Weirdhouse Cinema: The Warriors

In this episode of Weirdhouse Cinema, Rob and Joe take a street gang odyssey across New York City with 1979’s “The Warriors.” 

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:03):
Welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind, a production of iHeartRadio.

Speaker 2 (00:13):
Hey you welcome to Weird House Cinema. This is Rob
Lamb and this is Joe McCormick. 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. Four of our previous selections reflect this. Three

(00:36):
of them released in the same year 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

(00:58):
it's also packed full of weirdness. 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,

(01:20):
no aliens, no wizards, 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 3 (01:30):
I don't know how you're saying that it contains no
speculative element when it has street gangs that are in
baseball uniforms with face paint.

Speaker 2 (01:38):
I mean that could happening. 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 the costumes. Like

(02:01):
there is we'll get into. There are other aspects of
The Warriors that make it stand out as well.

Speaker 3 (02:06):
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 2 (02:24):
Yeah, and it, 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 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 spot in a goatee territory.

Speaker 3 (02:44):
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

(03:05):
real world. And the gangs in it and the heroes
in it are all just kind of mythical in a way.

Speaker 2 (03:12):
Yeah, yeah, I know what you're talking about. Like, similar
things are often said about I don't know, Cornt 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 ends

(03:33):
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,

(03:53):
and 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

(04:13):
just been sweating for days, that patina of sweat on them,
and most of the scenes. It's a grungy seventies New
York City film. And yeah, yeah, it's just part of
the vibe. It's just this is a good summer movie
in my opinion.

Speaker 3 (04:29):
I was quite surprised to hear you describe it as
a cleanser in any way, because this film is decidedly dirty.
It needs a shower, it is.

Speaker 2 (04:37):
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.

(04:58):
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,

(05:22):
the film would seem to be removed enough from reality
to avoid controversy upon release, at least from you know,
our vantage point, because, especially as the decades set in,
I think it also takes on this additional air of
otherness because 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, at the time that they released it,

(05:45):
apparently there were various controversies. There were like gangs allegedly
fighting in the theaters, like the street gangs loved that.
People who didn't like the street gangs were very critical
of the movie for for highlighting street gang violence.

Speaker 3 (05:58):
The Warriors is going to make people join gangs?

Speaker 2 (06:00):
I don't know, 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, uh, that's an interesting place to stop. But anyway,

(06:23):
he pointed out 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

(06:44):
lot of great New York City locations. I mean, this
is definitely a movie filmed in New York. Uh and
and even if you're used to today's New York City, you
feel at home in this film.

Speaker 3 (06:56):
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 York for 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

(07:17):
Bronx 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 cozy and familiar. It's hostile territory where our main

(07:37):
characters are in extreme danger. But it just feels like
it makes you want to settle in with a cup
of tea or something. Do you know what I'm talking about?

Speaker 2 (07:46):
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 the like the post apocalyptic New York but without
the apocalypse, or more of like a low apocalypse, and
yet it still feels like lovingly New York City in
some strange way, even though most of the scenes are

(08:08):
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 3 (08:19):
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, as you know, it would take the
worst components of urban poverty or decay or something and

(08:42):
then 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 2 (08:53):
Yeah. Escape from New York is in many ways like
the prime example of this, in which Manhattan had 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 3 (09:09):
New York does still feel like lived in in this.

Speaker 2 (09:12):
Movie, 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 3 (09:33):
Now, something 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 Anibosis by Xenophon, And so

(09:57):
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

(10:19):
that this is the story told by Xenophon, but in
the modern day, So what's the deal with the Anabasis?
The Anibasis is the story of a company of ten
thousand Greek mercenaries who travel out to fight a war
but becomes stranded in Mesopotamia. So they're fighting for a

(10:40):
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 to

(11:00):
travel back from this far distant hostile territory in Mesopotamia
back to friendly lands, back to Greek cities along the
sea and 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

(11:22):
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

(11:45):
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 very
interesting way to depict street gangs in storytelling. So the
movie is decidedly told from the gangs and the gang

(12:07):
member's 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. It's 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

(12:29):
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

(12:51):
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

(13:14):
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 2 (13:24):
Yeah, even Rembrandt, the most innocent seeming member of the gang,
is just totally down to desecrate some tombstones, Like 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 casually use homophobic or racist terms at times. And
on one hand, you know, perhaps they're going for that

(13:46):
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 loud mouthed, troubled youth. Yes,
some of the youth are thirty. They are not good guy.

