A night in the life of New York City’s most hated street gang. Tough guys like me can relate to this one, ahem. The Warriors are innocent of the shooting death of Cyrus, the likable visionary for unity among the gangs of the city, but every thug in town thinks that they did it and is now out for street justice. This film is all about the most primal instinct: survival. Director Walter Hill keeps it brilliantly simple. It’s a street gang flick cut down to the raw bone. The Warriors just want to get home, but there’s someone around every corner who wants to kill them—and that’s the whole movie, Charlie. In its world, there’s hardly anyone in the city who ISN’T in a gang, save for some cops and a few cowering squares. Even the cool FM radio DJ is down with the real underground, using her show to relay messages over the airwaves about clandestine happenings on the streets. That unique world is why this survived bad reviews and bad press in its original release to become a major cult favorite. It’s a zippy piece of entertainment, mildly subversive for its lack of judgement toward its anti-heroes and with plenty of room in which to read all of the subtext you want about how a lot of gullible minds united on a witch hunt can lead to disaster. Everybody’s got a favorite gang here and it’s usually The Baseball Furies, guys in vintage baseball outfits and facepaint and who stalk the streets wielding bats. Most people’s favorite character, meanwhile, is David Patrick Kelly (in his first film) as the movie’s biggest psycho and provider of its most memorable scene. You’ll know it when you see it because you’ll be singing it afterward.