The Warriors (film)

The film is based on Sol Yurick's 1965 novel The Warriors, which was, in turn, based on Xenophon's Anabasis.[5][6][7][8] Film rights were bought in 1969 by American International Pictures but no film resulted.[9]

Rights were then obtained by producer Lawrence Gordon who commissioned David Shaber to write a script. Gordon had made Hard Times (1975) and The Driver (1978) with Walter Hill; he sent the script to Hill with a copy of Sol Yurick's novel. Hill recalls, "I said 'Larry, I would love to do this, but nobody will let us do it.' It was going to be too extreme and too weird."[10][11]

Gordon and Hill were originally going to make a western but when the financing on the project failed to materialize, they took The Warriors to Paramount Pictures because they were interested in youth films at the time and succeeded in getting the project financed. Hill remembers "it came together very quickly. Larry had a special relationship with Paramount and we promised to make the movie very cheaply, which we did. So it came together within a matter of weeks. I think we got the green light in April or May 1978 and we were in theaters in February 1979. So it was a very accelerated process."[12]

Hill was drawn to the "extreme narrative simplicity and stripped down quality of the script".[11] The script, as written, was a realistic take on street gangs but Hill was a huge fan of comic books and wanted to divide the film into chapters and then have each chapter "come to life starting with a splash panel".[11] However, Hill was working on a low budget and a tight post-production schedule because of a fixed release date as the studio wanted to release The Warriors before a rival gang picture called The Wanderers. Hill was finally able to include this type of scene transition in the Ultimate Director's Cut released for home video in 2005.[11]

The filmmakers did extensive casting in New York City.[11] Hill was considering hiring Sigourney Weaver from Alien and watched a movie she'd filmed in Israel called Madman where the male lead opposite Weaver was played by Michael Beck. The director was impressed with Beck's performance and cast him in The Warriors. Hill initially wanted a Puerto Rican actress for the role of Mercy, but Deborah Van Valkenburgh's agent convinced the film's casting directors to see her and she was eventually cast. The filmmakers wanted to cast Tony Danza in the role of Vermin but he was cast in the sitcom Taxi and Terry Michos was cast instead. While there were white characters in Yurick's book, none of the central characters or protagonists were white: according to Hill, Paramount did not want an all-black cast for "commercial reasons".[11]

Walter Hill saw Thomas G. Waites as the next James Dean and the director "invited the young actor to the Gulf and Western to watch movies like Rebel Without a Cause and East of Eden for inspiration."[13] During the screening, Hill offered Waites a drink, which Waites refused, resulting in a rift between the two that grew worse during the grueling summer shoot. At one point, Waites threatened to report the working conditions to the Screen Actors Guild, forcing Paramount to provide a second trailer for the eight Warriors to share.[13]

Finally eight weeks into principal photography, when the tension on set between Waites and Hill reached the breaking point, Hill demanded that stunt coordinator Craig Baxley improvise a stunt scene in which Waites' character would be killed. "Stunned, Baxley demurred. Such a critical scene would take careful planning. But Hill was insistent. 'I don't give a shit how you kill him,' Baxley recalls the director saying. 'Kill him.'" Baxley found a crew member who resembled Waites and staged a scene in which the character is thrown off a subway platform in front of an approaching train. "It was like someone cut my soul out and left a shell", Waites remembers. He would later demand that his name be removed from the cast altogether; he remains uncredited to this day.[13]

Scenes from the film were shot in Coney Island (pictured in 2016)

Stunt coordinator Craig R. Baxley put the cast through stunt school because Hill wanted realistic fights depicted in the film.[11] In preparation for his role, James Remar hung out at Coney Island to find a model for his character. The entire film was shot on the streets in New York City with some interior scenes done at Astoria Studios. They would shoot from sundown to sunrise. The film quickly fell behind schedule and went over budget. Although the Conclave scene at the beginning was supposed to be in The Bronx, it was actually filmed in Riverside Park in Manhattan. The bathroom fight scene against The Punks was shot in a studio. The entire movie was only filmed in Manhattan, Brooklyn & Queens. Actor Joel Weiss remembers that filming of his scene on Avenue A, in Manhattan's notorious Alphabet City, was canceled because there was a double homicide nearby. For the big meeting at the beginning of the film, Hill wanted real gang members in the scene with off duty police officers also in the crowd so that there would be no trouble.[11]

