mentioned as far
as the cast goes, because he's not even credited cast,
but apparently future director Robert Townsend is in this as
one of the Baseball Furies. That's one of the Baseball
Gang members that we'll get to later. I didn't eyeball
him personally, but he's supposedly in there. And let's see.
I'm going to just mention in passing that Bobby Mannix

(48:18):
has costume designer credit on this, and then Mary ellen
Winston also uncredited for costume work, because again, the costumes
for these gang members are so amazing, So the people
who made this happen deserve to be called out. Oh yeah, Also,
Anthony Pagan has fight choreography credit on this. This is

(48:40):
a guy who I think his only other fight choreography
credit in film or TV is ninety six is Vertical City.
Tons of various credits and roles related to other projects.
I think he had a background in stage combat I
was able to uncover, but at any rate want to
call him out because the action in Warriors is pretty wild.
It's convinced sing like, it feels brutal, but also has

(49:03):
that flare you know you're gonna see occasionally like the
warriors will like grilla press somebody and throw them or
backbody drops somebody through a bathroom stall door, that sort
of thing.

Speaker 2 (49:13):
You know, This movie's mixture of gritty realism and fantasy
really comes through in the violence, because sometimes the violence
is shockingly hard, it's brutal and it hurts, and yet
at other times, yeah, it's like it's like pro wrestling.

Speaker 1 (49:31):
Yeah, so yeah, I like how it kind of goes
back and forth there and then finally the music here.
The score is by Barry Devorzen born nineteen thirty four,
six time Grammy and one time Emmy Award winning composer.
He was also nominated for an Oscar in seventy two
for the track Blessed the Beasts and Children performed by
the Carpenters for the movie of the same name. Other

(49:52):
scores include seventy seven's Rolling Thunder, seventy eight's The Ninth Configuration,
Xanadu eighty six is Nine of the Creeps, and nineteen
nineties The Exorcist Part three.

Speaker 4 (50:02):
Wow.

Speaker 2 (50:02):
The same person did Xanadu and Night of the Creeps.

Speaker 1 (50:05):
A number of Xanadu connections here between this movie and
then yeah, Night of the Creeps as well.

Speaker 2 (50:11):
Should we do Xanadu on Weird House.

Speaker 1 (50:15):
I've never seen it. I'm only familiar with it by reputation.
I think my wife likes it as a cheesy flake,
so I'd be open to looking at it.

Speaker 2 (50:23):
I've seen it, I remember it being a good time.

Speaker 1 (50:25):
Okay, But as far as the score goes, I love
divores and score here. It's an absolute synth rock jam.
I've heard it thrown into mixes before, and I think,
along with the cult status of the film, this is
a very well regarded score. Waxworks Records put This Baby
out remastered on crimson and leather colored vinyl several years back,

(50:48):
and of course you can stream it along with this
with the soundtrack selections wherever you stream your music. But
by and large, yeah, there's strong rock vibes to this picture.
Synth rock for the score, and then a number of
rock tracks as well, and it gets into some other
territory as well, but very synth rock candy.

Speaker 2 (51:16):
All right, you want to talk about the plot, now,
let's do it. So we're not going to do a
detailed chronological plot recap this time, like we do in
some cases. I think we should do a broad outline
and then pause it places throughout the film to focus
on things we want to talk about. But we'll set
up the basic premise. The premise is that the Warriors
are one of many gangs in New York City, specifically

(51:39):
hailing from Coney Island in Brooklyn. And in this movie,
all of the gangs have specific home turf defined as
a neighborhood in New York, mostly in Brooklyn, Manhattan, and
the Bronx, And they all have a specific gang costume,
so not just colors or like a bandana or specific marker,
but full costumes. So, as we've said, one gang is mimes,

(52:03):
one gang is overalls, striped shirts and roller skates, one
gang is baseball. The Warriors have comparatively normal looking outfits.
They have leather vests with a large patch on the back,
and this can be worn with or without a shirt underneath.

Speaker 1 (52:22):
Yeah, certain sort of like I don't know, like Native American,
vaguely Native American tribal aspects to their guard but it's
not overt. But they are all matching. They're very coordinated,
so they have a solid look going on.

Speaker 2 (52:40):
At the outset of the story, a conclave of street
gangs has been called by the most powerful crew in
the city, the grammercy Riffs, and the charismatic leader of
the Rifts, Cyrus, has asked every gang in New York
to send a delegation of nine members to appear unarmed
at a meeting in Van Cortland Park in the Bronx

(53:02):
at midnight. What for, we don't know at first. They're
going to find out when they get there. So if
you're not super familiar with the geography of New York
to put this together for the warriors, it's going to
be a long trip. Coney Island is all the way
at the south end of Brooklyn and the meeting place
is way up north at the other end of the
city in the Bronx. I did a Google Maps measurement

(53:25):
and by road it's about thirty miles.

Speaker 1 (53:28):
Yeah. Yeah, there's a lot of city up there if
you've ever had to jump around from one location to
the next, so it's quite quite an odyssey. By the way,
I'm sure folks have done like a warrior's pilgrimage where
they start at Van Cortland Park and make the appropriate
trip down through the boroughs and all the way out
to Coney Island.