Speaker 3 (14:00):
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

(14:22):
are They're not Luke Skywalker and Princess Leah. You know,
they're dangerous people in a dangerous situation.

Speaker 2 (14:29):
I like that you mentioned like nineteen fifties style street
gang 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

(14:51):
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
no of sense that they have like 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

(15:13):
are wearing. You know, it's like they their only possession
is their identity as a warrior, and there's nothing else
for them in the world at all.

Speaker 3 (15:22):
All they have is the perception they can create in
others that they are tough and they shouldn't be messed with.

Speaker 2 (15:28):
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
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 3 (15:50):
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 their
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.

(16:12):
The return home is the return to the coastline at
Coney Island.

Speaker 2 (16:16):
Yeah yeah, Like, isn't it like a rallying cry in
the original work, like the Sea of the Sea, like
the Sea?

Speaker 3 (16:22):
Yeah exactly, yes, all right, Well.

Speaker 2 (16:24):
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 just instantly like like no, Like, that's not what

(16:46):
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.

Speaker 3 (16:57):
That, Okay, and 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 2 (17:06):
There you go, there you go.

Speaker 3 (17:07):
Well, what would be the best mascot? I know it's
not baseball, but you could have a whole gang of gritty's.
You could have a whole gang of Yeah.

Speaker 2 (17:13):
Gritty gang would work. I mean anything like, uh, you know,
we could Witch of the East. Everybody's dressed 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 sulternate dimension. All right,

(17:35):
let's go ahead and listen to a little trailer audio.

Speaker 4 (17:46):
These are the armies of the night. Can you do that?

Speaker 5 (17:58):
The Furies, the Bombers, the high Hats, the Lizzies, the
turnbull Aces, the Gramercy Rifts. And these are the Warriors.

Speaker 4 (18:21):
We know about the Warriors. They're a heavy outfit. They're
from Corney Island. Warriors, you guys are the big dudes. Huh.
Now they're in the Bronx.

Speaker 5 (18:31):
We're going back twenty seven miles behind enemy lines.

Speaker 4 (18:34):
It's the only choice we get.

Speaker 5 (18:36):
Between them in safety stand twenty thousand cops.

Speaker 4 (18:42):
And one hundred thousand sworn enemies. I want them all.

Speaker 6 (18:46):
I want all the Warriors.

Speaker 5 (19:00):
They've got one way out, They've got one chance, They've
got one night the Warriors.

Speaker 2 (19:25):
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, yeah, go 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,

(19:54):
let's get into the people who made this film, starting
at the top. The director 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 as

(20:17):
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 3 (20:35):
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 Schussett or shuss It, and that was the
first script by O'Bannon I think was pitched at a

(20:55):
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,

(21:18):
and so they took a pass at the script. Is
that how you understand it?

Speaker 2 (21:21):
Yeah, yeah, that's my understanding. So you know, Hill and
Guyler 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 like what their particular take on it was

(21:43):
and how it was written.

Speaker 3 (21:44):
We can come back to that in a minute, because
I do want to talk about Walter Hill's screenwriting style now.

Speaker 2 (21:49):
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.

(22:13):
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 two Trespass, and his most recent directorial
effort was a twenty twenty two Western title Dead for
a Dollar.

Speaker 3 (22:31):
Oh my god, Walter Hill did Red Heat. I didn't
know that's the one with Schwarzenegger, right, or he plays
a Soviet cop mm hmm.

Speaker 2 (22:39):
Yeah. I vaguely remember seeing this one back when I
was a kid.

Speaker 3 (22:43):
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 2 (22:54):
Yep Arnold and James Belushi quite a screenpairing.

Speaker 3 (22:58):
Wow, I can imagine the chemistry. I'll have to watch
that one someday. 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

(23:22):
something that I like a lot. So, just as one example,
I want 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

(23:43):
of them, idle 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.