The studio would not allow Baxley to bring any stunt men from Hollywood and he needed someone to double for the character of Cyrus so he did the stunt himself dressed as the character.[11] Actual gang members wanted to challenge some of the cast members but were dealt with by production security. The actors playing the Warriors bonded early in the shoot, on and off the set. Originally, the character of Fox was supposed to end up with Mercy, while Swan was captured by a rival, homosexual gang known as the Dingos, only to escape later. However, Hill watched the dailies and realized that Beck and Van Valkenburgh had great chemistry; the script was rewritten so that their characters ended up together.[11]

The Rogues' car in the Coney Island confrontation was a 1955 Cadillac hearse.[14] Originally, at the Coney Island confrontation at the end of the film, actor David Patrick Kelly wanted to use two dead pigeons but Hill did not think that would work.[11] Instead, Kelly improvised by clinking three bottles in his right hand and ad-libbing his famous line, "Waaaaarriors, come out to plaaaay". Kelly based the line on a taunt that a neighbor used to chant to him when he was a child.

Hill wanted Orson Welles to do a narrated introduction about Greek themes but the studio did not like this idea and refused to pay for it.[11] However this sequence was finally included in the 2005 Ultimate Director's Cut, with Hill providing the narration himself. "I wanted to take it into a fantasy element, but at the same time add some contemporary flash", said Hill. "Those were some of the hard ideas we had to get the studio to understand. But we did not get along very well with our parent company. After the movie came out and it did well, everybody was sort of friends. But up until then there was a lot of misunderstanding. They thought it was going to be Saturday Night Fever or something."[12]

The Warriors opened on February 9, 1979, in 670 theaters without advance screenings or a decent promotional campaign and grossed USD $3.5 million on its opening weekend.[15]

The following weekend the film was linked to sporadic outbreaks of vandalism and three killings—two in Southern California and one in Boston—involving moviegoers on their way to or from showings.[16]

Paramount was prompted to remove advertisements from radio and television completely and display ads in the press were reduced to the film's title, rating and participating theaters.[15] As a reaction 200 theaters across the country added security personnel. Due to safety concerns, theater owners were relieved of their contractual obligations if they did not want to show the film, and Paramount offered to pay costs for additional security and damages due to vandalism.[17]

Hill later remembered, "I think the reason why there were some violent incidents is really very simple: The movie was very popular with the street gangs, especially young men, a lot of whom had very strong feelings about each other. And suddenly they all went to the movies together! They looked across the aisle and there were the guys they didn't like, so there were a lot of incidents. And also, the movie itself is rambunctious—I would certainly say that."[12]

After two weeks free of incidents, the studio expanded the display ads to take advantage of reviews from reputable critics including Pauline Kael of The New Yorker. She wrote, "The Warriors is a real moviemaker's movie: it has in visual terms the kind of impact that 'Rock Around the Clock' did behind the titles of Blackboard Jungle. The Warriors is like visual rock."[18] At Seattle's Grand Illusion Cinema, programmer Zack Carlson remembers, "people were squeezed in, lying on the floor, cheering."[19] By its sixth week, The Warriors had grossed $16.4 million, well above its estimated $4 million[1] to $7 million budget.[15][20]

Walter Hill reflected:

What made it a success with young people... is that for the first time somebody made a film within Hollywood, big distribution, that took the gang situation and did not present it as a social problem. Presented them as a neutral or positive aspect of their lives. As soon as you said in the old days gang movies it was how do we cure the pestilence and how do we fix the social waste. We want to take these kids, make sure they go to college... This was just a movie that conceptually was different. Accepted the idea of the gang, didn't question it, that was their lives, they functioned within that context. And the social problem wasn't were they going to college, but were they going to survive. It's the great Hawksian dictum, where is the drama? Will he live or die? That's the drama.[10]

"Hollywood forgives a lot when you have a hit," he added. "I don't know what to say about it, other than the fact that it was just a gift in terms of getting it. The studio hated it, and didn't even want to release it. There was a lot of friction with management at the time. Some of it might have been my fault."[21]

The Warriors received negative reviews from contemporary critics, who derided its lack of realism and found its dialogue stilted.[22] In his review for the Chicago Sun-Times, Roger Ebert gave it two out of four stars and wrote that, despite Hill's cinematic skill, the film is implausible in a mannerist style that deprives the characters of depth and spontaneity: "No matter what impression the ads give, this isn't even remotely intended as an action film. It's a set piece. It's a ballet of stylized male violence."[23]