Speaker 2 (53:48):
Yeah, of course, Coney Island is famous for the Coney Island. Oh,
I don't actually know the name of it. The Coney
Island amusement park that's on the shore with the Wonder Wheel. Yeah,
the Wonder Wheel, big ferris wheel. And that's the opening
shot of the movie, as we see the Wonder Wheel
lit up at night with the neon lights as it
goes around. And so the warriors are departing for the conclave,

(54:11):
where all the delegations from all the major gangs in
New York are gathered in a sort of outdoor amphitheater,
and we see the different gangs heading out, getting onto
the subway or walking down the streets in order to
make it to the assembly. Now, one thing that was
quite hilarious was that, apart from the gangs we actually
meet and know of in the movie, in the Walter

(54:34):
Hill screenplay, there was a list of all the gangs,
and so Robb I pasted this list here for you
to look at. There are many things we could call out,
but I just wanted to mention so some of them
have very normal sounding gang names.

Speaker 4 (54:49):
You know, they're called things like.

Speaker 2 (54:50):
The Alley Kats, or the Blackjacks or whatever. But then
we also have here, are you ready, the Jesters, the Imps,
the big Trains, the Dingoes, the go Hards, the magicians,
the Terriers, the Queen's Bridge mutilators, the Xylophones, and the

(55:12):
yo Yo's What is that? What is the initiation to
get into the xylophones?

Speaker 1 (55:18):
Oh? Man, and that is their signature weapon, Like yeah,
the design work on these.

Speaker 2 (55:23):
Oh yeah, they've each got two mallets.

Speaker 1 (55:26):
Yeah, there's so many, you know, I want to know, like,
who about the nickel steaks. What's their field?

Speaker 4 (55:32):
I don't know where that is?

Speaker 1 (55:33):
Yeah, yeah, yeah, the Shanghai Sultans, I mean, yeah, there's
so many of them. Well, some of these, and of
course we have some some very weird sounding ones that
we see only a little bit, like sort of like
you know, blink and you miss it. Like the moon
Runners are in there, and they have this weird logo
that you can look up online.

Speaker 2 (55:53):
It's the Moonpie logo stabbing a sword through its own stomach.

Speaker 1 (55:57):
Yeah, and then there's a what is it? The is
it of the Satan's Mothers?

Speaker 2 (56:01):
The Satan's Mothers. So they're like a motorcycle gang an
Outlaw Motorcycle Group.

Speaker 1 (56:05):
Yeah, they're the only gang that seems to be an
MC and we don't really see much of them, but
they're in there. They're in the movie.

Speaker 2 (56:12):
Also, this list has doubles in it because it includes
both the grammercy Rifts and just the Rifts that those
can't be different gangs.

Speaker 1 (56:20):
Mm or it was due to a rift in the Rifts, well,
I guess the Winter organization that never comes up in
the movie. But just a glimpse into the wider imagined
world of all these various street gangs and they're various
costuming choices, the yo yo's, and Cyrus is going to

(56:40):
unite all of them. That's the revision.

Speaker 2 (56:42):
Here, that's the point. So we get to this conclave
and Cyrus, the leader of the Grammar sy Riffs again
the biggest, most powerful gang in the city, addresses the
crowd to make a very interesting case. So instead of
fighting against one another all the time, the gang should
agree to a truce. And in fact, Cyrus lays out

(57:04):
a logical case for this. I think the direct quote
is can you count, suckers? He yells, can you count?
The idea is the city is gang members together massively
outnumber the city's police by more than two or three times.
The only thing that holds them back is that they
are not united, and they're fighting each other. But if

(57:27):
they form an alliance together, the gangs can overpower the police,
overpower everyone, and rule the city. And so he again
he insists, can you count? He says, the future is
ours if you can count.

Speaker 1 (57:42):
Yeah. Like, he eludes to the fact too, that it's
like even organized crime will bow before the might of
their ascended power because they control the streets. And already
he's achieved seemingly the impossible by getting a truce in
place where all of these participating games have ceased fighting
each other, at least for the time being. And if

(58:03):
we can go the extra step and unite them under
one charismatic ruler, under one highly organized gang's organizational system,
then nothing can stop them. It'll be a new era,
a new golden age of crime in New York City.

Speaker 2 (58:18):
Yeah, exactly so, Cyrus, I would say, is presented almost
as a prophetic or christ like figure.

Speaker 4 (58:25):
Here.

Speaker 2 (58:25):
There is an aura of an aura of holiness to him,
Except the kind of christ figure he is is one
dedicated to a utopia of gang power.

Speaker 1 (58:38):
Yeah. And of course, the iconic line from all of
this is that is he asked them if they can count,
but he's also says can you dig it? Can you
dig it? And they can dig it. Everyone can dig it.
Everyone loves Cyrus and they are on board for this.

