The Cult Movie Project #16 (of 200): These Are the Armies of the Night. They Are 100,000 Strong. And They are Here to Play-ay-yay in Walter Hill's The Warriors (1979).

Two wildly disparate tales, one an ancient Greek poem, the other a hit Broadway musical, though separated by thousands of years managed to intertwine themselves to form the basis of Walter Hill's ode to New York City's tribal street gangs, The Warriors (1979). First of these machinations was Xenephon's "Anabasis", which told of a group of Greek soldiers who found themselves trapped in Persia after the Battle of Cunaxa (dated around 401 B.C.). Alone, their commander dead, and surrounded by hostiles on all sides, this rag-tag group had to live off the land and fight their way out of enemy territory to the sea and safety over a 1000 miles away. The second influence begins with the production of West Side Story in 1957 (-- later filmed by Robert Wise in 1961), which tweaked "Romeo and Juliet" by turning the Montagues and the Capulets into rival (and racially divided) street gangs, and then ends with the publication of Sol Yurick's novel, "The Warriors" (1965).

Seems back in the late 1950s, before becoming a full-time writer, Yurick had served as a social worker in NYC to help pay for college, where he gained firsthand insight into the dysfunctional world of juvenile delinquents of low to no income families and the gangs they sought refuge in, who roamed the streets, a veritable army of thugs and miscreants. Finding the romanticized version of these street gangs in Wise's film disingenuous, the author wrote his debut novel as a stinging and scathing rebuttal as Yurick spins the depressing yarn of The Coney Island Dominators; a group of Blacks and Hispanics, who attend a gang summit in the Bronx. From there, also using Xenephon's tale as a framework (one of the gang reads a Classics Illustrated comic-book version of the story throughout the novel), after the summit falls apart, the organizer is assassinated, and the truce allowing this meeting to happen evaporates, with their leader killed in the resulting melee, the rest of the Dominators spend a harrowing night trying to get back home through enemy territory, seldom fighting, mostly hiding, and (sadly) raping the whole way. Not all of them make it.

Stumbling upon a battered copy of Yurick's novel in some broken spine in the late 1970s, producer Lawrence Gordon [Rolling Thunder (1977), Predator (1987), Die Hard (1988)] immediately secured the film rights using his own money, and then commissioned David Shaber to adapt a screenplay and approached Walter Hill, whom he had worked with on Hard Times (1975) and The Driver (1978), to direct. Hill loved the whole notion but feared no studio would ever back the film as is, and he was right; sadly, most of the hesitation was due to the proposed all-minority cast. The project was then tabled in favor of a western, but when the financing fell through on The Lone Gun, Hill and Gordon tweaked their pitch and Paramount took the bait. And while these changes didn't exactly revert Yurick's street gangs to the romantic version of Wise, this new version wound up highly fantasized.

Hill's western sensibilities (cinematically speaking) leeched into the project, as well. It's not that hard to see The Warriors as a western, with John Wayne or Randolph Scott, framed for the murder of an Indian chief, leading a wagon train of misfits out of hostile territory, with hostiles, bushwhackers, corrupt land agents, and Commancheros chewing at their heels the whole way. And like in a lot of those westerns, there would be casualties along the way. In Shaber's script, Cleon, the leader, is killed by the Riffs, Cochise is killed by the Baseball Furies, and then Vermin is offed by the Lizzies before Swan gets abducted by the Dingos -- a group of sadistic homosexuals, leaving Fox to lead what's left back to Coney Island.

But in the final film version there are only two casualties -- and it's not really clear if Cleon (Wright) is actually killed, and I'm not even sure if the interlude with the Dingos was ever filmed. And so, the only one who died for sure was Fox (Waites), who fell in front of an oncoming train while wrestling with the cop. Originally, I think Fox was to be a surrogate for Hinton, the main character and moral center in Yurick's novel, who, over the course of the night, comes to grips with the time he's wasted with the Dominators and 'grows up' as the novel progresses. Fox was also intended to be the love interest of Mercy (Van Valkenburgh), a character who was gang-raped and abandoned in the book. But there was no chemistry between the two actors at all; and Waites proved so volatile and difficult onset he was fired (-- his name was even stripped from the credits); and his character was killed off, transferring all of his attributes, and Mercy, to Swan (Beck). And in sharp contrast to Waites, Hill fell in love with the rest of his cast so much he couldn't bear to kill any more of them off.