(24:04):
Lights on 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,

(24:25):
reaches 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

(24:45):
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 often leaves out
the subject of the sentence in screenwriting if the subject
is the same as the previous sentence. So it's just

(25:08):
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 into

(25:31):
what happened in the actual film.

Speaker 2 (25:34):
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 3 (25:45):
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 Warrior screenplay online as well.
We'll come back to this because there's some funny things
from it that we can talk about. It is very
different from the final film, and I think there might

(26:06):
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 and

(26:29):
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 obviously

(26:49):
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 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, showing off his muscles,

(27:13):
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 over the

(27:34):
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 2 (27:47):
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

(28:09):
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 3 (28:27):
But now, is it the case that Hill also had
a writing partner on this script.

Speaker 2 (28:31):
Yes. David Shaber, who lived nineteen twenty nine through nineteen
ninety nine American screenwriter and theater producer. His other screenplay
credits include nineteen eighty one's Nighthawks, nineteen nineties 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 Yurik, who lived nineteen twenty
five through twenty thirteen, American novelist who was apparently partially

(28:56):
inspired not only by the classics, but 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 like
he had a little insight into what the world consisted of,
and he's like, it's not that glamorous, I'm going to

(29:16):
write it. His other books include sixty eight's The Bags,
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 or may
not mention all the warriors, but a lot of them

(29:37):
are 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 Beg This is Our Handsome
and ultimately ends up being the de facto warlord of

(29:58):
the Warriors after some stuff go 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

(30:18):
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

(30:38):
TV and film projects.

Speaker 3 (30:40):
Wow, Xanadu, Mega Force, The Last Ninja, That Is Is
Is the Warriors generally considered Beck's like peak peak performance.

Speaker 2 (30:52):
I think it might be. Yeah, I think 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

(31:12):
to bring the appropriate 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'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

(31:33):
year old youths is a common occurrence in films such
as these. All right, 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

(31:55):
them is Lord Raydon from nineteen ninety seven's Mortal Kombat
Annihilation Woo. So this is the guy who's been in
tons of stuff The Warriors, however, it 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.

(32:15):
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 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. TV viewers might
know him best from Dexter what he played Dexter's dad

(32:38):
on that Yeah So Yeah. Solid character actor. His stage
work includes a nineteen seventy nine Broadway production of Bent,
alongside Richard Gear and Michael Gross.

Speaker 3 (32:49):
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 2 (32:56):
Is it a substantial role or kind of like a
bit part.

Speaker 3 (33:00):
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.

Speaker 2 (33:10):
Up 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 (33:28):
Yeah.

Speaker 2 (33:30):
Now, interesting Aliens connection. This is one I hadn't I
wasn't familiar with, but 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

(33:51):
whatever the particulars of the situation were, it got worked out.
Things turned out out all right for James Ramar. But
due to the i'm 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

(34:13):
cut size for him. It was size for James Ramar. Oh,
that's funny.

Speaker 3 (34:17):
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 2 (34:27):
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.

(34:50):
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.

(35:15):
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 in film productions, including NYPD Blue,
in which he played Officer Donnie Simons. So very deadly
serious tone by coaches here, he's often there's a lot
of dialogue back and forth between the Warriors, so they

(35:35):
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

(35:57):
mckeerick 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

(36:18):
was thinking, really, you kind of 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 3 (36:36):
Yeah, yeah, in nineteen seventy nine. Yeah, you know, de
Niro would have been interesting a swan.

Speaker 2 (36:44):
Yeah, all right. We mentioned rim Brandt 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,

(37:04):
forty eight, Hours in eighty two, in Hill Street Blues
in eighty one. Died 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 probably

(37:26):
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 3 (37:36):
Oh yeah, I can see that.

Speaker 2 (37:37):
Yeah. 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 like, you know, sort of
political infrastructure stuff, and then sometime as a pastor as well,

(37:58):
I believe, huh oh. 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

(38:20):
episodes of Monsters, Star Trek, 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 Piune, starring Andrew dice Clay and Terry Hatcher.