Speaker 2 (58:53):
Plan exactly right. The crowd likes what they are hearing,
and they give Cyrus a very warm reception. But it
is not to be. Nothing good can last, nothing gold
can stay. Because while everyone is cheering and applauding and
excited about the idea of a criminal conspiracy to overthrow
the civil government and replace it with gang power, in

(59:14):
the midst of all this euphoria, suddenly someone shoots Cyrus
from the crowd and Cyrus falls down dead. Now we
the audience get to see who did it. It was Luther,
the leader of the rogues.

Speaker 4 (59:29):
The skin is.

Speaker 2 (59:30):
What's it David Patrick Kelly?

Speaker 4 (59:32):
Is that his name?

Speaker 1 (59:33):
Yep?

Speaker 2 (59:34):
Though most people in the crowd apparently have no idea
who fired the shot, so the audience knows, but almost
nobody in the scene knows. I'm kind of maybe we
should do an aside on Luther here, because my read
on Luther he's kind of hard to figure out. Luther,
to me, does not seem stable enough to be a

(59:54):
leader of anything, even a violent criminal enterprise. He is
just as you said, He's like chaos goblin. He is
a greasy, wide eyed, screaming ball of trouble and chaos.
I don't know how anybody is following him, if that
makes sense, Like you could imagine him just kind of

(01:00:15):
acting on his own to cause chaos and destruction. But
it's strange to me that he is portrayed as the
leader of the rogues.

Speaker 1 (01:00:24):
I mean a similar issue with the Joker, especially as
portrayed like by Heath Ledger. You know, great, great Joker,
but you also have to wonder, like, why are people
following this just obviously unhinged, chaotic individual. He just wants
to burn a bunch of money and so forth. Like
you know, Luther seems like a similar character. He just

(01:00:45):
wants to watch the world burn, and I guess his
entire crew is on board with that, but also takes
orders from him. I don't know how you know your
anarchist gang works in this respect.

Speaker 2 (01:00:58):
Well, maybe at the end of the movie they will
explain a coherent reason why Luther did what he did so,
but he So this is the twist, right, So Cyrus
is shot at the same moment police arrive to break
up the gathering and everybody begins to scatter. The Riffs
surround their fallen leader and Cleon, the leader of the Warriors,

(01:01:22):
who is portrayed as I think. Cleon is portrayed as
a very smart, rational, level headed, uniting force, like he
is what keeps the gang of the Warriors together and
he is a strategic thinker. Did you get the same feeling.

Speaker 1 (01:01:41):
Yeah, yeah, we don't see much from him, but he
seems to be well respected by everyone, even the ones
that don't get along within the Warrior trinks. Right.

Speaker 2 (01:01:49):
So, but he goes up to see Cyrus's body. He
approaches to see what's going on, while the rest of
the Warriors start booking. They're they're getting out of there.
But here here's another tragic moment. Looking I guess to
cause more chaos and escape blame the murderer of Cyrus.
Luther pipes up and starts screaming to the riffs. He says,

(01:02:10):
the warriors did it, that warrior, I saw it. They
killed Cyrus, and Cleon's standing there like what No, But
Cleon is quickly surrounded by the Rifts and attacked, and
I presume he has killed.

Speaker 1 (01:02:23):
I like the way that the Riffs come in on
him and they begin using what I was thinking of
as the elbow machine, like they're all kind of like
pounding their elbows down in unison, which also reminded me,
like it made me think of and maybe I'm overthinking
this because I, you know, went into it expecting these
you know, the the Greek saga to be underneath it all.
But I was thinking of, like, you know, soldiers in

(01:02:46):
a tight formation doing something in unison here.

Speaker 2 (01:02:48):
Oh interesting. That may not be exactly what they're going
for here, but there absolutely are scenes in the movies
where the gang members appear like in a phalanx, so
you know they're in they're in an almost kind of
classical formation.

Speaker 1 (01:03:01):
Yeah, the Riffs, especially, we get scenes later where they're
all in formation. They're very stoic, very organized, in control.

Speaker 2 (01:03:08):
Now the scene is very scary and chaotic and effective,
but it if I could issue one more criticism of it,
it's the same thing with Luther I mentioned the second ago,
like this obvious, like this guy's just shrieking and pointing
at Cleon and there's nothing about Luther that suggests you
should listen to or believe him, but they do.

Speaker 1 (01:03:29):
Or that he's tight with the Riffs at all. Yeah, yeah,
but they're like Luther said it, I believe it. That's
all there is to it.

Speaker 4 (01:03:36):
Yep, yep.

Speaker 2 (01:03:37):
So meanwhile, the rest of the Warriors, now without their
strategic and uniting leader figure, they don't understand what's going on.
They're just running away from the park and through an
adjoining graveyard as the police flood in. And so this
provides the setup for the return journey, which will take
up most of the rest of the movie. The setup
is that stranded and leaderless, the remaining Warriors have to

(01:04:00):
make it back home to Coney Island, traveling along the
way through through the territory of all the rival gangs.
And not only are they traveling through baseline unfriendly territory,
which is their initial understanding. Unknown to them is the
fact that they have been blamed for the death of Cyrus,
and now the Rifts have a bounty on their heads.

(01:04:22):
The Rifts enlist all of the other gangs within Cyrus's
truce to bring them the Warriors dead or alive, so.