Apparently, Tony Danza was offered the role of Swan first but he turned it down in favor of the TV series, Taxi (1978-1983). (Danza would take the lead in Floyd Mutrux's slighty tamer and more nostalgic look at gang camaraderie in The Hollywood Knights the very next year.) Hill then offered the role to Michael Beck, whom Hill had discovered watching the film Madman (1978) while scouting the then unknown Sigourney Weaver, whom Hill would cast as the lead in his follow up film, Alien (1979), and was so impressed he called the actor in to audition. Hill had wanted a Puerto Rican actress to play Mercy but he liked what he saw in Deborah Van Valkenburgh's audition, telling her she was the "unobvious choice" for the role. The actress went through all kinds of hell during filming. In the scene where she and Fox are running to catch a train, she fell and shattered her wrist, necessitating a few rewrites and a stolen jacket to cover up the cast. And as that scene concludes, when Swan throws the baseball bat at the cop, Beck's back-swing caught Van Velkenburgh in the face, requiring another trip to the hospital for several stitches and a permanent scar.

Mention should also be made of the eccentric performance of David Patrick Kelly as the psychotic Luther, leader of a rival Rogues, whose actions at the summit railroaded The Warriors and put a target squarely on their back for Cyrus' assassination. And as the story goes, as we breach the climax, his taunting, lunatic call while clinking the empty beer-bottles together was based on an old intimidating neighbor. Then, there's James Remar's Ajax, who gets flushed out of the story too soon. And Lynne Thigpen as a Tokyo Rose-esque disc jockey, who serves as an odd Greek chorus / balladeer combo as the evening toils on could have used some more air time. And Roger Hill's messianic Cyrus? I can totally dig that.

The film took 60 days to shoot, with the production risking life and limb by filming on location from midnight to 8am. (The only set used was the restroom for the spectacular fight with the Punks.) The trucks and equipment were protected by The Mongrels, a real gang, to the tune of $500 a day. Still, thousands of dollars worth of damages were still endured, and apparently, the whole crew got urinated on from a tower block for making too much noise. Also, no members of the cast were allowed to wonder off in costume, lest they get their heads caved in for wearing the wrong colors in hostile territory. Credit to the art and set direction of Don Swanagan, Robert Wightman and Fred Wieler for making that 'hostile territory' so fascinating. And to Bobbie Mannix for the wonderful costume designing which brought all those uniform and uniformed gangs to life. Also a huge nod to cinematographer Andrew Lazlo for convincing Hill into including a scene with a rain shower moving through, allowing for all that reflected neon light. And according to the film's composer, Barry De Vorzon, The Warriors was the first picture to feature an almost entirely synthesized score save for Joe Walsh playing us out over the closing credits.(Though I think John Carpenter might've beaten them to that particular punch.)

Upon completion, the film was turned over to multiple editing teams in an effort to get the picture released ahead of a glut of similarly themed films also due out in 1979; Walk Proud, Boulevard Nights, and The Wanderers. Meanwhile, Paramount's publicity machine cooked up a lurid promotional campaign, including poster art that included the tagline: "These are the armies of the night. They are 100,000 strong. They outnumber the cops five to one. They could run New York City." All of that emblazoned over an image of a motley assortment of thugs and toughs who appeared able to do just that.

But this backfired and triggered a moral panic, fueled by several incidents of fights between rival gangs at screenings of The Warriors (and all of those other films mentioned), both real and rumored, which had theater owners and city councils fuming and soon had the studio scrambling for new posters and a heavily doctored trailer, destroying any momentum the film had. It didn't matter. Fair or not, the word was out, the film was bad news, and the feature was yanked from most urban theaters.
 

The funny thing is, though the tagline might have been incendiary, the film itself was not. One of the things most often overlooked about The Warriors is how oddly optimistic it is, especially when you look at when it was made and all the other bleak sci-fi-tinged 'dystopian' films released around the same time. And it stands out the most starkly against the works of George Romero. The Warriors have a solid plan to get back home, and working together, even after being forcibly split up, they do make it, though they are nearly undone when they are distracted and stray from the plan (-- Ajax molesting the undercover cop, the incident with the Lizzies.) The members are all also very professional at what they do (unlike their literary counterparts), have each others backs (unlike their literary counterparts), and work toward a common goal (again, except for Ajax, who promptly gets taken off the board). 

