This is a Christmas movie?  The 1980s began early with this high-concept, edgy-but-silly urban fantasy dreamed up by Walter Hill when an original realistic concept was rejected: ads about ‘Armies of the Night’ glamorizing street gangs worried the old folk, while the exhibition rollout was disturbed by violence in theaters. Essentially one long foot chase across New York City, it boosted visibility for some fresh faces — Michael Beck, Deborah Van Valkenburgh, James Remar, David Patrick Kelly, Lynne Thigpen, Dorsey Wright — even Mercedes Ruehl. The remastered edition includes the original cut and a 2005 alternate version, that’s a bit different.

The Warriors 4K
4K Ultra HD
Arrow Video
1979 / Color / 1:85 widescreen / 93 min. / Street Date December 19, 2023 / Available from Amazon / 59.95 / + alternate cover version from Arrow Video / 59.95
Starring: Michael Beck, Deborah Van Valkenburgh, James Remar, David Patrick Kelly, Lynne Thigpen, Dorsey Wright, Mercedes Ruehl, Brian Tyler, David Harris, Paul Greco, Steven James, Tom McKitterick, Marcelino Sánchez, Terry Michos, Robert Townsend.
Cinematography: Andrew Laszlo
Stunt Coordinator: Craig R. Baxley
Art Director: Don Swanagan, Robert Wrightman
Costume Design: Bobbie Mannix, Mary Ellen Winston
Film Editor: Freeman Davies Jr., David Holden, Susan E. Morse, Billy Weber
Music by: Barry De Vorzon
Screenplay by Steve Shaber, Walter Hill based on the novel by Sol Yurick
Associate Producer: Joel Silver
Executive Producer: Frank Marshall
Produced by Lawrence Gordon
Directed by Walter Hill

Welcome to All Gang Action All the Time, in a New York that might be called ‘stylized,’ but is really a fantasy presenting street gangs as the dominant life force in the city. Walter Hill spent the 1979s on a powerful roll as a writer (Hickey and Boggs,  The Getaway) and writer-director (Hard Times,  The Driver), and as a producer was about to score a monster success Alien. Akthough he played well with studio excecutives, nobody wanted to touch his gritty project about street gangs, that would have an almost completely non-white cast. Yet the success of Saturday Night Fever made a NYC-based drama with profane young people seem a good idea. Thus was born the high-concept glam-gang epic The Warriors 4K, which Hill envisioned as a kind of comic-book movie. An action chase turns the city into a fantasy world where the nights belong to hundreds of street gangs, each with a special identity. The police are ineffectual and irrelevant. Thug law rules, with kids marking their turf, terrorizing straight citizens and threatening rape to any woman caught in the open.

In other words, the show wants to make its mark as the ultimate badass street fighting fantasy. Its real audience might be 9-year-olds that want to sneak into an R-rated movie.

Were it any more ‘stylized,’ Hill’s action thriller would be science fiction, like Escape from New York. NYC is re-cast as a free-range crime zone populated by testosterone-charged punks trying to out-macho each other. The huge cast of young male wannabes spend 90 minutes strutting about like western baddies or samurai assassins. Brightly costumed gangs prowl their turf like Sharks or Jets but looking a lot more like an extension of the Droogs in A Clockwork Orange — the gang ‘uniforms’ range from matching vests, to entire Themed Fashion Looks — a bunch called Baseball Fury wear ball club uniforms with white face paint.

↓  Like Moses gathering his flock, the respected Cyrus (Roger Hill) of the Gramercy Riffs addresses thousands of assembled gangbanger delegates in a huge amphitheater in Riverside Park. All are under oath to forgo violence for the night; all weapons have been left behind. The multitude comes wearing their colors and walking proud, including The Warriors from Coney (Coney Island). Cyrus claims that there are 20,000 gang members in the city plus 20,000 more unaffiliated fighters. He calls for all to unite in an organized, fair coalition that no police force can control — they’ll own the city outright.

Just as he’s wrapping his speech, Cyrus is killed by an assassin with a gun. Chaos breaks out and the cops charge in. The Rogue Gang’s Luther (David Patrick Kelly of The Crow) cries out that The Warriors are the ones that shot Cyrus. In the melee, the Warriors’ leader Cleon (Dorsey Wright of Hair) is slain. The remaining 8 or so unarmed Warriors must somehow cross all of New York while being hunted by every gang in town, plus the police. Hothead Ajax (James Remar of The Cotton Club) wants to take charge but the equally tough, more restrained Swan (Michael Beck of Xanadu) becomes the new leader.

The trip home is a series of chases and standoffs crossing from one patch of turf to another. The Warriors engage in battle with more than one gang, each of which wants the honor of killing the slayers of Cyrus. The group splits up, and half take refuge with a girl gang called ‘The Lizzies.’  Swan and Ajax pick up Mercy (Deborah Van Valkenburgh of Streets of Fire), a feisty troublemaker who provokes violence. Unhappy with her own gang ‘The Orphans,’ Mercy seems intent on finding the meanest mo-fo in town, and making him her own. Swan grudgingly lets her join in the flight.