Speaker 1 (01:04:30):
They have to deal with every gang in the city
plus the police as they try to make it back
through New York City to get back to Coney Island,
where they'll presumably be safe or have at least more
resources for safety than they have anywhere else in the city.

Speaker 4 (01:04:44):
Yeah.

Speaker 2 (01:04:45):
Also just a note that Rembrandt literally tags a grave
stone as they're leaving the cemetery in Big w On
a headstone.

Speaker 1 (01:04:53):
Yep, that's his role, he's the artist.

Speaker 2 (01:04:56):
So let's mention a few of the encounters they have
along the way. One of them is that they are
trying to get on the train. They're trying to get
on the elevated train in the Bronx to get back
downtown so they can I think they need to change
trains at Union Station to get back to Brooklyn. So
they arrive at the train station, but then they want

(01:05:17):
to get up on the platform, but blocking their way
is a skinhead school bus from Hell. Now, I think
maybe you understand the culture here better than I do.

Speaker 5 (01:05:28):
Rob.

Speaker 2 (01:05:29):
I think the turnbull Acs or the gang here, and
they are skinheads, but not the kind of skinheads we
usually think of today. There's no indication as far as
I can tell, that they're actually Nazis. They're just like
they've got shaved heads.

Speaker 1 (01:05:42):
That's what I was getting from it, because it seems
to be a multi racial group. They have shaved heads,
but they don't have any otherwise. They don't have any
identifying iconography.

Speaker 2 (01:05:53):
They do have a bus that says dudes on the back, yep.
And so there's a very tense scene where the Warriors
are hiding in the shadows and they're trying to work
out should we try to get up on the platform
or not, And as the train is arriving, they make
a break for it. The bus tries to run them down.
The bus is just full of these creeps with these

(01:06:14):
bats and stuff, and they're there. Actually we're not to
the bats yet. They've just got clubs and chains and
things and they're threatening the Warriors. But the Warriors just
barely make it. They make it onto the train and
the train leaves.

Speaker 1 (01:06:25):
Yeah. It's a great sequence, Yeah, very terrifying, well shot,
very apocalyptic feeling.

Speaker 2 (01:06:32):
However it is they're not going to make it all
the way back because there is a fire on the
tracks and they have to disembark. So after this they're
on foot yet again, forced back onto the ground and
they have to make their way through an unfamiliar neighborhood,
this time the neighborhood that is controlled by a gang
called the Orphans, who were not at the meeting. They

(01:06:55):
were not invited to the conclave in the Bronx, apparently
because they are not well known or respected enough to
even receive an invitation. So this scene I think is
very interesting because as that the warriors are outnumbered by
the Orphans, but the Orphans are clearly a There's a
danger extending from the orphans low esteem among their peers

(01:07:20):
and their low self esteem. So these the orphans are
kind of unsure of themselves, unsure of where they fit
into the hierarchy and maybe have something to prove, and
I think all that uncertainty creates this extra sense of
danger there.

Speaker 1 (01:07:37):
Yeah. Yeah, like they're they're pretty low on the pecking order,
but they have the numbers. This is their territory, so
they have to they have to play it just right.
They like Swan is telling everybody, it's like, no mouthing off,
We're just gonna go through this without ruffling any fetters
and we're going to be just fine. But we end
up getting a lot of great tension, because this is
where Mercy interjects self and just starts basically like stirring

(01:08:02):
the whole situation up and telling the leader of the
orphans here, who I didn't get the name of this actory,
He wasn't in a ton of stuff, but we actually
call Greco. I think, yeah, I believe that's it. He's
great in this as the leader of the orphans because,
like you know, clearly he has authority over them. He
also is not really looking for some sort of a
violent encounter, but if pushed, it's absolutely going to go

(01:08:25):
that direction.

Speaker 4 (01:08:26):
That's right.

Speaker 2 (01:08:27):
You can tell he's afraid and he doesn't want to fight.
But then Mercy pushes him, and his own gang starts
kind of pushing him, and he feels like he can't
lose his face, so he's got to escalate, and now
everybody's escalating and and it ends up leading to a
violent encounter where the warriors. Well, first Mercy follows them

(01:08:48):
as they're making their way through the territory. Uh, she
she sort of I think she wants one of their
their gang insignia.

Speaker 1 (01:08:56):
Yeah, that was her whole thing. To the leader of
the orphans, She's she's like, you can't just let them
walk through. You've got to make them give up one
of their vests. I want one of those vests. And
that kind of begins the escalation right there, because Swan
is like, now we're not doing that. We're marching through
like soldiers through Avarnland.

Speaker 2 (01:09:17):
Yeah, So Mercy ends up following the warriors. She's kind
of she's clearly interested in them and would probably rather
follow them than stay with the Orphans. So Mercy ends
up following the warriors through the territory. This leads to
a scary confrontation where I think Ajax especially is treating
her abusively and then threatening her with sexual violence. And

(01:09:40):
then they have another confrontation with the with the Orphans,
which is ultimately resolved because somebody throws a Molotov cocktail,
which is a twist, and they end up having to
run out of the territory and Mercy follows them and
after this, shortly after this, they end up chased by
the police and separated. So different parts of the gang

(01:10:02):
are scattered in different directions. Uh, And there is one
one member of the gang, is it the is it
the scout Fox, the one who witnessed Luther as the
murderer in the in the assembly who is killed in
the subway station.