Now plug all of those attributes into Dawn or Day of the Dead  or The Crazies and, yeah, they'd all be zombie kibble by the end. Even as the film wraps up on the shore, when they ponder what they were fighting to get back to, and if it was worth it, Swan takes in the whole group and we have our answer: each other, and it was.

Also, the film is oddly sanitized; practically bloodless, the violence straight out of the comics, and our heroes shake off any beating with apparent ease. The only real nasty thing about the movie is the landscape of dirty old New York City that our players move around in. A fantasy-land not far removed from Narnia or Mirkwood, or Monument Valley, to be honest. And the overall plot of world-building, camaraderie and humor, a code of ethics, tough chicks, and manly men banding together to do manly things, is right in Hill's wheelhouse, too. And he delivers a mesmerizing, hyper-stylized film that moves to its own beat; a high and fast, pulsating rhythm, that sucks you in, bopping and weaving the whole way, and doesn't let go. 

Other Points of Interest:

Poster campaign for The Warriors at the Archive. 

 * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *  

 xx

"But as the many moviegoers, who flocked to the theater to see what all the commotion was about, soon discovered, The Warriors is a lively, well-made action film full of adventure and humor, no more violent than the film down the block, not inciteful, not deserving of the furor it caused. The cult for the film -- the result of enthusiasts rallying behind a film good enough to deserve defending -- charged the [ad campaign] was misleading. Perhaps 100,000 strong could take over New York City as easily as the roaches have, but in The Warriors they are no threat to us at all -- in fact we essentially do not exist in the fantasy world we see on screen."

XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXxxxxxxxxxXXXXXXX-- Danny Peary 

 xx

  * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *

The Fine Print: The Warriors was watched via Paramount's 2001 Theatrical Cut DVD. (I've seen Hill's Director's Cut and didn't much care for it.) Watched as a Teenage Rampage double-feature with Quadrophenia (1979). What's the Cult Movie Project? That's 16 down, with 184 to go.

The Warriors (1979) EP: Frank Marshall / P: Lawrence Gordon / AP: Joel Silver / D: Walter Hill / W: David Shaber, Walter Hill, Sol Yurick (novel) / C: Andrew Laszlo / E: Freeman A. Davies, David Holden, Susan E. Morse, Billy Weber / M: Barry De Vorzon / S: Michael Beck, Deborah Van Valkenburgh, James Remar, Dorsey Wright, Brian Tyler, David Harris, Tom McKitterick, Marcelino Sánchez, Terry Michos, Roger Hill, Thomas G. Waites, David Patrick Kelly

Movie Poster Spotlight :: "Guerreros de Salir a Jugar-ar-ar!" :: A Set of Mexican Lobby Cards for Walter Hill's The Warriors (1979)

Full review of The Warriors coming soon. Watch this space, Boils and Ghouls.

Other Points of Interest:

Poster campaign for The Warriors at the Archive.

The Warriors (1979) Paramount Pictures / EP: Frank Marshall / P: Lawrence Gordon / AP: Joel Silver / D: Walter Hill / W: David Shaber, Walter Hill, Sol Yurick (novel) / C: Andrew Laszlo / E: Freeman A. Davies, David Holden, Susan E. Morse, Billy Weber / M: Barry De Vorzon / S: Michael Beck, Deborah Van Valkenburgh, David Patrick Kelly, Thomas G. Waites, James Remar, Dorsey Wright, Brian Tyler, David Harris, Tom McKitterick, Marcelino Sánchez, Terry Michos

Keep Firing Until You Hit Something -- Anything! :: A Beer-Gut Reaction to Robert Culp and Walter Hill's Hickey & Boggs (1972).

  ___  ___  ___  ___  ___  ___  ___  ___  ___  ___ 

“Nobody came.”
“Nobody cares.”
“Thanks.”

"Anytime.”

“It’s still not about anything.”

“Yeah, I know, you told me.”

