Attention All Sections Alpha: Space:1999 Turns 50!

Approximately fifty years ago, in September of 1975 -- shortly before I turned six -- I sat down in front of a color TV, turned on WPIX New York, and a TV show blew my mind.

Seriously.

I was watching a new science fiction series, called Space:1999, and, no exaggeration, it changed my life. It was a series that I not only loved as a child, a teenager, and as an adult, but as a writer, it transformed my career. 

My very first book was a non-fiction book guide to the series. My first magazine sale was a retrospective of the series.  And in 2002 and 2014, I wrote officially licensed novels or new adventures in the 1999 universe, representing my first fiction sale. 

My love of the series introduced me to a creative mentor, friend and collaborator in the late, great script-writer Johnny Byrne, and I have made so many new friends and talented colleagues because of Space:1999.  Musicians. Writers. Model-makers. Filmakers. Podcast and video-makers.

But in the beginning was the series itself.

Here was a program that felt different from Star Trek (1966-1969) and Lost in Space (1965-1968), and at least to me, it seemed incredibly real; incredibly possible.  

Say what you will, but Space:1999 was my sci-fi show, for my era, in the 1970s.

Half a century later, with the year 1999 far behind us, Space:1999 still feels that way to me, and this week, I'll be celebrating the series as it celebrates this milestone and anniversary.

I always say that the year 1999 need not be an expiration date, and that this Gerry and Sylvia Anderson series from the disco decade still has much to share with audiences about ourselves, about humanity.  

Those people who compile internet list insisting that its age makes the series unwatchable? Let's just say they suffer a paucity of imagination, understanding of context, and lack of appreciation for the tenets of filmmaking.
 
As I see it, Space: 1999 was constructed upon the following six creative pillars and philosophical underpinnings.  

These half-a-dozen ideas represent the identity of the original 1970s program, and keep it vibrant after all these years and decades. 

1. Technology is a double-edged sword. 

While technology permits for the Alphans to sustain themselves on the moon (and in deep space), and the wonderfully versatile Eagles permit for landings on planets that could represent a new home, technology is not a cure-all in the Space: 1999 universe.  

On the contrary, technological solutions to problems (like atomic waste on the moon), cause the "Breakaway" catastrophe in the first place.  

And in episodes such as "Space Brain" and "The Troubled Spirit," technological solutions to crises are often proven to be flawed.

A nuclear charge-carrying Eagle (mysteriously) can't return to Alpha when it is on a collision course with a cosmic intelligence in the former episode, and in the latter episode, a scientific "exorcism" of a ghost is the very thing that creates a haunting on the lunar base in the first instance.

In large part, this conceit of technology as a double-edged sword is what distinguishes the Space: 1999 universe from the Star Trek universe.  In Star Trek, "Technology Unchained" has made the Federation a paradise. Without the need to worry about survival issues like hunger and poverty, man has turned, particularly in the 24th century, towards "enriching" himself, not his pocketbook.   

Writing in Science Digest all the way back in 1975, editor Arielle Emmett wrote that Space: 1999 concerned the "downfall of technological man."  That's the template,  "Earthbound" is a perfect example of this idea well-executed. It showcases the glorious potential and horrors of advanced suspended animation in a most chilling fashion.

As we are developing new technologies, new medicines, new weapons and new media at a prodigious rate right now, this facet of the original series remains timely. 

Do our tools make us more human, or less human?  Do our tools connect us or isolate us?  Do we control our machines, or do they control us?

2.  Outer Space is Terrifying and Mysterious.  It isn't a Cosmic United Nations.

Many popular "outer space" franchises, from Star Trek to Farscape to Andromeda  have featured recurring alien villains.  We all know their names: the Klingons, the Peacekeepers, the Nietzscheans, the Ferengi, the Borg and so on.  Communication is possible with all these species, and the galaxy is like a cosmic U.N., with different countries separated by the vast cosmic ocean of outer space. You can radio back to headquarters (Earth) via a sub-space radio, and there is no time dilation at all.

Not so in Space: 1999, the original series. 

There, outer space was a realm of mystery and terror and awe.  I'm reminded of Taylor's lyrical description of deep space in Planet of the Apes: "Time bends. Space is...boundless. It squashes a man's ego. I feel lonely."  

Those sentences perfectly describe the established Space: 1999 aesthetic.  

Another way of putting it, the original Star Trek had a rule for prospective writers that they should not get lost in "the bigness of it all" in terms of outer space.  

In Space: 1999, the bigness of it all is the very point of the drama. 

It's important to remember that on Space: 1999 the errant moon was moving through alien star systems, on an unplanned course, never to return, so there were not recurring enemies to battle.  This makes it more challenging, I suppose, in terms of drama: you don't have a regular villain to fall back on.  But the idea was also rewarding, each episode offered new horizons.  Space: 1999 wasn't pinned to an increasingly complex alien-based continuity where you had to say, "but a Ferengi would never do that!"

There was a logical reason for this approach in terms of the structure of Space: 1999. The Alphans had few resources and fewer weapons on their cosmic odyssey. Thus they were never in a position to combat a continuing enemy like the Borg or the Klingons.  

Indeed, Moonbase Alpha might -- with luck and ingenuity -- survive one engagement with a militant alien empire, but it would never have survived if the Sidons, the Dorcons or other villains had kept hammering at it, week after week. The base was too fragile for that, its life support systems too precarious, its defenses too "primitive."  

