The Wanderers is many things...an urban gang drama, juvenile comedy, changing of the times study and more. It works on all these levels and has become a certified cult classic. At it's core, the Wanderers is about the final death of the innocence of the 1950's. The Wanderers are an Italian gang in NY, still clinging to the last vestiges of the 1950's with their matching satin jackets and grease-backed hair. Early on several members run afoul of another gang, the notorious 'Baldies'. The Wanderers find themselves trapped until a newcomer, the huge Perry saves them and is immediately welcomed into the gang by their leader Richie (Ken Wahl).
The various members of the Wanderers have problems to deal with on their own. Richie has gotten his girlfriend, Despie, pregnant, Perry's mother is an Alcoholic, Turkey wants to join the Baldies and Joey has an abusive father who thinks his son doesn't measure up. The Wanderers have a verbal war with a black gang, the Del Bombers, in school and decide to settle things with an old-fashioned rumble.
When the Wanderers cannot get any other gangs to back them up, Despies father (Dolph Sweet) a neighborhood mob boss steps in and decides to stop the rumble and have the gangs settle their differences with a football game instead...with a lot of mob money riding on the outcome. The game climaxes when the two gangs, along with the rest in attendance, must join together to fight "The Ducky Boys", a group of vicious, seemingly homosexuals, who have crashed the game with hundreds of members.
Mixed in with the drama and action is a liberal amount of juvenile buddy comedy as the Wanderers 'accidently' bumb into women on the street in order to touch their breasts. This is how the meet Nina (karen Allen) a bohemian girl who Richie becomes infatuated with. There there are drunken parties, games of strip poker, etc. In one memorable scene, the drunken Baldies join the marines.
Through all of this is the theme of the changing of the times. The doo-wop of the 1950's is now being replaced by folk music. A poignant scene has Richie following Nina until she enters a club where (in sound anyway) Bob Dylan is playing. Richie doesn't enter as he seems to know that it's just not his world. The film also covers the assasination of John Kennedy as the symbolic death of innocence. It is this moment the galvanizes the strained relationship between Despie and Richie.
One wishes that the Ducky Boys had been better explained. They are a creepy group of men..older than the other gangs...who never speak and were actually seen taking Holy Communion in one part where Turkey enters their turf by mistake and his killed. What were the Ducky Boys representing? It's the one mystery of the film.
The Wanderers has a fantastic soundtrack of early 1960's hits including "Soldier Boy", "Walk Like a Man", "Runaround Sue", "Shout", "Big Girls don't Cry" and of course the title track.
This is a movie that holds up still after 25 years because it works well on so many different levels. This was mostly a cast of unknowns with Karen Allen perhaps being the most notable star a year after she did 'Animal House'. An enjoyable movie from beginning to end.
Stylized Nostalgia
"The Wanderers" is an entertaining nostalgia piece about the exploits of a group of Italian-American teenage gangmembers who engage in various turf wars with other gangs of varied ethnic types. The film contains many amusing vignettes and I highly recommend it. That said, the film definitely is aiming to comment on more serious issues and it is there that it falls short. It is the very stylishness that director Philip Kaufman employs that undermines this goal. The social upheavals of the time are treated perfunctorily so they have no real resonance. The soundtrack, though appropriate(Dion and the Belmonts, The Four Seasons) comes off as somewhat hollow. I kept thinking that if Martin Scorsese, who later collaborated with writer Richard Price, author of the film's source novel, had directed this film it would be a completely different animal. If your looking for a better film that deals with the social upheaval that occured in the Bronx at approximately this period of time a better film would be "A Bronx Tale", the only feature to be helmed by Robert DeNiro.
Highly underated movie, a classic
This is a movie that will stay in my mind at least for a long time. The rhythm, the soundtrack, the different aspects of the plot, the photography, every detail was perfect.
You dont have to be a baby boomer or be from the Bronx to like this movie. Im a generation X guy, never lived in the Bronx and this has become to be one of my favorite movies.