___  ___  ___  ___  ___  ___  ___  ___  ___  ___  

Paid $500 to resolve a seemingly simple missing persons case, two been there, done that, and screw the lousy t-shirt detectives sober up long enough to get to work on the mean and dirty streets of Los Angeles to try and flush her out. But when every lead turns up a dead body instead of a clue to the missing woman's whereabouts, our detectives quickly unravel -- and become some unwilling ingredients of -- a conspiracy involving her, their client, and about 400,000 missing dollars from a mob-backed bank robbery in Pittsburgh five years prior that left several guards and all the robbers dead, save one, and his girlfriend, who disappeared with the money -- until now... 

Born in Long Beach, California, soon to be a legendary producer (the Alien franchise), director (Hard Times, 48hrs.) and screenwriter (The Drowning Pool, The Warriors), Walter Hill tried his luck at being a cartoonist, a journalist, a roughneck, and a construction worker before breaking into the industry as an assistant director on a couple of Steve McQueen thrillers, The Thomas Crown Affair and Bullitt. Wanting to move up the chain of command and into the director's chair, Hill was told the easiest way to accomplish this was to write and direct his own material. And being a huge fan of manly men doing manly things, Hill, a self-proclaimed western and film noir nut, coaxed the script for Hickey & Boggs out of his typewriter; a lament for the dying breed of private detective it features that, honestly, deconstructs -- no, demolishes these hard-boiled archetypes, laying it out bare and naked and ugly without the usual romanticizing and macho-posturing: 

A former cop, Hickey (Cosby) is trying and failing to reconcile with his estranged wife and daughter. Boggs is a fractured but functional alcoholic, who is currently stalking his ex-wife through the seedy joints she strips at. These men are schlubs; damaged and beaten down and barely functional, doing just enough to barely scrape by. This isn't about right and wrong or seeing justice served. This is about getting the phone bill paid with enough left over for an occasional blowjob.(Paving the way, I think, for Elliot Gould's Philip Marlowe in Altman's The Long Goodbye, Jack Nicholson's Gittes in Chinatown, and James Garner's Jim Rockford for the small screen.) Cosby and Culp are great, and have great chemistry together. I think Culp is one of the most under-appreciated actors to come out of the 1960's, and the range Cosby shows here makes one wish he had tried more dramatic roles. (Or stuck with the likes of Mother, Jugs and Speed instead of Leonard Part 6.) And, holy crap, what a supporting cast, with Robert Mandan and Michael Moriarty as the mobsters, and Jack Colvin, Vincent Gardenia and James Woods as the cops who constantly bust their balls. Another character in this fantastic neo-noir we cannot discount is the city of Los Angeles itself. And even though the smog occluded sunshine evaporates the usual shadows and nullifies the neon rain, everything is still just as dingy, dirty and bent when you get right down to it. 

Now, the mystery Hill plugs these guys into in this setting has the layered conspiracy of a bourbon-addled Raymond Chandler whodunit, the brutality and maledicted criminal malfeasance of Jim Thompson, and the violent buffoonery and comical snark of Donald Westlake as our protagonists become pawns in a deadly game of chess between "the bitch" who is trying to launder the hot money and the mob who wants it back no matter how many people wind up in the morgue. And to make things even more complicated, as the bodies pile up around them, the cops are ready to punch their ticket, too, by removing them from the board altogether by pulling their licenses. 

___  ___  ___  ___  ___  ___  ___  ___  ___  ___  ___  ___  ___ 

"I very purposely -- more and more so every time I do a script -- give characters no back story. The way you find out about these characters is by watching what they do, the way they react to stress, the way they react to situations and confrontations. In that way, character is revealed through drama rather than being explained through dialogue." 

-- Walter Hill xxxx

___  ___  ___  ___  ___  ___  ___  ___  ___  ___  ___  ___  ___   

x
Also serving as the film's director, Robert Culp showed the same sensibilities. And together with noted cinematographer Bill Butler (-- who would go on to shoot JAWS for Spielberg next), let the camera's eye linger, each frame a story unto itself, really, if a person wanted to take the time and freeze frame their way through the whole picture, to tell the audience all they needed to know about the players involved:

Boggs' silent encounter with a prostitute and the montage of hotdogs, mustard, and a phone book is nothing short of brilliant. Silent, or ambient noises only, with minimal dialogue. Amazing. And, yes, there are many scenes in this film that seem to linger too long but wind up being terribly important later on. The best example of this is a scene where the most brain-damaged thug takes great pleasure in dismembering and fondling a child's doll. This may seem morbidly comical when encountered, or even stupid, but later, when these same thugs send a message to our detectives, who catch Hickey's wife (Cash) in the wrong place at the wrong time, all we see is a bloodied pair of fettered legs and that's all we need to know the who and the how, which, I think, does more damage to the viewer via our own imagination than watching the act itself. And this punch to the kidneys is intensified by a follow up scene where Hickey is shredded by his mother-in-law (a brief cameo by Isabel Sanford) in the presence of his daughter that is just devastating.

This very same deliberate and nuanced visual approach to character definition is also used narratively by Culp as we watch Hickey and Boggs unravel this conspiracy. We're never really told anything -- I don't think Mary Jane (Moreno) has any lines of dialogue, at all, as she sets all of this into motion; but if you pay attention the puzzle pieces are easy enough to keep track of and start falling into place. But each step forward winds up finding our heroes taking two steps back, as Mary Jane always seems to stay several moves ahead of them, especially when the bullets start flying.

One of Culp's first breaks as an actor was playing a Texas Ranger in the TV series, Trackdown, where he first met Steve McQueen when the show spun off the series, Wanted: Dead or Alive. And it was for the small screen where Culp first moved behind the camera, writing and directing episodes of The Rifleman and The Westerner for another friend, Sam Peckinpah. A trained firearms expert, it was Culp who showed the likes of McQueen and Chuck Connors on how to properly handle their firearms. (And I believe it was through these mutual revolving circles of friends that he met up with Hill for this feature.) And one of things I absolutely love about Hickey & Boggs is the potshots it takes at the .44 Magnum, so recently celebrated as Dirty Harry's weapon of choice for urban renewal, de-myth-ifying the gun as being too cumbersome and a total a pain and the ass to fire and reload, let alone toting the damned thing around. Both our protagonists are armed with one, and neither can hit anything with them. Another hard-boiled dick illusion shattered, am I right?  

And as Hickey & Boggs progresses, not only does the shit hit the fan, but the resultant splatter is then doused in kerosene and set on fire. Nice. Soon stripped of everything but each other, our battered and bruised heroes rally just long enough to take that long walk off a short pier for the bloody denouement. 

Even though it seems to finally be getting its much deserved due these days, audiences weren't ready for Hickey & Boggs back in 1972. Too cynical, too bleak, too downbeat, too depraved, I'm not really sure if pre-Watergate audiences weren't necessarily not ready for it or just didn't get what they were expecting, especially those coming for an I Spy reunion only to watch their heroes fail so spectacularly on almost every front (-- even the final shootout turns on a lucky shot.) It died at the box-office and critics pasted both Culp and Hill, calling the film a confusing mess of contradictions. How a film that unfolds this slowly and deliberately can be called confusing is a puzzlement. Perhaps it was too slow people couldn't see the forest for the trees? That's me shrugging right now...

Culp would never direct again, which is too bad, because he really had something special going on here; a style I would love to have seen nurtured through several more films. Hill recovered almost immediately, penning the screenplay for The Getaway the very same year, which eventually paved the way for his directorial debut with Hard Times two years later. And even though he basically used the same deliberate approach, audiences and critics ate it all up, triggering a decade run of success for Hill where everything he touched seemed to turn into box-office gold. So maybe audience just weren't ready for Hickey & Boggs after all back then. Now? You have no excuse at all for not seeing it and I encourage all of you to watch it as soon as possible. 

Okay, folks, this post is just part of a trio of reviews put together by a motley triumvirate of Blogs, originating over at Checkpoint: Telstar, focusing on the film career of Walter Hill. 

Checkpoint Telstar: Hard Times 

Cinemasochist Apocalypse: Southern Comfort 

Micro-Brewed Reviews: Hickey & Boggs 

Please check 'em out, won't you? Thank you. 