A reckoning comes at dawn when they reach Coney. Luther and the Rogues corner the Warriors on the beach, just as the enormous gang The Gramercy Riffs arrives to settle accounts.

Thanks to Jaws, ’70s Hollywood had become engaged in a heated game to uncover Hot Concept ideas that could take the nation’s theaters by storm. Finding the next wild new thing with mass appeal was an increasingly complicated game. Inventing fantasy worlds of course worked for Star Wars, and to some degree in Rollerball, but there are also actors that rue the day they signed on to appear in Solarbabies and The Ice Pirates. The same ‘go big, go crazy’ thinking appealed to exploitation action movies. John Carpenter barely pulled off his guns-guns-guns actioner Assault on Precinct 13. It introduced the absurd idea of the ‘multi-ethnic gang.’

The Warriors embraces this action-oriented baloney: lots of fighting, but no annoying ‘social context’ or unwelcome responsibilities to anything beyond one’s comrades in arms. In this sanitized vision of The Street, the hundreds of NYC gangs aren’t part of traditional organized crime. Each gang is free and has its own turf. Hill cuts to close-ups of dominant ‘overlords’ scowling behind their dark glasses, but they’re just talking heads dispensing exposition about the threat to the Warriors. Extra cutaways feature choker close-ups of Lynne Thigpen as a radio Deejay, seen only as a pair of lips and a chin.  ↖  The Deejay broadcasts ‘personal’ gang messages to inform the troops. her choice of platters sends a message to the Warriors: “Nowhere to Run, Nowhere to Hide.”

Most action movie fans would recognize the Deejay character as a bald lift from Richard C. Sarafian’s 1971 cult item Vanishing Point, in which Cleavon Little’s ‘Super Soul’ also uses the radio airwaves to praise the progress of an outlaw road racer, and to send him coded messages.

No fantasy has to be ‘responsible’ or impose a moral message, but the gang world pictured here is as glamorously false as was Bonnie & Clyde about ‘folksy’ Depression-era rural bandits. The reality is of course cheap, brutal, and infantile in ugly ways. Even in 1979, gang victims included non-combatants, little kids and babies. The Warriors glorifies and santitizes — a plot confection mostly removes gun & knife violence from the mayhem — and then minimizes the trauma of blunt force attacks with baseball clubs, pipes, etc. The Warriors use their fists in open combat, in relatively fair fights. That’s a fantasy no urban 8-year-old would buy.

A few civilians are roughed up, but nothing more than that. There’s also a big dose of macho sexism, but no sex — various hoodlum are frustrated in their drive to Get Laid. Female ‘treachery’ is a given — in this world, you just can’t trust B_____s.  Yet every gangbanger is a sucker for any woman that flatters their masculinity. The Lizzies lay an obvious trap for some of our Warriors. The most rape-hungry Warrior is a Big Dunce done in by his idiot hormones and an undercover lady cop.  Jeez, why is everybody getting so serious about a friendly rape attempt?

The show is praised as an experiment in genre style, as Walter Hill had done in The Driver, which partly channelled the ultra-cool, mostly nonverbal style of French crime pix. With so many hoodlums to keep track of Hill resorts to the ‘lost platoon’ method of differentiation — there’s a ‘funny’ Warrior, a cowardly one, and one in charge of spray-paint tagging, even on graveyard tombstones. When the gang’s leadership post goes vacant, the position will go to either the silent, muscled poser Swan, or the loose-cannon, sex-obsessed Ajax.

Hill assembled squads of young players that do their best to make the gang confrontations seem like events of world-shaking import. The fights are nicely choreographed for ‘cool’ bat-swinging and head banging. Some of the blows that land ought to be killing people, but there’s a minimum of blood. The emphasis is on Getting That Energy Out, over anything real. The boys all seem content to strike rugged poses, like Steve McQueen having a bad day. Gang Fashion was already a thing, before Hip Hop and Rap brought thug culture to the mainstream.

The fashion aspect makes The Warriors into one long ad for designer looks with gang ‘tude. Each Warriors is styled with a distinctive hairdo and color-coordinated wardrobe. The goofier outfits now remind us of Martin Scorsese’s Gangs of New York.  ↑  In the stadium-ful of contrasting hoods, we expect to hear tips exchanged, like ‘where did you get your boots?’  The galleries of costumed kids are more than a little silly — they could be a TV game show audience competing for Monty Hall’s attention: “Come on Down!”