The atmosphere of the movie is a blue collar neighborhood, nothing spectacular brights there, but the mentality, romanticism and values of that time represented in this movie, made this look like this as a perfect era. It also made me understand the nostalgy of the baby boomers.
The final scene, (dont read this if you havent seen the movie), where Joey and Perry left New York,in my opinion represents the exodus of the people that lived in the inner city toward the suburbs or the new promising west states. A symbol of this phenomenum was,the traumatic for many, departure of the Brooklyn Dodgers to the new great city in that time, Los Angeles.
There are other parts of the movie that deserves an anthropological and sociological analysis.
This film is a timeless jewel, I think I was lucky the day I saw this on cable for the first time. Before watching this, I never imagined this movie could be that great. And definitively, the box office and the critics never made justice to this film. This was the perfect closer for perhaps the greatest decade of cinema.
The Warriors combines pure pulp storytelling and surprisingly poetic images into a thoroughly enjoyable cult classic. The plot is mythically pure (and inspired by a legendary bit of Greek history): When a charismatic gang leader is shot at a conclave in the Bronx meant to unite all the gangs in New York City, a troupe from Coney Island called the Warriors get blamed and have to fight all the way back to their own turf--which means an escalating series of battles with colorful and improbable gangs like the Baseball Furies, who wear baseball uniforms and KISS-inspired face make-up. Pop existentialism, performances that are somehow both wooden and overwrought, and zesty, kinetic filmmaking from director Walter Hill (Southern Comfort, 48 Hrs.) result in a delicious and... More Info about this DVD Actor(s): Michael Beck - James Remar Director(s): Walter Hill DVD Release Date: Released the 16 January 2001 This item is currently not available.
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When The Lords of Flatbush was released in 1974, Sylvester Stallone was still an unknown actor polishing his screenplay for Rocky, and Henry Winkler was approaching TV superstardom as "Fonzie" in the first season of Happy Days. In this modest, low-budget feature, they play second and third fiddle (respectively) to Perry King, whose respectable career, ironically, would never reach such stratospheric heights. As for their costar and diminutive fourth "Lord of Flatbush," Paul Mace appeared in only one more movie after this (Stallone's Paradise Alley), and was killed in a 1983 traffic accident at the age of 33. Such is the random nature of fame and fate.
Walter Hill's updated (1984), highly stylized take on biker movies still looks like a determinedly eccentric project that happens to work at times, but not at others. Michael Paré plays a biker who agrees to rescue his ex-girlfriend (a rocker played by Diane Lane) from kidnappers (led by Willem Dafoe). The ensuing battle against a nocturnal background of industrial blight, chrome, and loud music is like some fever dream of a Springsteen fan who listened to the song "Born to Run" far too often. The audacity of the film carries it a long way even after it becomes clear that Hill's experiment is crumbling under its own weight. Dafoe, who looked even spookier back then than he does now, is memorable, as are Amy Madigan and Rick Moranis. Music is by Ry Cooder, with an appearance by the... More Info about this DVD Actor(s): Michael Paré - Diane Lane Director(s): Walter Hill DVD Release Date: Released the 21 July 1998 Usually ships in 24 hours
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You've got to give credit to the Hollywood Knights. They may be crass, juvenile, sex-mad pranksters, but they have an open-door policy: nerds and jocks alike are welcome, as long as they show proper disrespect for authority. The Hollywood Knights, a minor 1980 cult comedy poised somewhere between the innocent nostalgia of American Graffiti and the raunchy humor of Animal House, chronicles the antics of a practical-joking high school gang on Halloween night, 1965. In tribute to the last night of their favorite hangout, a Beverly Hills drive-in marked for destruction by the snooty Chamber of Commerce, the gang's court jester Newbomb Turk (Robert Wuhl in his film debut) leads the Knights in an all-out assault on the forces of law and order, conformity, and good taste.... More Info about this DVD Actor(s): Tony Danza - Michelle Pfeiffer Director(s): Floyd Mutrux DVD Release Date: Released the 09 May 2000 Usually ships in 24 hours
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