Speaker 3 (38:40):
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 movies from the eighties, such as

(39:02):
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 Volkenberg
in The Warriors. I think she's the most interesting actor
in the movie. A lot of the performances of the

(39:23):
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

(39:43):
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 valkenberg character is complicated and paradoxical. There are these

(40:04):
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 in scenes
like the scenes later where she wants Swan's approval and

(40:25):
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 is very good. And I like
her a lot.

Speaker 2 (40:46):
Yes, I absolutely agreat 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 gone to ever be let out. You know,
they have this huge wall up, and she is this
character where we get to see a lot more, we

(41:07):
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
be king of New York Street Gangs, played by Roger
Hill no relation, who have nineteen forty nine through twenty fourteen.

(41:29):
This is his most well known role, a small one
but undeniably iconic. And then we have the Pictures villain
is Luther, the leader of the Rogues, played by David
Patrick Kelly born nineteen fifty one. Just an undeniable chaos
goblin in this picture. This was Kelly's first film and
TV role, but he had a background in music and

(41:52):
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
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 3 (42:14):
Interesting they didn't cast him as the leader of the
mimes Ganges, which yes is in the movie. One of
the gang are mimes.

Speaker 2 (42:21):
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

(42:42):
five's Commando. Do you remember who he played in Commando?

Speaker 3 (42:45):
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

(43:08):
him down and is like dangling him off a cliff
and says, when I said I'd kill you last, I lied.

Speaker 2 (43:14):
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's The Crow, twenty
fourteen's John Wick, It's twenty seventeen sequel, and he also

(43:35):
had a role on Secession.

Speaker 3 (43:37):
Oh, who was he in Succession?

Speaker 2 (43:38):
I remember that he 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 3 (43:58):
Well, I don't remember who he was in success but
I'm pretty sure in Twin Peaks, which you mentioned, isn't
he the guy who shows up from France with Baghett
and Brie for Audrey Horn's dad.

Speaker 2 (44:09):
I looked up some stills and I have one for you.
Here he is eating some bread, so I guess that
is correct.

Speaker 3 (44:14):
They're like, he shows up with the food and they're
in his office and they're going like.

Speaker 2 (44:20):
Brie, 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,

(44:42):
Academy Award winning actress for her role in nineteen ninety
two 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 thigpenn Is in this she lived nineteen forty
eight through two thousand and three. Do we ever see
her whole face or all her lips?

Speaker 5 (45:00):
No?

Speaker 3 (45:00):
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

(45:21):
she like queues up songs that are thematically appropriate. So
she's like, hey, Warriors, if you're listening, and then puts
on Nowhere to Run.

Speaker 2 (45:30):
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 3 (45:40):
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

(46:02):
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 2 (46:21):
Oh that's awesome. I don't think I ever watched Carmen
san Diego, but just looking over her filmography, yeh. 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 stage version. But then she
was also in the film adaptation, so that's pretty cool.
But she's been in tons of stuff like Tutsie back

(46:42):
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 was in The Bicentennial Man in nineteen ninety nine,
So a load of credit it's here, you know, great
voice obviously.

Speaker 3 (47:03):
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. It's just a tight shot 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

(47:24):
very like short sentences with a period and then a pause.

Speaker 2 (47:30):
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 gonna just mention in passing that Bobby Mannix has

(47:52):
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

(48:14):
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 convincing, like it feels brutal, but also has that

(48:38):
flare you know you're going to see occasionally like the
Warriors will like gorilla press somebody and throw them or
back body drop somebody through a bathroom stall door, that
sort of thing. You know.

Speaker 3 (48:48):
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 pro wrestling.

Speaker 2 (49:05):
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 Devores And 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

(49:27):
scores include seventy seven's Rolling Thunder, seventy eight's The Ninth Configuration, Xanadu,
eighty six is Night of the Creeps, and nineteen nineties
The Exorcist Part three.

Speaker 3 (49:36):
Wow, the same person did Xanadu and Night of the Creeps.

Speaker 2 (49:40):
A number of Xanadu connections here between this movie and
then yeah, Night of the Creeps as well.

Speaker 3 (49:46):
Should we do Xanadu on Weird House.

Speaker 2 (49:49):
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 3 (49:57):
I've seen it, I remember it being a good.