Hickey & Boggs (1972) Film Guarantors :: United Artists / P: Fouad Said / AP: Joel Reisner / D: Robert Culp / W: Walter Hill / C: Bill Butler / E: David Berlatsky / M: Ted Ashford / S: Bill Cosby, Robert Culp, Carmencristina Moreno, Louis Moreno, Rosalind Cash, Robert Mandan, Michael Moriarty, Jack Colvin, Vincent Gardenia, James Woods

The Camp and Cult Blogathon :: The Marty McFly Effect :: Walter Hill's Streets of Fire (1984)

Our rock 'n' roll fable opens in an unnamed, neon-drenched city of a distant future or an alternative-fictionalized past, where Ellen Aim (Lane) and the Attackers, over the protests of her manager / boyfriend, Billy Fish (Moranis), return to her rough-n-tumble borough of origin for a concert. Everyone seems to be enjoying the performance, though; some more than others -- namely the Bombers, a group of motorcycle riding hooligans, who crash the show, trash the theater, and kidnap the headliner to be the new plaything for their smitten leader, Raven (Dafoe). After witnessing all of this, the local diner owner gets word to her soldier of fortune brother, Tom Cody (Paré), to come home, kick some ass, chew some bubblegum, and fix this mess. And now that I think about it -- never mind the bubblegum. Totally irrelevant to the situation. Lets forget I even brought it up.

Heeding the call, things get complicated with the revelation that Cody and Aim used to be an item, but, with the reluctant help of Fish, Cody arms up and heads into the Battery to raid the Bombers hangout, bust some heads, and get his old flame back. But getting there and rescuing Aim is only half the battle, with a long and arduous fight to get back out and into friendlier territory still to come with the enraged Bombers behind them and corrupt cops blocking the way out. And though he claims to be doing it just for Fish's reward money, Cody's motivations soon become clear when the bullets start flying and things start exploding in between several raucous musical interludes as the old, smoldering flame between these two flares up as the city burns around them...

Since his bare-knuckle brawling epic, Hard Times (1975), where he made his directorial debut, filmmaker Walter Hill had been on a roll. Even before then, with screenwriting credits for Hickey and Boggs, The Getaway, and The Drowning Pool Hill's status as a Hollywood A-Lister was already well and firmly bona fide. But after Hard Times, whether serving as writer, director or producer, or all of the above, Hill could seemingly do no wrong with the likes of The Driver and The Long Riders, and cult classics like Southern Comfort and The Warriors, or when he let Ridley Scott and Dan O'Bannon scare the living shit out of all of us with Alien. After seeing Hard Times, John Wayne personally asked Hill to direct The Shootist, but Hill reluctantly turned him down because he was too big a fan and couldn't bare to direct J.B. Books' (and Wayne's) final, fatal shoot-out.

Hill always was a huge, self-proclaimed fan of westerns and insists the genre heavily influenced all of his films. And it was while shooting another sure fire hit, 48 Hours, that Hill got the notion for another oddball western, combining it with his obsession for "custom cars, kissing in the rain, neon, trains in the night, high-speed pursuit, rumbles, rock stars, motorcycles, jokes in tough situations, leather jackets and questions of honor." Taking this idea of a rock 'n' roll neo-noir to his producers, Lawrence Gordon and Joel Silver, and screenwriter Jerry Gross, they all loved it; and while Gordon and Silver pitched it to Universal, Hill and Gross began hammering out a script. And when 48 Hours hit big, the studio quickly gave these collaborators the green light to keep on keeping on.

Originally, Hill copped the title of the film from a Bruce Springsteen song, Streets of Fire, from Darkness on the Edge of Town, and was [-this-] close to getting the song into the film until the Boss realized Hill had every intention of re-recording the song, to be performed by his heroine, and withdrew. Now. I love Springsteen, but, to the film's betterment, Hill then turned to Jim Steinman, whose pompous, operatic rock tunes had Meatloaf rocketing to the top of the charts like a Bat Out of Hell in the 1970's, and it was the composer who really sets the tone of the film to come.

 

Video courtesy of sfmmist

When it came to casting, the same agent who recommended Eddie Murphy for 48 Hours sold Hill on Michael Paré as Tom Cody. Paré had just wrapped up Eddie and the Cruisers and Hill felt the actor brought the perfect balance of toughness and innocence to the part. Paré's initial breakthrough role came as one of Ralph Hinkley's remedial students in The Greatest American Hero, and had a near, brief flash of stardom in the early 1980's. He certainly had the looks and the physicality of an action hero, but, when it came to actually emoting, this guy was the living embodiment of a 404 Document Not Found Error. For his heroine, Hill overcame his initial reluctance over casting Diane Lane, fearing she was too young (Lane was only 18), and was so impressed with her performance that he kept expanding her part as filming progressed.