Speaker 1 (01:10:17):
Yeah, is this this in the altercation with the police. Yeah. Yeah,
it's like he gets thrown into the tracks.

Speaker 2 (01:10:21):
Fighting with a police officer and he gets thrown onto
the tracks in front of a train.

Speaker 1 (01:10:25):
Yeah, there was a frightening sequence there. And then I
believe what Swan and Mercy end up like jumping down
onto the tracks and escaping through the subway tunnel.

Speaker 2 (01:10:35):
So that might be later because they I think they're
separated from Mercy. But then Swan meets up again with
Mercy later.

Speaker 1 (01:10:43):
Okay, there you go.

Speaker 2 (01:10:44):
But another one of the encounters along the way is
the Baseball Furies. Uh, this is the baseball Gang. When
the gang splits up, half of them encounter the Baseball
Furies and it plays, Uh, these are the guys in
full Like are the Yankees uniforms are just generic baseball
uniform I don't know, their baseball uniforms with like war

(01:11:05):
paint on their faces and they're carrying bats and when
they meet them. This sounds funny and it is funny,
but it's also actually a little bit scary, especially because
of the music that sounds like the music from Dawn
of the Dead.

Speaker 1 (01:11:20):
Yeah, Devorzone is really on point here. Great portion of
the score.

Speaker 2 (01:11:24):
So half of the gang Swan, Ajax, Snow and Cowboy
are chased by baseball and they're chased through the park
and they're running for a while until ultimately they decide
to stand and fight, and they fight the baseball guys
and they win the brawl.

Speaker 1 (01:11:40):
Yeah, great sequence with lots of baseball sword fights that
again are both goofy and terrifying, like it's very brutal
fight that happens here. And yeah, the baseball Furies are
just so delightfully weird, Like I just I look at them.
We don't know much about them. We see them emerging
from some sort of a basement, like ceremonially grabbing their

(01:12:02):
their their baseball bats on the way out. But yeah,
I just can't help but wonder, like what is their ideology,
Like what are their sacred rights and observations? You know,
they show us only a little bit and then our
imagination fills in the rest and and they're to be
clear a late film encounter. It's held up as a
legit threat, like they're not just a novelty act, Like
these are guys you don't want to mess with. But

(01:12:23):
I'm like, what do they believe in? Like, do they
have sacred rituals that involve Big League two? I want
to know all about it.

Speaker 4 (01:12:39):
Let's see.

Speaker 2 (01:12:39):
So what happens after this? After the fight, Swan ends
up meeting back up with Mercy somehow in the train
station and they have to run away from police. So yeah,
they run down into the tunnels ahead of the train
and they're they don't get hit by the train, they're
dodging it. But they're just traveling through the tunnels on foot.
And Mercy clearly likes Swan, like she she is attracted

(01:13:01):
to him, She's interested in him, she wants his approval
and Swan, it's it's a fascinating dynamic here. Swan is
just cold to her. He rebuffs her. He tells her
that he sees her as promiscuous, he's mean to her.
Underneath it all, he does seem to be interested in her.
And so they sort of, you know, the kiss for

(01:13:23):
a moment, but then he's like, no, basically, no time
for loving tonight. We're back on the journey.

Speaker 1 (01:13:29):
Yeah, they spend a lot of time with this relationship,
a relationship that in a lesser movie would probably be
one of those like why are these two people in love? Like,
you know, why of these two people attracted to each other?
The screenplay in the direction here seems to, you know,
recognize that that whatever is bringing these two characters together

(01:13:49):
in this chaotic time, this chaotic setting, and at this
chaotic point in both of their lives, like there needs
to be something there, and the film does explore that
and you see it come out in their performances. I
think both of them, I think they have some great
chemistry together playing these characters who are like clearly going
through a very trying and traumatic situation.

Speaker 2 (01:14:09):
Now, maybe we should mention a few of the other
things that recur as interludes, you know, little scenes we
get throughout the runtime. We get a few scenes of
the Riffs, like organizing and searching for the warriors. We
get these scenes of them all these guys like standing
at attention and in an abandoned building. They have a
have an almost marine style call where they call out

(01:14:31):
yeah right.

Speaker 1 (01:14:32):
H yeah, and we and the guy who has stepped
in as leader of the Rifts. He has these really
killer silver shades, so he has like Darth Vader energy
if Darth Vader's whole thing was just having really cool sunglasses.

Speaker 2 (01:14:48):
Yes, of course, we get several scenes of Lynn Thigpin
on the radio making announcements about places to hunt for
the warriors and putting on me music that's thematically appropriate.
We also get scenes with the rogues just running around
and causing trouble, like they're driving a car that is

(01:15:08):
sort of like a graffiti hearse and they just go
up to I don't know vendors on the street and
threaten them and cause trouble.

Speaker 1 (01:15:17):
Now, one thing we should mention is that Luther, I think,
on two different occasions, calls in and checks with somebody.