Again, this goes right back to the late Martin Landau's (correct) assertion back in the 1970s that Space: 1999 was less "macho" than Star Trek.  Star Trek was about peaceful contact with aliens in a universe of plenty, but also about gunboat diplomacy. The Enterprise had phaser banks to make certain the crew was safe, and the Federation was protected. By contrast, Space: 1999 was about a Darwinian universe where survival was the overriding issue, and this was distinctly a battle for limited resources.

We saw many aliens in Space: 1999 who attempted to steal the Alphan resources ("The Beta Cloud" and "Bringers of Wonder" to name two episodes), and the series obsessed on matters of survival. One character, in an episode called "Dorzak" said that the battle for survival "makes monsters of us all." Yet another episode, "The  Exiles" saw characters debating survival explicitly.  

Is it more important that you simply survive, or how you choose to survive?"

Johnny Byrne's "Mission of the Darians" looked at a disaster on an alien spaceship where the crew turned to cannibalism because there was no uncontaminated food remaining. The series hero, John Koenig was asked if he would have turned to the same grisly solution if that crisis had occurred on Alpha. 

Rather pointedly, he didn't answer.

3. Mankind in Space: 1999 is technologically and psychologically unprepared for the mysteries of deep space, and when he countenances those mysteries, it is his human nature which will either hand him defeat, or bring him to victory. The scientists and astronauts of Moonbase Alpha were not examples of evolved, idealized, romanticized mankind, but us -- contemporary man -- in space, replete with all our flaws, emotions, paranoia, fears and hopes. 

Frequently in Space: 1999, a mistake by the Alphans was the very thing that led into the adventure of the week.  They tampered in alien justice in "End of Eternity." They investigated and opened up orbiting cryo-chambers in "The Exiles."  

Humans are curious, and that can be a strength, but it can also be a weakness.

The story "Collision Course" depicted beautifully how man is psychologically and technologically unprepared for life in space.  An alien from an advanced race, Arra (Margaret Leighton), informs Commander Koenig that he must permit the moon to collide with her colossal world. In this case, she claims, it will trigger some kind of evolutionary metamorphosis, but that Alpha will survive the event.  That's a lot to "believe in," but Koenig discovers that he trusts Arra.  He's made a human judgment about her.

Back on Alpha, however, his team can't get on board with this idea of letting the collision occur and it goes around Koenig's authority to attempt to avoid disaster with mines deployed in space.  

What is the superior value in this instance? Trust in science? Or trust in a person?  Do we depend on what we know, or what we feel?

I'm not drawing any universal conclusions regarding that idea, but Space: 1999 meditated on the notion that in deep space, the "laws" of the universe might not be exactly exist as we understand them now, from our perch on Earth.  Instead, man is going to be asked to take -- now and again -- a "leap of faith."  

Some men and women will be equipped to do so, some will not. This creates tension amongst the Alphans.

Now, Space: 1999 has been accused of being anti-science, and this is so because the series suggests that:

a.) technology is not always the answer, and... 

b.) that the laws of science as we understand them in the here-and -now may not apply, exactly, in the far corners of space and time. In Space: 1999, man must puzzle his way through answers, based not on techno-babble, but on a combination of technology, psychology, philosophy and even spiritualism.  

4. The Alphans are the new kids on the block, literally.  I once compared the original universe in Space: 1999 to a classroom. It's a crucible from which the Alphans -- having escaped from a dying, politically-destructive Earth -- learn about themselves and their role in space.  

You'll notice that in no episode of Space: 1999 do the Alphans encounter a race that is less advanced than they were, at least in terms of technology (unless you count 13th century Earth in "Journey to Where," or the Alphans themselves, as cavemen, in "Full Circle.")

Instead, the Alphans universally countenanced super-advanced aliens that believe they have life "licked," so-to-speak, and are apparently far more advanced. But these aliens, almost universally have lost  or sacrificed some important aspect of humanity.  

The Zennites of "Missing Link" have emphasized science over emotion, and have forgotten how to feel.  

The Sidons of "Voyager's Return" champion their  legalisms over moral solutions to their problems, thus embracing vengeance under the auspices of "law."  

The aliens of "War Games" have created a world with no fear...and yet they fear the presence of the Alphans on their world.  Planet of the Hypocrites.

In "Guardian of Piri," the Alphans discover an extinct race, the Pirians, that gave up physical labor and "work" and destroyed themselves through lassitude and luxury.

Again and again, the Alphans gaze at alien worlds in the series, and find that while some of those societies possess glorious aspects, they also showcase an absence of something important; the very things the Alphans cherish most in themselves, as human beings.  

Space:1999's late story editor, Johnny Byrne always told me that the Alphans would be successful, ultimately, in their space quest, and they would achieve success by accepting their limitations and potential as a species. Their humanity -- warts and all -- is their greatest gift. 

5. Horror Mythology. If you look across the catalog of Space: 1999 episodes, you begin to detect that many episodes actually had more in common with the original The Outer Limits than Star Trek. This is because the horror genre -- particularly the Gothic -- played a considerable role in Space: 1999. Various episodes resurrected and updated famous horror tropes.  

I've written about this in length in a post here.  