Speaker 2 (49:59):
Time, okay, But as far as the score goes, I
love Divorce and score here. It's an absolute synth rock jam.
I've heard 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. Waxwortz Records put
This Baby out remastered on crimson and leather colored vinyl

(50:21):
several years back, and of course you can stream it
along with this with 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 a number of rock tracks as well, and it
gets into some other territory as well, but very synth
rock heavy.

Speaker 3 (50:50):
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 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 hailing

(51:14):
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,

(51:37):
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 2 (51:56):
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 3 (52:14):
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

(52:36):
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

(52:59):
and by by road it's about thirty miles.

Speaker 2 (53:02):
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 Burroughs and all the way out
to Coney Island. Yeah.

Speaker 3 (53:23):
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.

Speaker 2 (53:41):
And so the.

Speaker 3 (53:42):
Warriors are departing for the conclave, where all 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,

(54:03):
apart from the gangs we actually meet and know of
in the movie, in the Walter Hill screenplay, there was
there 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, you know, they're called

(54:24):
things like 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 Queensbridge Mutilators, the Xylophones, and

(54:46):
the yo yo's. What is that? What is the initiation
to get into the xylophones?

Speaker 2 (54:52):
Oh man? And is it there signature weapon?

Speaker 5 (54:55):
Like?

Speaker 2 (54:55):
Yeah, the design work on these.

Speaker 3 (54:57):
Oh yeah, they've each got two mallet.

Speaker 2 (55:01):
Yeah, there's so many, you know, I want to know, like,
who about the nickel steaks? What's there of the.

Speaker 3 (55:06):
Old I don't know where that is.

Speaker 2 (55:08):
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 3 (55:27):
It's the Moonpie logo stabbing a sword through its own stomach.

Speaker 2 (55:31):
Yeah, and then there's a what is it? The is
it the Satan's Mother's.

Speaker 3 (55:35):
The Satan's mothers. So they're like a motorcycle gang, an
outlaw motorcycle group.

Speaker 2 (55:39):
Yeah, they're the only gang that seems to be an
mc uh and we don't really see much of them,
but they're in there. They're in the movie.

Speaker 3 (55:46):
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 2 (55:54):
Hmmm, or it was due to a rift in the Rifts. Well,
I guess the Winter organization.

Speaker 3 (56:00):
That never comes up in the movie, but just.

Speaker 2 (56:03):
A glimpse into the wider imagined world of all these
various street gangs and their various costuming choices, the yo yos,
and Cyrus is going to unite all of them. That's
the revision here, that's the point. So we get to
this conclave and Cyrus, the leader of the grammercy refs

(56:23):
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 gangs
should agree to a truce. And in fact, Cyrus lays
out a logical case for this. I think the direct
quote is can you count?

Speaker 4 (56:43):
Suckers?

Speaker 3 (56:44):
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 they form an alliance together,

(57:04):
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 2 (57:16):
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 these participating gangs have ceased fighting each
other at least for the time being. And if we

(57:38):
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, new
golden age of crime in New York City.

Speaker 3 (57:52):
Yeah, exactly so. Cyrus, I would say, is presented almost
as a prophetic or christ like figure. 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 2 (58:12):
Yeah. And of course, the iconic line from all of
this is that he asks 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 plan.

Speaker 3 (58:28):
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 the

(58:48):
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. The skin is what's it David
Patrick Kelly? Is that his name?

Speaker 2 (59:07):
Yep?

Speaker 3 (59:08):
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

(59:28):
leader of anything, even a violent criminal enterprise. He is
just as you said, He's like a chaos goblin.

Speaker 4 (59:35):
He is a.

Speaker 3 (59:35):
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 acting on
his own to cause chaos and destruction but it's strange
to me that he is portrayed as the leader of

(59:57):
the rogues.

Speaker 2 (59:58):
I need a similar issue with the Yore, 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

(01:00:19):
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 3 (01:00:32):
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 arrived to break
up the gathering and everybody begins to scatter. The Riffs
surround their fallen leader and Cleon, the leader of the Warriors,

(01:00:57):
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 2 (01:01:16):
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 warriors ranks.

Speaker 3 (01:01:23):
Right, 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 getting out of there.
But 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 rifts. He says,

(01:01:45):
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 2 (01:01:58):
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

(01:02:20):
a tight formation doing something in unison here.