Speaker 4 (01:15:23):
Yeah, what's going on there.

Speaker 2 (01:15:25):
I thought that what this was leading up to was
that Luther it would be revealed because I didn't remember
what would happen at the end. Yeah, same, I thought
it would be revealed at the end that Luther was
like checking in with someone who he was in a
conspiracy with, like the second in command of the Riffs
or something like that.

Speaker 1 (01:15:42):
Yeah, or perhaps the police even or organized crime or
you know somebody like you know, he's somebody's stooge. Yeah,
Like he's somebody's you know, like hired an anarchist.

Speaker 2 (01:15:55):
Yeah, he is on the phone with somebody, But who
is it. Maybe it's revealed and I just missed, but
I don't know.

Speaker 1 (01:16:01):
Or maybe it's something that it's in the screenplay or
some earlier version of the earlier cut or of the
film or earlier script. Who knows. But yeah, we'll get
to we'll get to the fallout in a bit. Oh.

Speaker 2 (01:16:13):
There's also a scene where after their encounter with the
Baseball Furies, the Warriors are trying to leave the park
and the Ajax decides to stay behind to sexually assault
a woman in the park, but it turns out to
be a police stakeout and he gets caught and arrested.

Speaker 4 (01:16:27):
So Ajax is out of the picture.

Speaker 1 (01:16:29):
Now, Yeah, this is the scene with Mercedes Rule and
it's a really well done scene. It's a very uncomfortable
scene to watch, and I guess we get what we
want because Ajax is arrested and defeated. And Ajax is
not a character I think we ever were really supposed
to root for, Like he was the worst of the Warriors,
So I assume I am vindicated him being relieved that

(01:16:52):
he has been arrested.

Speaker 2 (01:16:54):
Yeah, though the movie doesn't really celebrate his capture in
a way. It's just it's a very matter of fact, like,
well they got Ajax.

Speaker 4 (01:17:01):
Now there he is.

Speaker 1 (01:17:02):
It's his character flaws that bring about his own downfall. Yeah,
and we don't miss him. But I guess at the
end of the day, it is another thing that has
diminished the numbers of the warriors here, and the more
diminished they are, the less likely they are to survive
to reach their destination.

Speaker 4 (01:17:16):
Yeah, that's right. Now.

Speaker 2 (01:17:17):
Another one of the encounters is that again the gang
has been separated. So three of the warriors, including Rembrandt,
the sort of most sensitive, the nicest seeming of them,
who was tagging the gravestone, they get invited to a
party by some women they meet in the subway station
at Union Square. This turns out to be the Lizzies,

(01:17:41):
which are an all woman gang, and they're like having
a party, and at first they make it like, oh,
you know, come over, hang out, we can party. But
of course this turns into an ambush where they are
also trying to kill the warriors on the order of
the Riffs. So the guys here get ambushed and nearly killed,
but they escape.

Speaker 1 (01:18:01):
Both the Lizzies and the female undercover cop. They seem
to occupy the space of a mythic siren or a
Circe like feminine threat to our warriors as they think
their journey across this enemy territory.

Speaker 2 (01:18:14):
Now, eventually the warriors are all reunited. I think this
is still in the Union Union Squares station. I don't
know if I'm saying that right, the Union station or
Union Square station, and in along this area they have
to fight another gang that is pursuing them.

Speaker 4 (01:18:31):
This is the Punks.

Speaker 2 (01:18:34):
Overall's striped shirt, butt cut on the hair, and roller
skates yep.

Speaker 1 (01:18:40):
Yeah, and one of them is super tall. I couldn't
help but notice that there is one really tall like
blonde guy in the group. All these gangs, even the
goofy ones, come off as legitimately intimidating within the context
of the film.

Speaker 2 (01:18:52):
Much like with The Baseball Furies. The costumes are funny
and so it necessarily is funny at one level, but
the staging in the cinematography is actually quite intimidating and scary.
That yeah, like the way that the one of the punks,
like the scout of the Punks, is just slazily following

(01:19:14):
them through the subway station on roller skates, kind of
weaving back and forth. The fact that he's on roller
skates is funny, but it's framed in such a way
that it actually does work. It's very threatening.

Speaker 1 (01:19:26):
Yeah, yeah, absolutely, And of course this leads to this
huge fight in a subway station bathroom. I don't think
I've ever been in a subway station bathroom this big.
But I can't be this big by way. It looks
like a legit location, So maybe they downsize them after this,
They're like, we can't have this, you can't. We can't
have bathrooms that are this spacious and susceptible to gang warfare.

(01:19:51):
So we got to downsize them. I don't know, but
they have a robust battle in here. This is one
with backdrops through a stall door, a lot of cool
fi choreography, and just feels like an equal mix of
unrealistic and maybe even a little you know, fun, but
also brutal and also high stakes.

Speaker 2 (01:20:11):
The warriors stage and ambush by they go into the
bathroom and they know the punks are going to follow them,
and they all go into the stalls and then the
punks like go in and the warriors all burst out
of the stalls at the same time to attack, and
I'm like, I don't know if that gives you any
advantage at all.