In short, Space: 1999 in 1975 and 1976 gave us outer space, high-tech variations of  The Premature Burial ("Earthbound), the Siren ("Guardian of Piri"), the Midas Touch ("Force of Life,") the Midwich Cuckoos ("Alpha Child"), Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde ("Full Circle), Faust ("End of Eternity"), Ghosts ("The Troubled Spirit"), St. George vs. The Dragon ("Dragon's Domain"), The Picture of Dorian Gray ("The Exiles") and even the zombie ("All That Glisters.")  

You'll notice that some of these tales arise from ancient mythology (the siren, the Midas Touch, namely), and others come from more recent mythology, 19th and early 20th century literature.  

Johnny Byrne once informed me that his idea for "Another Time, Another Place" came from a mythology built around a church in Ireland.

He told me: "One hundred yards up the road from the house where I grew up was this little church with a fantastic reputation.  We heard that if you walked around the church sun-wise (clockwise) three times, you'd meet yourself coming out.  That kind of legend was the core of "Another Time, Another Place."  Our mythology is filled with situations in which a person stumbles into a mist and then emerges 300 years later or some such thing. So I constructed a story around the experience of my upbringing."

6. Mind-blowing Visual Distinction. In terms of visualization, Space: 1999 was a series that took ambitious, even crazy risks on a regular basis, and was never afraid to fail.  

There were occasional visual failures (the soap suds of "Space Brain," one of my favorite episodes), of course, but also radically new environments featured on the series.  

Who can forget the bizarre but mind-blowing surface of planet Piri in "Guardian of Piri?"  

We saw, in Space: 1999 worlds of soft fabrics glowing mists and hard-edged nightmares ("Missing Link,"), diamond-like, jeweled mirrors ("Seed of Destruction"), vast computer/man interfaces ("War Games," "The Infernal Machine"), an anti-matter world of crimson skies ("Matter of Life and Death"), an underground alcove of spheroid "bouncing" probes ("AB Chrysalis"), and much more.  

In some sense, Space: 1999 was really about allowing the imagination to run wild -- with very little control or barrier terms of scientific rationalization or explanation. Farscape was truly brilliant in this regard as well, showing us colorful worlds of tremendous ingenuity and visual invention.

these are my thoughts on what Space: 1999  as we celebrate its fiftieth birthday. These are the values I see played out, across the catalog of 48 episodes.  These are the reasons I enjoy the series after a half-century.  

Other fans have other reasons, I should hasten to add.  I'm not trying to speak for anyone else, or for any agenda. This is just my interpretation of a work of art that inspired me (and, incidentally, began my writing career).

50 Years Ago: Return to the Planet of the Apes (1975)

Return to the Planet of the Apes (1975) is a Saturday morning TV program developed for television by David De Patrie and Fritz Freleng. This fifty-year old series assimilates and re-invents characters, plot lines, devices and technology from all previous incarnations of the once-popular franchise, including the Pierre Boulle novel, the 1968 film and sequels (Beneath, in particular), and even the short-lived 1974 live-action TV series.

The result is an invigorating shot in the arm for the franchise. The series is attentive and committed to details, and even develops an overall story arc.

That might bee a surprise to you. Because frankly the buzz from the old genre press wasn’t good. Going back to Fantastic Television a reference book from 1977 that I've always adored, the author writes in a summary review of the NBC series that it “was a not very exciting animated version of the short-lived CBS live-action series,” and that the artwork and plots were “simplistic.” (page 177).  

The comment about the art work is correct, and yet some times "simplistic" can also mean...interesting.  Once you get used to it, the design of the cartoon series is actually pretty terrific, at least in a baroque kind of way.

The premiere episode of Return to the Planet of the Apes, “Flames of Doom,” (by Larry Spiegel), finds a NASA space capsule called the “Venture” traveling on a routine deep space mission on August 6, 1976. 

Aboard are three astronauts: Bill Hudson (a white man), Jeff Allen (an African-American man) and Judy Franklin (a woman). 

Bill narrates the captain’s log and confirms Dr. Stanton’s theory of “time thrust;” that man can utilize faster-than-light speeds to propel himself into the future. Admirers of the 1968 film will recognize this comment as a reflection of Chuck Heston’s opening narration, and Dr. Hasslein’s theory named there. It’s been simplified for children in this cartoon, but the idea is identical.

No sooner has Hudson informed us about this scientific theory than the ship’s chronometer goes wild and the Venture literally plunges into a time warp. The “Earth Clock” goes crazy, and the Venture arrives battered and bruised in the year 3979, where it crashes on a strange planet, and into a dead lake.

Meanwhile, elsewhere on the surface  – in a city ruled by intelligent apes – General Urko, a gorilla power-monger, addresses the Supreme Council of Ape City and demands genocide against all humans. 

Arguing the opposite case is the kindly chimpanzee Cornelius, who pleads for a “different course.” He and his wife, a behavioral scientist named Zira, wish to study humans as the key to “simian origins.” Arbitrating this dispute of national importance is the ruler of the apes, an orangutan named Dr. Zaius. 

I must note that the level of attention to detail in this scene is remarkable.  For as Zaius issues his decision on the matter at hand, the edit cuts to a stone relief on the wall behind him which reveals the long history of ape-human relations. There are images of apes hunting humans and even domesticating them.

Humans may be hunted as legitimate sport, Zaius concludes, or brought into the city to perform “menial tasks.” They may even serve as domestic pets, but Zaius will not demand their total destruction.

However, on an ominous note, he warns that Article 18 of the “Book of Simian Prophecy” demands that man must be destroyed at any cost if he develops the power of speech. In other words, this is a temporary victory for Cornelius’s cause, and for the primitive, mute, stone-age humans who populate caves outside the technologically advanced ape-city.