Speaker 3 (01:02:22):
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 2 (01:02:35):
Yeah, the Riffs especially, we get scenes later where they're
all in formation. They're very stoic, very organized in control.

Speaker 3 (01:02:43):
Now if 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 Luthor. I mentioned the second ago,
like this obvious, like this guy's just shrieking and pointing
at Cleon And there's nothing about Luthor that's just you
should listen to or believe him. But they do or.

Speaker 2 (01:03:03):
That he's tight with the Riffs at all.

Speaker 3 (01:03:05):
Ye.

Speaker 2 (01:03:06):
Yeah, but they're like Luther said it, I believe it.
That's all there is to it. Yep.

Speaker 3 (01:03:10):
Yep. 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 is 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.

(01:03:31):
The setup is that stranded and leaderless, the remaining Warriors
have to 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

(01:03:53):
death of Cyrus, and now the Rifts have a bounty
on their heads. The Riffs enlist all of the other
gangs within Cyrus's truce to bring them the Warriors dead
or alive.

Speaker 2 (01:04:04):
So 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 3 (01:04:19):
Yeah. Also just a note that Rembrandt literally tags a
grave stone as they're leaving the cemetery in Big w
On a headstone.

Speaker 2 (01:04:27):
Yep, that's his role he's the artist.

Speaker 3 (01:04:30):
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

(01:04:52):
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 4 (01:05:03):
Rob.

Speaker 3 (01:05:03):
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 2 (01:05:16):
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 3 (01:05:27):
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 bats and stuff, and they're they're actually,

(01:05:51):
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 2 (01:06:00):
Yeah. It's a great sequence, Yeah, very terrifying, well shot,
very apocalyptic feeling.

Speaker 3 (01:06:06):
However, 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,

(01:06:26):
who were not at the meeting. They 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
the Warriors are outnumbered by the Orphans, but the orphans
are clearly a there's a danger extending from the orphans

(01:06:52):
low esteem among their peers 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 2 (01:07:12):
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 mouth
and off, We're just gonna go through this without ruffling
any feathers and we're gonna be just fine. But but
we end up getting a lot of great tension because
this is where Mercy uh interjects herself and just starts

(01:07:35):
basically like stirring the whole situation up and telling the
leader of the orphans here, who I didn't get the
name of this actor He wasn't in a ton of stuff,
but we actually, 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,

(01:07:57):
but if pushed, it's absolutely going to go that. That's right.

Speaker 3 (01:08:01):
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 uh, and it ends up leading to
a violent encounter where the warriors. Well, first Mercy follows

(01:08:22):
them as they're making their way through the territory.

Speaker 2 (01:08:25):
Uh.

Speaker 3 (01:08:25):
She she sort of I think she wants one of
their their gang insignia.

Speaker 2 (01:08:30):
Yeah, that was her whole thing to 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 their their vests. I want one of
those vests. And and that kind of begins the the
the escalation right there, because Swan is like, now we're
not doing that. We're marching through like soldiers through a farnland.

Speaker 3 (01:08:51):
Yeah, so Mercy ends up following the warriors. She's kind
of she's clearly interested in them and would probably rather
follow them. Then 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

(01:09:14):
then they have another confrontation with the with the Orphans,
which is ultimately resolved because somebody throws a Molotov cocktail
which is a twist. Uh. And they end up having
to run out of the territory and Mercy follows them.

Speaker 5 (01:09:29):
Uh.

Speaker 3 (01:09:29):
And after this, shortly after this, they end up chased
by the police and separated. So different parts of the
gang 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 2 (01:09:51):
Yeah? Is this this in the altercation with the police, Yeah. Yeah,
he gets.

Speaker 3 (01:09:56):
Fighting with a police officer and he gets thrown onto
the tracks in front of a train.

Speaker 2 (01:10:00):
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. So
that might be later.

Speaker 3 (01:10:12):
Because I think they're separated from Mercy, but then Swan
meets up again with Mercy later.

Speaker 2 (01:10:17):
Okay, there you go.