However, for the record, that is not Lane singing. She was lip-synching to Holly Sherwood and Laurie Sargent. And Sargent's band, Face to Face, served as Aim's back up band, The Attackers, in the film.

As scripted, Cody's sidekick, McCoy, was supposed to be an overweight lush, but, while auditioning for the role of Cody's sister (-- which eventually went to Deborah Van Valkenburgh), actress Amy Madigan convinced Hill and Silver to change the gender and give her a crack at it. The rest of the cast is admirably filled out with Willem DaFoe, giving another whackadoodle performance as the venomous Raven, complete with a completely fubar hairdo that brings to mind a king cobra, as the villain, Rick Moranis, knocking 'em dead as the odious comedy relief, and a handy Bill Paxton loitering around to get punched in the face whenever needed.

The film was shot in Chicago, an abandoned soap factory, and on the Universal back-lot, where production designer John Vallone put a giant tarp over several city blocks to make it perpetually night to intensify all that neon glow reflecting off the consistently wet streets (-- but it never seems to rain, bringing into question the source of all that dampness). Shooting ran for five months with Hill in the director's chair and Andrew Lazlo behind the camera, both of whom worked hard to give the film a harsh, industrialized edge -- a bizarre amalgamation of hard-boiled noir, Steam Punk, Ozzie and Harriet and an old-fashioned Sock Hop. Truthfully, considering when it was made, and that killer soundtrack it sports, it's not hard to look at Streets of Fire as nothing more than one long -- or a series of music videos, with the kidnapping and rescue plot stringing them together. And with the explosive popularity of MTV back then, one has to wonder how this film backfired so badly at the box-office?

Yeah, Streets of Fire was a rare box-office flop for Hill and barely made back half of its production costs, which officially scuttled Hill's original plans for a Tom Cody trilogy. Most of the blame fell on the leads. Lane hadn't quite perfected her craft yet, but she still acted circles around Paré during their romantic interludes, which all clunk pretty badly. To his credit, Paré fares just fine, even excels, during the action set-pieces (-- ably assisted by bulldog Madigan), especially the climactic sledgehammer fight with Dafoe (-- a scene that took nine days to shoot). The film's soundtrack album fared better, buoyed by Dan Hartman's top ten hit "I Can Dream About You", and combining that with Steinman's bombastic-ness, Hill's unique vision of a dystopian future, a mind-blowing striptease, and a metric ton of blunt one-liners, kept the film from fading into permanent obscurity.

And I proudly belong to the tenacious cult that glommed onto Streets of Fire and find myself bopping and weaving and "Hell Yeah-ing!" to its percussive beat whenever I give it another spin. One of the few reviewers who didn't completely paste it back in 1984 was Roger Ebert, who dug what Hill was trying to do with his world-building, saying, "The language is strange, too: It's tough, but not with 1984 toughness. It sounds like the way really mean guys would have talked in the late 1950s, only with a few words different—as if this world evolved a slightly different language." I can dig that, too, and Ebert's right on the money. Which is why I always describe Streets of Fire as what the world would have looked like in 1984 if Marty McFly had only borked things up when he went back in time to 1955, got stuck there, and, like a pebble in a pond, his impact eventually re-shaped the world to come. It could have been awesome, and I've never hated Robert Zemeckis more than I do right now.

This post is my meager contribution to She Blogged By Night's Camp and Cult Movie Blogathon. Now follow the link, get your hinders in gear, and get to reading all of the other fine entries

Streets of Fire (1984) Universal Pictures :: RKO Pictures / EP: Gene Levy / P: Joel Silver, Lawrence Gordon / AP: Mae Woods / D: Walter Hill / W: Walter Hill, Larry Gross / C: Andrew Laszlo / E: Jim Coblentz, Freeman A. Davies, Michael Ripps / M: Ry Cooder / S: Michael Paré, Diane Lane, Rick Moranis, Amy Madigan, Willem Dafoe, Deborah Van Valkenburgh, Lee Ving, Bill Paxton