Speaker 1 (01:20:28):
Yeah, but it works. They seem to know what they're doing.
They defeat the punks, and it's time to move on
towards their destination.

Speaker 2 (01:20:38):
Also in this scene, I think Mercy proves herself to
Swan in a way the way that she sticks with
the gang and holds her own and she's sort of
showing and emerging loyalty and dependability to her newfound friends.
And so I think there's whereas Swan was cruel to
her emotionally cruel to her in the scene before, something

(01:21:01):
is kind of different with them after this when they're
on the subway together.

Speaker 1 (01:21:05):
Yeah, and this this next subway scene really stood out
to me on this viewing of the picture. So, you know,
it's pretty late in the film at this point. The
remains of the warriors here are all on the train.
They're exhausted, they're beat up. You know, they got cuts
and scratches and bruises from this most recent battle and
all the previous battles. So you know, they're just hanging
on by a thread. They're on the train some of

(01:21:27):
them are I think like Rembrandts, like laying down on
the seats like he's just fallen asleep. But the Swan
is conscious, Mercy's conscious setting up. And then we see
a few civilians on the train, but then four youth
board the train, and these are not gang members. Given
their dress, we're to assume they're rich kids coming home
from a night on the town. And they PLoP down

(01:21:48):
opposite Swan and Mercy, and we get this long and
fascinating I guess, ultimately kind of a stare down between
the warriors and these rich kids. And it's it was
just it's just nic. It's like drawn out. It's minimalist
and really impressive. I think another film might have played
this for a quick laugh, or escalated it to some

(01:22:09):
form of physical confrontation, or indulged it with a lot
of dialogue. But instead there's no dialogue in this sequence. Instead,
he'll give this this what ends up being an intense
stare down from Swan, and he nonverbally stresses that Mercy
shouldn't flinch either, like she tries to sort of awkwardly
look away and touch your hair, and he like nudges her,
you know, and it's like, no, like, don't flinch. You've

(01:22:31):
got to You've got to stare them down. You've got
to like remain strong to who you are, and eventually
they will be the ones to flinch.

Speaker 2 (01:22:39):
Yeah, exactly right. So yeah, I was wondering, what's what's
gonna happen here? Is there going to be a fight,
But no, instead they just sit there and Swan it's
his sort of his first real show of tenderness to
Mercy that he's like asking her to be a brick
wall with him. Yeah, and so they are a brick
wall together now, and the kids who look like they

(01:23:00):
just came from prom or something, all dressed up in
tuxedos and fancy dresses. They eventually they get creeped out
and they get off the train at the next stop.

Speaker 1 (01:23:10):
Yeah. So just a really powerful scene and I think
just great acting from Beck and Van Valkenberg here. So yeah,
it was really impressed with this secret This is one
that I did not remember from my initial dealing in
the film many years ago.

Speaker 2 (01:23:22):
But it's great, I agree, Yeah, very strong. But there's
still a final fight left to be had.

Speaker 1 (01:23:28):
Yep.

Speaker 2 (01:23:29):
So the warriors, the Warriors and Mercy do arrive back
home in Coney Island, dawn is breaking, it's morning now,
and as they go on to the beach, we start
to hear a sound, a clinking sound, a rhythmic clinking
of glass against glass, and it's coming from a car.
Oh no, it is that tombstone hearst that we've seen

(01:23:49):
rolling around with the rogues in it all day. And
this is a famous moment from the movie where David
Patrick Kelly Luther, the leader of the rogues, is clink.
He has glass bottles on three of his fingers and
he is rhythmically clinking them together like a drum, and
he says, warriors come out to play, over and over.

(01:24:14):
Very creepy. It's iconic for a reason. I don't know
who had the idea of him to clink the bottles
like that, but it's brilliant.

Speaker 1 (01:24:21):
Yeah, I think I've read that it's kind of a
Kelly brought a lot to this, like basing it on
some characters he'd encountered in life before. But yeah, through
some combination of performer and writer and director, yeah, we
get this just super iconic and creepy sequence.

Speaker 2 (01:24:37):
So the warriors quickly arm themselves with pipes, and scraps
of wood and stuff they find under a I think
under a set of bleachers out on the beach, and
they go out onto the sand and the rogues pursue them,
and the two gangs come face to face on the
beach as dawn is breaking, and they ask Luther why

(01:24:58):
he killed Cyrus and he says, quote, no reason.

Speaker 1 (01:25:03):
I just like doing things like that. Oh man, it's
a real head scratcher. Yeah.

Speaker 2 (01:25:11):
I thought we were going to get an explanation from
like who he was on the phone with and so forth.

Speaker 1 (01:25:16):
Yeah, I mean, because on one level, it seems like
Luther would be the sort to gloat at this point
about his powerful connections to certainly to some other gang
or organized crime. But he doesn't. He's just like, nope,
I just like cause and trouble and that's what I did.
This is who I am.