However, Ebert later wrote during a review of Hill's film Southern Comfort that he felt he overlooked some positive qualities in The Warriors out of his dislike for Hill's general approach to broad characterizations.[24] Gene Siskel gave the film one star out of four, likening the dialogue to that of "Harvey Lembeck in those silly '60s motorcycle pictures" and concluding, "You would think after watching 'The Warriors' that gang membership was a victimless crime, save for the occasional sadist who pops up as comic relief. This entire film is a romantic lie."[25]

Linda Gross of the Los Angeles Times called the film "an insightful, stylized and shallow portrayal of gang warfare that panders to angry youthful audiences."[26] Gary Arnold of The Washington Post wrote, "None of Hill's dynamism will save The Warriors from impressing most neutral observers as a ghastly folly."[27] In his review for Newsweek, David Ansen wrote, "Another problem arises when the gang members open their mouths: their banal dialogue is jarringly at odds with Hill's hyperbolic visual scheme."[28]

Frank Rich of Time wrote, "unfortunately, sheer visual zip is not enough to carry the film; it drags from one scuffle to the next ... The Warriors is not lively enough to be cheap fun or thoughtful enough to be serious."[29] Yurick expressed his disappointment and speculated that it scared some people because "it appeals to the fear of a demonic uprising by lumpen youth", appealing to many teenagers because it "hits a series of collective fantasies."[15] President Ronald Reagan was a fan of the film, even calling lead actor Michael Beck to tell him he had screened it at Camp David and enjoyed it.[18]

A building in Long Island City, New York with a wall covered in graffiti with the names of the fictional gangs from the movie

The Warriors has become a cult film, and some film critics have since re-examined it. As of August 2022, the film garnered an 88% approval rating at Rotten Tomatoes, based on 48 reviews. The critical consensus reads: "As violent as it is stylish, The Warriors is a thrilling piece of pulp filmmaking."[30]

In 2003, The New York Times placed the film on its "Best 1,000 Movies Ever Made".[31] Entertainment Weekly named it the 16th-greatest cult film on its 2003 "Top 50 Greatest Cult Films" list,[32] and ranked it 14th in its 2008 list of the "25 Most Controversial Movies Ever".[33]

Hill reflected in 2016:

I love the fact that people still enjoy something I did what, 37 years ago? It makes an old man happy. I'm surprised by it. But I loved working with my cameraman Andy Laszlo in shooting it, and I loved working with my cast, who were incredibly trusting of this crazy old fucker that was making the movie. They didn't get it, I don't think—costumed gangs running around New York?—but they just went with it.[21]

The film was first released on VHS in 1980, LaserDisc in 1981, and DVD in 2000. The DVD contained the theatrical cut unrestored; this release has since fallen out of print. Then, in 2005, Paramount Home Entertainment released the "Ultimate Director's Cut" DVD of The Warriors. In addition to remastered picture quality and a new 5.1 surround remixed soundtrack, the film was re-edited with a new introduction and comic book-style sequences between scenes.[34] In July 2007, the "Ultimate Director's Cut" was released on Blu-ray and has since been available for online streaming rentals and purchases through Amazon, iTunes, Google Play, Vudu and YouTube.[35] The original theatrical cut is available to stream in HD on those same services and was released as a Manufactured On Demand DVD in the U.S. in March 2020 by Paramount. In May 2022, The Warriors received another release through [imprint] on Blu-ray in Australia, which included not only the "Ultimate Director's Cut", but also the theatrical version, which hadn't had a Blu-ray release before.

In 2005, Mezco Toyz released several action figures based on characters from the film, including Swan, Cleon, Cochise, Ajax, Luther, and a Baseball Fury.[36]

A fighting video game based on the film was released by Rockstar Games in October 2005. The game expands upon the story of the film, featuring 13 levels that take place before the film's events and depict the Warriors' rise to power. The final five levels directly adapt the events of the film, with only a few changes. Several of the actors from the film returned to reprise their roles. In 2005, Roger Hill (who portrayed Cyrus in the film) sued Rockstar Games and Take-Two Interactive for royalty fees, claiming the video game used his voice and depiction of his likeness without his consent or paying him royalties. Take-Two asserted its claims that the voice and likeness of Cyrus were a component of its licensing agreement for the film. Roger Hill died in 2014 with the case unresolved.[37]

In 2009, Warner Bros. Entertainment released a beat 'em up scroller game based on the film, titled The Warriors: Street Brawl.

The Warriors: Come Out to Play board game was published by Funko Games in 2022.

In July 2016, Joe and Anthony Russo announced they were working with Paramount Television and Hulu for a re-imagined Warriors TV series; Frank Baldwin was signed on to write the series.[38] In June 2018, development of the series was moved to Netflix.[39]