Watching this portion of the episode, a few matters become plain. First and foremost, the franchise has returned to the ape society as depicted in Boulle’s original novel. In other words, the apes dwell in a twentieth century city with television, radio, automobiles and the like. 

Their city is not a rock-outcropping like in the popular original movie, but rather a contemporary metropolis with buildings and skyscrapers that resemble those from human history in a wonderful nod to the adage “monkey see, monkey do.” The ape culture of the original film was almost medieval, despite the presence of guns and such medical advances as brain surgery. Not so here.

For instance, the imposing ape council building resembles nothing so much as our own Capitol Building where Congress deliberates when it isn't shutdown. Since this is a re-imagination and updating of Planet of the Apes for the mid-1970s, not only is there the burgeoning nod to gender and racial diversity (this was the era of the equal rights amendment...) in the make-up of the astronauts, but the focus on the Council and its proceedings reveals a more bureaucratic bent to the apes.

Instead of ape culture being essentially of one mind (as in the see-no-evil/hear-no-evil/speak-no-evil triumvirate of the Schaffner film showcases), here Ape society is bedeviled by partisan politics, with chimpanzees representing the pacifist left, gorillas the militant right, and orangutans the sensible center. This is especially important considering the context of Return to the Planet of the Apes: immediately post-Watergate and soon after the Vietnam conflict. Again, this is an example of updating and changing a franchise, but not throwing out the baby with the bath water.

Continuing with the story, Bill, Jeff (voiced by Austin Stoker of Battle for the Planet of the Apes and Assault on Precinct 13), and Judy abandon their sinking spaceship and flee into the Forbidden Zone. Recalling the portions of the original film shot in Death Valley, the series offers an artistic montage here as the three astronauts search for water and food under the glaring sun of what they believe is an alien world.

The animated frames turn a bright scarlet hue to represent the heat of the desert and there are close-ups of human faces caked in sweat. Close-ups of tired feet marching in the sand also appear. This montage doesn’t rely on dialogue, but rather on clever images that express an emotion. 

The animation is limited perhaps, even crude but these limitations are marshaled as a strength on the program. Overlapping views, double exposures, intense close-ups, insert shots and first person subjective point-of-view shots all provide a texture to the desperate march through the wasteland. 

This march ends, appropriately, with the sighting of an Ape Mount Rushmore. Another new touch, but again one that along with the ape metropolis reveals the ape talent for mimicry (monkey see, monkey do) and is therefore thematically valuable; a subconscious reminder that all of the simian accomplishments are built on “aping” human society.

Later episodes go further with this idea, visiting "The Tomb of the Unknown Ape" or mentioning the famous author, William Apespeare.  One episode, "Invasion of the Underdwellers," even casts eyes on -- at least briefly -- a simian Mona Lisa.

In the desert, Jeff and Bill lose Judy when fires spontaneously erupts in front of them, and an earthquake splits the ground in a series of lovely frames that reveal a high degree of fidelity to images from Beneath the Planet of the Apes (particularly Taylor’s abduction by the underground mutants). 

The astronauts have little time to ponder the loss of their companion, however, as Bill and Jeff encounter a tribe of stone age humans, including the beautiful Nova.

Suggesting an interesting mystery, Nova wears the dog tags of another astronaut, someone named Brent (again, a reference to Beneath the Planet of the Apes). His birth date was May 2, 2079, so Jeff and Bill are forced to ponder the notion that an astronaut who was born after them arrived on the planet of the apes before they did. Boggles the mind, no? This is a pretty advanced concept for a kid’s show, and it also provides an underlying mystery for adults to enjoy. Where is Brent? What happened to him? 

Before long, the apes arrive, on the hunt,  in tanks, jeeps and with heavy artillery. The gorillas even lob gas grenades at the primitive humans. Here, the series utilizes zooms inside individual frames (not actual motion, but rather camera motion…) to suggest the frenetic pace of the hunt. Jeff and Bill are separated, and Bill is captured and taken to Ape City.

That’s where the first episode ends, but already, the attentive viewer can detect how this canny re-imagination assimilates the critical aspects of the Planet of the Apes mythos with something akin to 20/20 hindsight.

Instead of making up the saga as it goes (a deficit of the otherwise outstanding motion picture series…), Return to the Planet of the Apes accounts for -- from the very beginning -- the mutants in the Forbidden Zone (here termed “The Underdwellers.”) It also employs familiar characters in new ways and in  new situations, and even incorporates movie imagery to vet the story. 

In terms of characters, Urko derives from Mark Lenard’s character on the 1974 TV series. In Beneath, a similar character was known as “Ursus.” He is essentially the same ape here, as are Zira and Cornelius, but Dr. Zaius has changed the most. 

Zaius is no longer a hypocritical religious zealot, but rather an equalizing force of moderation in Ape Society…almost heroic, actually.

“The free ape is he who does not fear to go to the end of his thought,” he even states; an ideal that the movie’s “chief defender of the faith” could never get behind.

This is actually a significant structural change as well as a symbolic representation of the left/right divide in our culture. Why? Because with Zaius moderating pacifists and war-mongers, we can more logically believe that humans (particularly the astronauts) can continue to escape and outmaneuver a technologically advanced simian culture. The whole planet isn’t out to kill them; they do have allies.  Dr. Zaius is even referred to by his enemies, the Underdwellers, as being "just...for an ape," and again, this is a sea change in the character's depiction.