Speaker 2 (01:25:33):
So it seems that Luther and Swan are setting up
for a duel, but it's not going to be a
fair one because Luther has a gun and Swan does not.
But Swan does have a switchblade knife, and so it's
actually it just came up on the show recently, that
scene in The Magnificent Seven where James Coburn has a
knife and the other guy has a gun, and there,

(01:25:54):
you know, he brings a knife to a gunfight and
he wins. The same thing happens here, actually, except Swan
does not kill Luther. Swan throws the knife into Luther's
hand and makes him drop the gun, and then right
then the Riffs arrive. They apparently know the truth because
a biker I think one of the Satan's mothers maybe

(01:26:15):
showed up and told them that, hey, it was not
the Warriors, it was Luther who shot Cyrus. So now
that they know the truth, they tell the warriors were cool.
You guys are good. But they surround Luther and the rogues.
We don't see what happens, but it's presumably to kill them,
and Luther is whining and protesting the whole time. He

(01:26:38):
keeps saying, no, it was the warriors.

Speaker 1 (01:26:42):
Yeah, this would be another moment where if Luther could
roll on anybody, it seems like he would have, even
if it was the police, Like this would be the
time to be like, let me tell you about the
person that I was talking on the phone with. They
set all this up, but it doesn't happen, So maybe
there was nothing to it. Maybe really just did this
because he likes chaos and it's just who he is. Yeah,

(01:27:03):
but yeah, I presumably they kill him. They're probably not
gonna let him off with a string warning.

Speaker 2 (01:27:08):
So we watched the Warriors and Mercy I guess. I
guess Mercy is kind of part of the Warriors now
in a way. They make their way happily down the
beach and then we get autro music. Oh my lord,
I was laughing at the Joe Walsh that comes in here.
It's amazing.

Speaker 1 (01:27:23):
Yeah, this is the track in the City, co written
by Divorce and later re recorded by the Eagles, So yeah,
strong Eagles vibe. I think in the City is a
great track. I've heard it many times before, you know.
But I guess watching the movie here, it does feel
from our modern perspective as being awfully yacht rocky. For

(01:27:44):
the sequence we're greeted with here, it is.

Speaker 2 (01:27:47):
A weird fit for the Warriors. It's like, can you
imagine if they'd played life in the fast Lane and
the scene where the turnbull Acs are trying to run
them down with the hell bus?

Speaker 1 (01:27:57):
Yeah yeah, yeah, So I don't know. I mean, it's
it's iconic. It's here, it's part of the Warriors. You
can't take it away, but it's it's an interesting.

Speaker 4 (01:28:07):
Choice, sure to make you lose your mind.

Speaker 1 (01:28:11):
All right, Well, there you have it. The Warriors a classic.
We didn't even mention this, but there's like, it's interesting
because we have like the Warriors cannon, you know, what
we see in the film, like the gangs that are
presented or mentioned in the film. And then there are
the gangs that are mentioned in the screenplay that didn't
make it into the picture. And then there is this

(01:28:32):
added layer that I don't know much about, but I
know that Rockstar Games came along at some point much
later on and made a Warrior's video game, brought back
a number of the actors from the picture, and I
don't know to what extent they expanded the universe of
the Warriors or brought in, like you know, expanded different gangs,
or brought in any of the gangs from the screenplay.

(01:28:53):
But I know, just from searching around for Warriors information,
I kept running across stuff tied to this game.

Speaker 2 (01:29:00):
Warriors video game made in two thousand and five.

Speaker 4 (01:29:03):
That is so strange.

Speaker 1 (01:29:05):
Yeah, this was I don't think this was the time
in which I was playing a lot of video games,
so I don't have any experience with this one. So
if there any big time Warrior fans out there, or
just folks who played this video game, perhaps you can
ride in and let us know what it consisted of
and how it matches up with the film.

Speaker 2 (01:29:21):
Can you think of another example where in the two
thousands there was a video game adaptation of a movie
from the seventies.

Speaker 1 (01:29:29):
I mean, I'm assuming there was some sort of an
alien game, but most of those would have probably been
more based on aliens as opposed to alien.

Speaker 2 (01:29:37):
Yeah, anyway, it'd be interesting to hear about. Yeah, Okay,
that's all the Warriors I got in me for today.

Speaker 1 (01:29:43):
All Right, we'll go and close this one up. But yeah,
we'll just remind everyone that Stuffed to Blew Your Mind
is primarily a science and culture podcast, with core episodes
on Tuesdays and Thursdays, short form episode on Wednesdays, and
then on Fridays, we set aside most serious concerns to
just talk about a weird film on Weird House Cinema.
You can follow the podcast feed on Instagram at STBYM podcast,

(01:30:03):
and if you want to follow weird House Cinema exclusively
go to letterbox dot com. It's l E T E
R B O x D dot com. Our username is
weird House and we have a list of all the
movies we've covered so far, and sometimes there's a peek
ahead at what's coming out next Huge things.

Speaker 2 (01:30:17):
As always to our excellent audio producer Jjposway. If you
would like to get in touch with us with feedback
on this episode or any other, to suggest a topic
for the future, or just to say hello, you can
email us at contact at stuff to Blow your Mind
dot com.

Speaker 3 (01:30:37):
Stuff to Blow Your Mind is production of iHeartRadio. For
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