Has anyone else seen this movie? I just watched it this evening, and I love it. It’s really the Western answer to Hong Kong kung-fu films; full of pulpy, stylised fight and chase sequences, loads of colourful, cheesy gangs with their own styles and look, and archetypical characters.
I especially liked the DJ character, commenting with ironic, dispassionate coolness on the events on the street (and playing ‘Nowhere to Run to’ for the Warriors ;)), and the camp, giggling sociopath leader of the Rogues. The ending, where he explains why he shot Cyrus, is just perfect. ‘I just like doing things like that’. Yes indeed.
When it had its first run on HBO in about 1981, I would set my alarm clock to get up and watch it every time, because it would only be shown at about 1:00 am. It was considered extremely violent at the time.
What’s strange about watching it nowadays is that instead of looking up to these guys (I was pretty anti-establishment as a fifteen-year-old) now I look and see a bunch of dumb punks.
The story is an adaptation of a greek myth, no?
I watched it on a late night movie (on TV) once, and the host made that point. The host was possibly Joe Bob Briggs or something like that.*
*I don’t know the names of celebrities. It’s funny really. There’s a whole thread about how people hate J Lo, and I don’t even think I’d recognize her.
wow!!
Can’t believe there are people out there who still love this movie. There was a cult movie feel to it when it came out, and it looks like it happened. I don’t know how many times we watched it on video, but I hadn’t thought about it in 20yrs till I saw this thread tonight.
The Warriors is my most seen movie.
I saw it three or four times in the theater, everytime it showed on HBO (in its fledgling days), I’ve rented it a number of times, I’ve owned it but I don’t know what happened to the tape. Hell I even owned the soundtrack album at one point.
It made me and all of my 13 year old buddies in rural Maine think we were in a gang. We were actively planning on invading Canada “for a big rumble, man.”
Love this movie! I can recite it word for word to this very day.
The plote is very loosely based on Xenophon and the March of the 10,000. It actually occured around 403 BC, in some form or another. Xenophon was an Athenian philosopher who wound up supporting Cyrus against Artaxerxes. Xenophon winds up in command and has to lead the troops out of enemy territory, all te way back to Athens. I found a short bio online.
[minor hijack]
John Ringo and David Webber are currently retelling the tale as the March! series (Upcountry, To the Seas and most recently To the Stars) of military SF.
And I know Harold Coyle retold it in The Ten Thousand as straight modern military fiction of a US Army formation cut off in a suddenly hostile Germany, fighting to get to a friendly port.
It seems to be a favorite for retelling.
[/minor hijack]
I met some of the actors (not the main stars, though) from “The Warriors” while waiting in line for a movie many years ago. I still remember them. They were really obnoxious.
You forgot quite a few - most significantly the Rogues, who were the villains of the piece, but also four or five other gangs are namechecked including the Jones Street Boys and the Van Cortelaan (sp?) Rangers.
Well, technically it’s based on Sol Yurick’s novel, but that was inspired by the March to the Sea IIRC.
I actually saw a copy of the novel in a second-hand book shop years ago, but I had no money and when I went back I couldn’t find it again. Does anyone have one lying around that they don’t want?