From the original Planet of the Apes movie, “Flames of Doom” also incorporates other powerful visuals. We see the ape scarecrows on the border of the Forbidden Zone again, and, on a connected note, hear the same gorilla “hunt” horn on the soundtrack. We see a small, yellow rubber raft and a U.S. flag planted in the Forbidden Zone too, as well as the discovery of a first green plant indicating life on the fringe of the desert.

Again, the approach here seems to be to this: take what worked in the apes movie, book and TV series, and then put them all together in a more coherent, cohesive story, smoothing out the bumps and making everything jibe. 

That’s important, because long time Planet of the Apes fans will remember some of the more dramatic gaps fouling continuity in the film series. In Planet of the Apes, for instance, it is the year 3978 when Taylor arrives, but when Brent arrives on his heels in the follow-up, Beneath, it is magically 3955.

Similarly, there are discrepancies between Escape and Conquest in the story of how the apes ascended to superiority in man’s world. Cornelius’s story involves an ape named Aldo (whom we meet in Battle), but does not take into account the true ape revolutionary, Caesar.  Coming at essentially the end of the apes cycle, Return to the Planet of the Apes benefits from knowing everything that came before.

Indeed, this is the only artistic reason for the re-imagination of a franchise. Taking what worked in one production and maintaining it; and taking what didn’t work and improving upon it.  It must be done, however, with a degree of love, patience and restraint involving the material. I feel like I see all that here.

Notice that there is not merely change for the sake of change; that characters have not miraculously switched sexes, and whole swaths of mythology have not been removed or altered to suit a developer"s ego, or need to be "creative."

What I’m suggesting is that fundamentally there is a respect in evidence here for the the productions that came before, for the Apes mythos. So yes, a re-imagination can work, and this dedicated animated series is one example, at least in its first chapter, where it did so.

None of this means, however, that Return to the Planet of the Apes doesn't sometimes lapse into childishness and silliness.  The series was made, after all, to air on Saturday mornings in the 1970s.  The intended demographic was young children, and yet here I am, writing about it 50 years later  

20 Years/Top Ten Posts #4: The Warriors (1979)

[Originally posted on September 4, 2010, this review is the 4th most-read post on my blog in its first 20 years, racking up nearly 30,000 views).

"The problem in the past has been the man turning us against one another. We have been unable to see the truth, because we have been fighting for ten square feet of ground, our turf, our little piece of turf. That's crap, brothers! The turf is ours by right, because it's our turn. All we have to do is keep up the general truce. We take over one borough at a time. Secure our territory... secure our turf... because it's all our turf

- The "One and Only" Cyrus, The Warriors (1979)

Recently, a reader of this blog asked me in an e-mail to name my "dream" or "fantasy" double feature of the immediate post-Star Wars film period. 

I'm not sure if this is precisely what she had in mind, but almost immediately, my mind seized on two great action fantasies which perfectly capture the unsettled, anxious vibe of that span: Walter Hill's The Warriors (1979) and John Carpenter's Escape from New York (1981).   

Wouldn't you love to sit down in a darkened auditorium, and watch these two films back-to-back?  I know I would.

Both of these classic action movies are born from of the same historical context: a period of extreme urban decay and blight in the Big Apple.

And -- as great science fiction films often do -- both movies project that considerable societal problem into the immediate but unknowable future.   In the case of The Warriors, that future date is intentionally left unspecified, but New York is a city overrun by gangs.  And in the world of Snake Plissken (Kurt Russell), Manhattan becomes a government-run maximum security prison in 1997.

So how did the American fantasy film arrive at this weird, dark juncture...where the criminals are running the prison, so-to-speak?   

Well, if you recall, the mid-1970s was not really a terrific time for big cities in America, specifically NYC.  Much of the metropolitan infrastructure had fallen into disrepair and neglect,  and there was a growing sense of disenfranchisement, politically-speaking.  

Alarmingly, crime rates were sky high and trending higher.  

Poverty was also an enormous problem because of economic stagnation and high unemployment (Carter's age of malaise and America's "crisis of confidence.")   New York City teetered dangerously near bankruptcy in 1975, and President Ford famously refused to bail it out.  This task was left to the Teachers' Union and, utilizing pension funds, it rose to the challenge...to the tune of  a then-whopping 150 million dollars.

Then, in July of 1977, a city-wide power outage shone another light on the social unrest burdening the great city.   During a 25-hour period of black outs, there was a city-wide outbreak of looting and crime, and over 3,000 men and women were arrested.    Prisons virtually overflowed...

In that day and age, no one could have imagined so quick an end to this urban nightmare (which was also featured to great effect in the terrific early eighties flick Wolfen [1981].  However, via the corporatization/Disneyfication/Giuliani-fication of the Big Apple in the early 1990's...the problem was resolved in New York, at least to a very large degree. 

Yet filmmakers of the day, like J.C. and Walter Hill, imagined in the late 1970's and early 1980's that the Big Apple would only sink further into crime, into gang-warfare, into blight, and into despair.  The city became a dark, apocalyptic landscape in their highly-visual, action-packed productions.

That's the critical context underlying both The Warriors and Escape from New York. In his landmark book, Cult Movies, film scholar and critic Danny Peary does a terrific and thorough job of comparing and contrasting the novel and the film, but long-story short: the book de-romanticizes the gang members that serve as its protagonists, while the Walter Hill film of the disco-era purposefully mythologizes The Warriors and firmly places them in  a fantasy-styled (if dystopic...) landscape.