Walter Hill at least differentiates the punks on view. Michael Beck is made to ‘stare with solemn authority’ too many times, and when not fighting comes off as a waxwork. By contrast James Remar is a genuinely frightening dynamo, tooth gap and all. Deborah Van Valkenburgh’s Mercy is definitely a hot presence, affecting a sexual challenge in the form of a rude tease. She puts it all out there, wardrobe-wise, and comes off as the story’s biggest attention-getter.  ↓

David Patrick Kelly stands out as an onerous bad guy, while Dorsey Wright exits almost before he arrives. We didn’t catch Steve James or Robert Townsend. Neither could we pick out stunt dervish Craig Baxley, whom I had witnessed perform a death-defying car crash two years earlier on Close Encounters (and he broke both legs).

The fun surprise is a short scene with none other than Mercedes Ruehl — another ‘treacherous female’ but with a badge. Ms. Ruehl really stands out — it’s her first American-made feature appearance.

They say that this show was one long, never-ending night shoot. The mostly synth soundtrack nails down the late-’70s mood without OD’ing on disco beats. If pressed, we’d tag The Warriors as an upscale, studio-funded attempt to create a cult item. Would Quentin Tarantino proclaim Walter Hill’s mini-epic as top-grade ’70s cinema?  Or would he consider it a pretender, with the Real Deal being a genuine grindhouse underdog like Jack Hill’s twisted Switchblade Sisters?

Arrow Video’s 4K Ultra HD of The Warriors 4K definitely makes this show pop. Arrow commissioned and supervised the transfer, and Walter Hill signed off on the result. Cable TV prints back in the 80’s weren’t very appealing, but Andew Laszlo’s lighting of night streets on real locations looks very good here. Were they taking advantage of new film stocks?  In some of the low-light footage around the city’s trains, the signal lights, etc, really blast out brightly.

The music track keeps a rhythm going at all times, lending momentum to the endless scenes of guys sprinting through parks, jumping bus benches, etc. In the extras we learn that The Warriors was rushed through post-production to avoid clashing with a similar movie. That accounts for the three separate teams of editors that labored on those fast-cut fight scenes. Susan E. Morse would proceed directly from this show to edit most of Woody Allen’s films for the next decade.

Arrow’s two 4K discs present both the show’s Theatrical Cut, and Walter Hill’s 2005 Alternate Version, which only has a couple of differences. This edition includes no Blu-ray feature encoding, so if you are equipped for Blu-ray only, be sure to order the separate Blu-ray release.

The extras go way beyond the descriptor ‘in depth.’  Some of the items are celebratory and some are hype about the ‘Warriors Phenomenon’ but Walter Hill offers candid facts and memories of the weeks of nighttime shooting. The first thing we think is, ‘didn’t the real New York Street gangs insist on bribes to allow filming on their turf?’  The fashions and the locations are thoroughly covered, and some critical analysis is offered as well. Extra extras are a set of postcards and a sheet of gang logo mini-stickers. A welcome double-sided poster presents Arrow’s new artwork and the original ‘Army of the Night’ one-sheet art that put theater owners on edge in ’79. Reports differ, but word of vandalism and violence in theaters prompted Paramount to give some exhibitors a break, letting them out of their play contracts if so desired.

A fat book with essays and interviews is disguised as a New York Subway Guide, from the Arrow Video Transit Authority.

Reviewed by Glenn Erickson

The Warriors 4K
4K Ultra HD rates:
Movie: Good
Video: Excellent 4K Ultra HD (2160p) Blu-ray presentation in Dolby Vision (HDR10 compatible) of both versions of the film; Theatrical Cut presented in original aspect ratio of 1.85:1 for the first time on home video.
Sound: Excellent Original uncompressed mono, plus stereo 2.0 and Dolby Atmos audio options for the Theatrical Cut, plus stereo 2.0 and DTS-HD MA 5.1 for the 2005 Alternate Version
Supplements (from Arrow USA):
DISC 1: THEATRICAL CUT (4K ULTRA HD BLU-RAY)
New commentary by Walter Chaw
War Stories, a new interview with Walter Hill
New roundtable discussion with Josh Olson, Lexi Alexander, and Robert D. Kryzkowski
New interview Battling Boundaries with editor Billy Weber
New interview Gang Style with costume designer Bobbie Mannix
New featurette Armies of the Night with costume designs and photographs from designer Bobbie Mannix
New featurette Sound of the Streets on composer Barry De Vorzon by Neil Brand
Isolated score option
New featurette Come Out to Play about locations at Coney Island
Featurette The Beginning about the film’s Genesis
Featurette Battleground on the problems of the location shoot, with Walter Hill and assistant director David O. Sosna
Featurette The Way Home with director of photography Andrew Laszlo
Featurette The Phenomenon
Theatrical trailer, Image gallery
DISC 2: 2005 ALTERNATE VERSION (4K ULTRA HD BLU-RAY)
Introduction by director Walter Hill.
100-page collector’s book containing new writing by Dennis Cozzalio and a Walter Hill interview by Patrick McGilligan
Deaf and Hearing-impaired Friendly? YES; Subtitles: English (feature only)
Packaging: Two 4K Ultra HD in Keep case
Reviewed: December 20, 2023
(7052warr)

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