Speaker 3 (01:10:19):
But another one of the encounters along the way is
the Baseball Furies. This is the baseball gang. When the
gang splits up, half of them encounter the Baseball Furies
and it plays these are the guys in full like
are they Yankees uniforms or just generic baseball uniform I
don't know, their baseball uniforms with like war paint on

(01:10:39):
their faces, and they're carrying bats and when they meet them,
it it 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 2 (01:10:54):
Yeah, Devorzone is really on point here. Great portion of
the score.

Speaker 3 (01:10:58):
So half of the gangs 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 2 (01:11:14):
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

(01:11:36):
their their baseball bats and 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 that held up is a
legit threat, Like they're not just a novelty act, Like
these are guys you don't want to mess with. But

(01:11:58):
I'm like, what do they believe the Like do they
have sacred rituals that involve big league chew? I want
to know all about it.

Speaker 3 (01:12:13):
Let's see. 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

(01:12:35):
is attracted 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,

(01:12:57):
the kiss for a moment, but then he's like no,
basically no time for love, and tonight we're back on
the journey.

Speaker 2 (01:13:03):
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 whatever is bringing these two characters together in

(01:13:23):
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 3 (01:13:44):
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
they have an almost marine style call where they call

(01:14:05):
out yeah right, m.

Speaker 2 (01:14:07):
M yeah, and we and the guy who has stepped
in as leader of the Riffs. 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 3 (01:14:22):
Yes, of course, we get several scenes of length thick
Pin on the radio making announcements about places to hunt
for the warriors and putting on 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

(01:14:42):
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 2 (01:14:51):
Now, one thing we should mention is that Luther, I think,
on two different occasions, calls in and checks with somebody.

Speaker 3 (01:14:57):
Yeah, what's going on there. I thought that what this
was leading up to was that lou it would be
revealed because I didn't remember what would happen at the end, Yeah,
saying 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 you know, the second
in command of the riffs or something like that.

Speaker 2 (01:15:16):
Yeah, or perhaps the police even or organized crime or
you know, somebody like you know, he's somebody's stooge, Like
he's somebody's you know, like hired an anarchist.

Speaker 3 (01:15:29):
Yeah, he is on the phone with somebody. But who
is it. Maybe it's revealed and I just missed it,
but I don't.

Speaker 2 (01:15:35):
Know, Or maybe it's something that Yeah, 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.

Speaker 3 (01:15:47):
Oh, there's also a scene where after their encounter with
the Baseball Furies, the the 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. So Ajax is out of the picture.

Speaker 2 (01:16:03):
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

(01:16:27):
he has been arrested.

Speaker 3 (01:16:28):
Yeah, though the movie doesn't really celebrate his capture in
a way. It's just it's a very matter of fact, like, oh,
well they got Ajax. Now there he is.

Speaker 2 (01:16:36):
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 3 (01:16:50):
Yeah, that's right.

Speaker 2 (01:16:51):
Now.

Speaker 3 (01:16:52):
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,

(01:17:15):
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're 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 2 (01:17:35):
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 the enemy territory.

Speaker 3 (01:17:49):
Now, eventually the warriors are all reunited. I think this
is still in the Union Union Square 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. This is
the punks overall's striped shirt, butt cut on the hair,

(01:18:13):
and roller skates.

Speaker 2 (01:18:14):
Yeah yeah, and one of them is super tall. I
couldn't help but notice that he's 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 3 (01:18:26):
Much like with the baseball theories. 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.

Speaker 1 (01:18:41):
That ye.

Speaker 3 (01:18:42):
Like the way that the one of the punks, like
the scout of the punks, is just lazily following 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 2 (01:19:01):
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.

Speaker 3 (01:19:10):
I can't be this big by way.

Speaker 2 (01:19:13):
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. Uh, 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 fight choreography, and just feels like an

(01:19:37):
equal mix of unrealistic and maybe even a little you know, fun,
but also brutal and also high stakes.

Speaker 3 (01:19:45):
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.

Speaker 2 (01:20:02):
All, 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 3 (01:20:12):
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

(01:20:35):
is kind of different with them after this when they're
on the subway together.