Taking a Ride on the Wonder Wheel; Or History Repeats Itself

It is a well-known fact that The Warriors (book and film) is loosely based on an event from human antiquity, the Battle of Cunaxa in 401 B.C.  

There, north of Babylon, a leader named Cyrus the Younger led "The Ten Thousand," -- an army of Greek soldiers -- into enemy territory against the Persian Army, which reportedly numbered over a million-strong.  

Cyrus was killed in the battle, leaving his men stranded deep inside enemy territory with no ally, no sanctuary and no supplies.  Clearchus, a Spartan general, assumed command of the fugitives, but there was danger, intrigue and betrayal at every turn.

For instance, a local satrap, Tissaphernes, invited the Greeks to feast with him...and the leaders who accepted the invitation were captured and decapitated.  The remaining Greeks fought superior numbers all the way back to their land, near the Black Sea.  And when they saw the familiar shore-line, they shouted -- famously (and with great relief) -- "Thalatta! Thalatta!" ("The Sea! The Sea!")

The events of the battle at Cunaxa, the subsequent retreat and the return home were assiduously recorded by the Greek soldier, Xenophon in his famous chronicle, Anabasis.   

This historical work is explicitly the source of the adaptations by Walter Hill/David Shaber and Yurick, but the location has been updated to the near-future, to gangland New York sometime near the dawn of the 21st century.  

A gang called "The Warriors" travels deep into enemy territory from their home-land (Coney Island) to attend a "conclave" in the Bronx.  The gang then faces enormous odds (and enemy gangs with names like The Baseball Furies, the Lizzies, the Electric Eliminators, the Moonrunners, the Orphans and the Gramercy Riffs), to return home safely following the assassination of a messianic gang leader.  

The Warriors ultimately know they have reached home, not coincidentally, when they spy the shore at Coney Island.  Thalatta?

There's even a figure in the film named Cyrus -- the aforementioned visionary gang leader assembling an "army" -- who dies early in the proceedings.

By connecting the odyssey of the Coney Island Warriors explicitly to the story told in Anabasis, director Hill successfully casts his unconventional, even criminal protagonists as epic heroes; thus casting them in a romantic, mythological light.  These men are not just street toughs; not merely small-time thugs, but heroes undertaking a terrifying and dangerous journey.  

The Wonder Wheel at Coney Island is the first shot of the film and it's almost as though Hill is using the concept of the wheel itself to take us back in time...to an almost mythological past.  The point is simply to note that, perhaps, unconventional times demand unconventional heroes.

Throughout the film, Hill returns to this important idea of myth making.  First, he cannily utilizes familiar character names to suggest famous figures/characters from history and myth.  It's important to remember, these character names are quite different from those highlighted in Yurick's novel, which sought to reveal gang members as ignorant and foolish, not as heroic, comic-book, fantasy figures.  

In the movie, then, we get a gang leader named Cleon (Dorsey Wright), who leads his Warriors to a "peace" gathering in the city. In Greek history, Cleon was actually a noted critic of the aristocracy, and the film character takes on this particular trait, at least to some extent.  He sees the power and righteousness inherent in Cyrus's vision of gang unity.  It's a way to change things; a way to alter the established (and morally corrupt?) order that has created the desolate, urban landscape.  

Another Warrior is called Cochise (David Harris), and he adopts the guise and characteristics of  a famous Apache war chief in American history.  Cochise's name means, literally "the strength of oak," and accordingly, in the film, Cochise is one of the Warriors' greatest fighters.

Yet another Warrior from Coney Island is named Ajax (James Remar), and this moniker derives from Greek history/myth too, specifically from Homer's The Iliad.    

Then there's Rembrandt (Marcelino Sanchez), the gang's graffiti-artist...named for the Dutch painter, and Snow (Brian Tyler) -- an African-American who is one "cool" customer.

Even the man who eventually takes over for Cleon, Swan (Michael Beck) is named explicitly for myth.  In Finnish tales, a swan is known as the bird of the underworld, and the "swan song" widely remembered as the "song of death."  Ultimately, it is Swan who takes on the Orphean task of safely leading his fellow-gang members (and a beautiful woman named Mercy...) out of the underworld of New York City, back to the safety and relative sanctuary of Coney Island.

The characters and situations encountered by the Warriors in Hill's 1979 film also relate specifically to stories recounted from Greek Myth; stories that remain well-known today.  For instance, Ajax falls prey in a park to an undercover police officer, a beautiful woman, sitting on a park bench.  She hand-cuffs the impulsive Ajax to that bench, and soon the police have arrived in force to take him into custody.  He does not make it home.  

After a fashion, Ajax's tragic fate is a reflection of the "Procrustean Bed" in Greek legend.  An evil man named Procrustes set up -- on a sacred path, no less -- an iron bed.  He would then invite innocent passersby to rest upon it.  Finally, he would ruthlessly make his occupant fit the bed...even if that "fit" required amputation, dismemberment or other tortures.  Eventually, Procrustes met his fate at the hands of the hero Theseus.  

But the underlying point of the myth was Procrustes' enforcement of conformity...everybody had to fit his bed...or die trying.  

In The Warriors, Ajax -- an outlaw gang member -- is captured by the police, who enforce conformity to the law.  In this setting (and rather subversively, I might add...), the police represent the corrupt and powerful authority of the land, and the gang members represent an escape from/protest of the establishment

In another important scene in The Warriors, Cochise, Rembrandt and Vermin are lured from the safety of a train at Union Station by a beautiful all-female gang called "The Lizzies."  On one hand, the Lizzies may be an allusion to the Tissaphernes interlude in Anabasis...the promise of a sumptuous "feast" of sorts that actually leads trusting warriors to their mortal doom.  

Or perhaps, the all-female nature of the gang, and the tantalizing promise of sexual seduction refers to the famous Sirens of Homer's The Odyssey: dangerous female creatures who lure sailors to their doom with beguiling music.  Certainly, the latter idea fits well here.  The Warriors are drawn out of the train car, and led to an island of sorts - a locked room -- with the promise of sex.  Only Rembrandt seems to sense the danger.

My favorite scene in The Warriors involves the heroic gang engaging battle with another dynamic gang, the Baseball Furies.  These Furies are armed with baseball bats and dressed in baseball uniforms.  Most terrifyingly, they wear war-paint: face-make-up.  You might be tempted to laugh at these characters in broad daylight...but at night -- and in perpetual, relentless motion --  these guys are pure nightmare fodder.  

Importantly, they take their name "The Furies" from another facet of ancient Greek lore.

There, the Furies or "Angry Ones" were known as beasts who exacted brutal punishment against those who had sworn a false oath.  In other words, the Furies punished...liars.  In the film, the Baseball Furies come out of the woodwork to punish the Warriors, who are believed to have broken the city-wide truce; and who (against orders) brought a weapon into that truce at  the conclave.  Of course, the Warriors are not guilty of murdering Cyrus, or of breaking their word, but the Furies don't realize that.

Again and again in The Warriors, Hill explicitly links the journey of the Coney Island gang to mythological, events, personalities and scenarios.  The end-game is to suggest that they -- like the heroes of antiquity -- are larger-than-life, romantic figures who, one day, will be remembered by history for their great accomplishment.  

The movie's myriad comic-book touches -- specifically framing and captioning -- likewise add to this underlying feeling of myth making.  This is no small matter.  I remember reading as a kid an interview with George Lucas in which he derided the lack of "real" heroes for children in 1970s pop-culture.  He named Dirty Harry and Kojak as role-models I believe, and saw Star Wars as a more innocent and appropriate alternative.

The Warriors in Hill's film represent another such alternative, even if a little unconventional.  They boast such heroic qualities as loyalty, strength and honor...and they are steadfastly trying to make a better life for themselves in the corrupt, urban blight of a city out of control. "sometime in the future."  

By depicting the gangs of New York City in this strange future landscape as colorful, dynamic and interracial (in the spirit of John Carpenter's Street Thunder in Assault on Precinct 13 [1976]), director Hill reminds the audience that this film does not occur in depressing, kitchen-sink reality, but rather  in a heightened, fantasy reality where people -- even gang members -- can still make heroic choices, and behave in honorable fashion.  In a future where every young person seems to be in a gang (or in a network of gangs, as it were), it's not hard to believe that one gang may be more heroic than other. 

That's why The Warriors is not the incitement to violence that some culture warriors mistook it for way back in 1979.  It features gangs to be certain, but the landscape is purposefully classic -- mythological -- and the gangs themselves are fantasy-inspired villains, bearing almost no resemblance to real-life thugs or common gangs.  

I mean, how many gangs do you know that dress up as...mimes?  

Can You Dig It? The Magic of "The One" in The Warriors

In some highly-intriguing fashion, The Warriors is not merely a comic-book fantasy about heroes on a "desperate, forced march" but a subversive commentary on its post-counterculture times, on the Crisis-in-Confidence America of the 1970's.  

Here, representatives from warring gangs in peace (and unarmed, even...) attend a conclave in the Bronx.  They go to listen to the inspirational words of a messianic leader, "The One and Only" Cyrus...an African-American visionary and revolutionary.  

Except for one bad apple (David Patrick Kelly's Luther), these gang members stand and listen respectfully to Cyrus, and "nobody is wasting nobody."

Believed to possess a "whole lot of magic," Cyrus is the leader of the biggest gang in the city and he preaches a Gospel of unity...and, importantly, numbers.  "Can you count, suckers?" he asks repeatedly.  Then he provides an entirely logical argument using mathematics as his primary rhetorical tool.  

There are 60,000 gang members in blighted New York, and only 20,000 police he reminds his audience.  "One gang could rule this city," he deliberately suggests.

What Cyrus promises is a new order.  Instead of battling over "turf," over a few hundred meters of territory, these gangs could effectively control the entire city if they just cooperated.  They could control infrastructure, resources and yes, even crime rates.  The city could not move without the okay of the gangs, Cyrus observes.  Power is within reach, but the gang leaders must not be selfish; must not be distracted by the "small" things.

What The Warriors never makes clear, or specific, is how exactly Cyrus would utilize his new found power were he to gain control of New York City.  Would he cause a reign of terror, of lawlessness?   Doubtful, I think.

Given the comments by the Warriors (especially Cleon...) regarding Cyrus, as well as Hill's honorable, classic presentation of these fantasy outlaws, there's ample reason to suspect that Cyrus is the real deal, and that his motives are pure.  