Speaker 2 (01:20:39):
Yeah, and 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 in 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 there on the train. Some of

(01:21:01):
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 for 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

(01:21:22):
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 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 form

(01:21:43):
of physical confrontation, or indulged it with a lot of dialogue.
But instead there's no dialogue in this sequence. Instead, he'll
give us just 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 look away
and touch your hair and he like nudges her, you know,
and it's like, no, like, don't flinch. You've got to

(01:22:05):
you 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 3 (01:22:13):
Yeah, exactly right. So, Yeah, I was wondering, what's what's
gonna happen here? Is they're gonna be 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're a brick wall together now, and the

(01:22:33):
kids who look like they just came from prom or something,
all dressed up and tuxedos and fancy dresses. They eventually
they get they get creeped out, and they get off
the train at the next stop.

Speaker 2 (01:22:45):
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 viewing of
the film many years ago. But it's it's great, I agree.

Speaker 3 (01:22:58):
Yeah, very strong, but there's still a final fight left
to be had. 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

(01:23:20):
a car. Oh no, it is that tombstone hearst that
we've seen 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 cling.
He has glass bottles on three of his fingers and
he is rhythmically clinking them together like a drum, and

(01:23:41):
he says, warriors come out to play, over and over.
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 2 (01:23:56):
Yeah, I think I've read that. It's kind of a
Kelly brought a lot to this, 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 3 (01:24:11):
So the warriors quickly armed 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

(01:24:32):
he killed Cyrus and he says, quote, no reason. I
just like doing things like that.

Speaker 2 (01:24:42):
Oh man, it's a real head scratcher.

Speaker 3 (01:24:45):
Yeah, I thought we were going to get an explanation
from like who he was on the phone with and
so forth.

Speaker 2 (01:24:50):
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
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 3 (01:25:07):
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,

(01:25:28):
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

(01:25:50):
showed up and told them that, hey, it was not
the Warriors, it was 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

(01:26:11):
protesting the whole time. He keeps saying, no, it was
the Warriors.

Speaker 2 (01:26:17):
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 didn't happen, so maybe
there was nothing to it. Maybe he really just did
this because he likes chaos and it's just who he is. Yeah,

(01:26:37):
but yeah, I presumably they kill him. They're probably not
going to let him off with a string warning.

Speaker 3 (01:26:42):
So we watched the Warriors and Mercy. 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 2 (01:26:58):
Yeah, this is the track in the City, co written
by Divorce and and later re recorded by the Eagles.
So yeah, strong Eagles vibe.

Speaker 5 (01:27:06):
Uh.

Speaker 2 (01:27:07):
I think in the City is a great track. I've
heard it many times before, you know, but I guess
watching watching the movie here, it does feel from our
modern perspective as being awfully yacht rocky. For the sequence
we're greeted with here, it is.

Speaker 3 (01:27:21):
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 aces are trying to run
them down with the hell bus?

Speaker 2 (01:27:31):
Yeah? Yeah, yeah, So I don't know it. 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 3 (01:27:41):
Choice, sure to make you lose your mind.

Speaker 2 (01:27:45):
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. Uh, you know
what what we see in the film, like the gangs
that are present and that are 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

(01:28:06):
then there is this 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

(01:28:26):
the games from the screenplay. But I know just from
searching around for Warriors information, I kept running across stuff
tied to this game.

Speaker 3 (01:28:34):
A Warriors video game made in two thousand and five.
That is so strange.

Speaker 2 (01:28:39):
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 3 (01:28:56):
Can you think of another example where in the two
thousands there was a VID video game adaptation of a
movie from the seventies.

Speaker 2 (01:29:03):
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 3 (01:29:11):
Yeah, anyway, it'd be interesting to hear about. Yeah, Okay,
that's all the warriors I got in me for today.

Speaker 2 (01:29:17):
All Right, we'll go ahead and close this one up.
But yeah, we'll just remind everyone that Stuff 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,

(01:29:37):
and if you want to follow Weird House Cinema exclusively,
go to letterbox dot com. It's l E T 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.

Speaker 3 (01:29:51):
Huge things. As always to our excellent audio producer JJ Posway.
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
Yourmind dot com.

Speaker 1 (01:30:11):
Stuff to Blow Your Mind is production of iHeartRadio. For
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