The character thus represents political optimism...the belief that, as foot-soldiers for change, we can each help shape the future to our liking.  If only we all row in the same direction.   What's daring about this vision is that Hill seems to suggest that it isn't just the marginalized who recognize the corruption of the system...but actual criminals.  Those outlaws become, ironically, the hope for a more equitable future.

It's downright fascinating how this fantasy movie positions an outlaw gang-leader as the rightful heir to the counter-culture movement of the late 1960's, and how this so-called criminal (as well as his people) openly embraces high moral ideals, like interracial equality and unity of purpose. 

But there's an important idea here:We have the numbers, if we vote, to unseat those responsible for the status quo; responsible for -- in the era of the movie -- the city that is falling down and failing its citizenry. Unfortunately, in the tradition of inspirational real-life leaders like Martin Luther King Jr., and Robert Kennedy, The Warriors' Cyrus is brutally gunned down before his Utopian new order can come to pass.  At his death, those formerly in unity turn on each other, and foster only deeper disunity.   Without the leadership of The One, the gangs turn on their own kind.

So, let's sum up here. A film that begins with great political optimism (the belief that a better world is possible if we work together) ends with great cynicism about the entrenched political process.  Even the media itself (a New York City radio station) is prophetically used throughout the film to "spread the lie" that the Warriors assassinated Cyrus. Fake news?

The Warriors become convenient scapegoats, pursued not just by law enforcement authorities, but by their fellow citizen gang-members and by the powerful media that holds sway over their dangerous world.  In one of the movie's many great moments, the radio DJ marshaling gang forces "in code" against the Warriors plays the song "Nowhere to Run."  It's essentially a rock-and-roll death sentence.

America itself keeps reliving this very cycle of optimism/pessimism/cynicism in our national politics. With overwhelming numbers, we vote for change.  Lately, Reagan, Clinton and Obama all owe their presidencies to "change"-oriented campaigns. 

Yet very early into these periods of "change," powerful (and rich...) voices in the mass media re-assert the power of the entrenched establishment and scare voters about the very change we so enthusiastically and resolutely voted for.  Instead of believing we can work together to make things better for everyone, we soon become mired in convenient scapegoats and ignorant beliefs (like, say, that our President is, you know, the Anti-Christ).  What's worse, sometimes the people "pulling the trigger" on the future - on men like Cyrus -- do it simply to be oppositional. When asked why he killed Cyrus, Luther answers "No reason.  I just like doing things like that."

In The Warriors, like in life, alas, nothing seems to change fast.  Cynicism supplants optimism, and the problems of the city don't get solved.  The Warriors heroically return home, but even home isn't so great.  "This is what we fought all along to get back to?" Swan asks, upon leading his people successfully back to Coney Island.   A nearly abandoned world of graffiti, boarded-up shops and empty roads?

Is this the promised land that it could have been, in Cyrus's vision? Or simply the last place the Warriors can fight the system, their backs literally braced against the ocean?  

In its conclusion, The Warriors suggests a kind of desperation and yearning for change, since even the criminals -- not exactly a future-oriented crowd --  see that something must change, that revolution must come, to make things better in the City.

I want the people to know that the Warriors were there: Change Begins with One Person..or Maybe Two.

I don't want to make it sound as though The Warriors is a serious movie all about political systems and cycles.  

On the contrary, this is a visceral, action-packed thriller, and there's a real uplifting, inspiring side to the picture too.  

One fetching and memorable character in the film, Mercy (Deborah Van Valkenbergh) joins up with the Warriors, and returns home with them.   After circling each other suspiciously for a time, Mercy and Swan take the first steps towards trusting...and loving...each other.

In a dark train tunnel in the city, at the height of the action, Mercy talks convincingly and meaningfully about the established world; about the world she was born into and hates.  

"I see what's happening next door and down the block," she tells Swan.  "...I want something new.  This is the life I got left.  You know what I mean?"

There is such yearning expressed in those words; and such power in the (truly great) performance.  It's authentic, it's hungry...its questing.   For Mercy, happiness is still possible, but you have to keep looking for it. 

Like Cyrus, the Warriors (and by extension the audience itself) must have the vision to imagine what a better world could look like...and pursue that vision no matter the cost.  For Swan and Mercy, perhaps, finding each other is the first step towards that unseen Utopia.

This idea is reinforced at the film's end, with the surviving Warriors and Mercy standing together before the timeless, beating waves of the unceasing ocean.  The soundtrack goes to song ("In the City") and the lyrics suggest that "Somewhere out there on that horizon, out beyond the neon lights, I know there must be somethin' better..."

As these lyrics play on, the movie goes to freeze frame, with the Warriors standing heroically on the beach, a beautiful sun hanging low in the morning sky.  Our last view of them shows these heroes unbeaten, unbowed.  Still wearing their colors (holding onto their ideals, in other words) and standing at the precipice of eternity, literally, at the dawn of life beyond the soul-deadening City.

I'll be honest and completely unguarded here. This momentary conjunction of  subject matter, theme, song and film technique represents what is for me a perfect movie moment, one of those inexplicable but wholly magical grace notes that always gives you goosebumps and leaves you on an emotional high.  

In part (personally speaking), this is what the exploration of cinema is for...for finding and excavating such moments.

The whole movie comes together gloriously in this final burst of energy, and, well, you can't resist it. The Warriors have survived the day, and, because of their experiences, can imagine what a better tomorrow looks like.

Or, to put it in the lingo of the flick, the Warriors will...come out to play.  Another day.