Los jóvenes pandilleros

Trying to have the time of your life, only to have tragedy to ruin it. That happened when a group of punks attacked a young couple, killing the boyfriend, and the girl getting gang raped. That causes the brother and his friends since high school to take action against crime. Angry with all the "red tape", the group became vigilantes. Since they couldn't wait to get justice for his sister murder, the quad-squad go on a manhunt to find the murderers, only to become murderers themselves. During a robbery at a liquor store, they kill the culprits which one of them is a girl who was carrying a toy gun. It was a tragedy, but she was hanging out with the wrong people, and look what it got her. Standing up to crime is good, but going too far has its consequences. Another 80's cheese, and enjoyed it very much. Has Ernest Borgnine, "Shaft" star, Richard Roundtree, Tom Reilly who was fresh off from "CHiPs", and the star, James Van Patten of the Van Patten family. Good for a rainy day. 2 out of 5 stars.

It begins with a couple of disgusting sex-comedy gags, but soon it reveals its true colors: it wants to be a "Death Wish" clone. I say "wants to" because the script gets so increasingly laughable by the minute that it ends up looking like an absurdist "Death Wish" spoof! From a love scene in a room inexplicably filled with candles, to "heroes" who dress up as commandoes and wave their machine guns because they don't want to attract attention to themselves(!), to bad guys who drive around the city in a black van long after it has been recognized as their vehicle, this film has too many ludicrous points to fit in a list. The other major problem is that you can't tell most of the characters apart; of course, you know who Borgnine and Roundtree and even James Van Patten are, but all the other roles could have been played by different actors in various scenes, and you wouldn't know the difference. (*1/2)

Normally I hate 80's action movies, but this one was written and directed by anti-auteur Lawrence Foldes, so I knew that, although it would no doubt be completely incompetently made, it would also violate all the tedious clichés and formulas of the genre (not to mention all the boundaries of good taste), and I certainly wasn't disappointed. This starts out as a typical dumb frat comedy (with some surprisingly homoerotic pranks and hazing rituals). Then in a change of tone so sudden it might give you whiplash, the younger sister of one the fraternity guys is brutally and graphically raped and murdered by a gang of bikers. The cops won't do anything as usual, which is very odd since they are represented here by the father of the hero and the murdered girl (Ernest Borgnine)and his partner Shaft, I mean, Richard Roundtree. The brother becomes a vigilante and very implausibly gets his beer-drinking, good-time frat buddies to join him, even though he gets almost all of them killed. But you see they're all graduates of Foldes infamous "Malibu High" of which this movie is completely unrelated sequel.

Unlike most of the action movies made during the happy fascism of the Reagan era this movie definitely doesn't glorify "make-my-day" vigilantism, but is more in the spirit of harrowing 1970's rape-revenge movies like "Last House on the Left". But any message this movie might have about "digging two graves" when you go seeking revenge is lost in the jaw-droppingly incompetent narrative and film-making (my favorite scene is when the protagonist gets in an argument about violence with his philosophy professor and emphasizes his point by throwing his desk through a window).

Unlike in his previous films, Foldes has quite a cast on hand here. Besides Borgnine and Roundtree, Lynda Day George plays the protagonist's mother. Linnea Quigley also makes an appearance as one of several girls whose sole function seems to be to strip off and substantiate that the male characters are not actually gay. The lead is also interesting given that he is the son of Dick Van Patton from TV's "Eight is Enough". Recommended, but for all the wrong reasons.

My review was written in November 1983 after a Times Square screening.

"Young Warriors" is an overly-ambitious teen exploitation film that mixes the popular drive-in formulae of hijinks, violence and sex tease with an uncomfortable overlay of preachiness. Cannon pickup is likely to do fair off-season business.

Filmed last year in British Columbia and Southern California as "The Graduates of Malibu High", a title it retains by way of introduction, picture limns the effects of crime and violence on teens three years after graduation, now attending Pacific Coast College. After an opening reel devoted to fraternity initiation revelry and sight gags, pic becomes melodramatic with the gang-rape and murder of Tiffany Carrigan (April Dawn) by thugs in a black van sporting a death's head insignia.

While her father (Ernest Borgnine) follows normal procedures as a police officer, Tiffany's brother Kevin (James Van Patten) feels frustrated and organizes his frat members to hit the streets and root out the killers. They quickly extend their efforts towards violently confronting any crime encountered, building up an impressive arsenal of automatic weaponry in the process.

The comic-strip fantasy elements here, culminating in a cantina shootout in which Kevin wields a machine gun in emulation of the slow-motion blood pack finale of Sam Peckinpah's "The Wild Bunch", do not mix well with numerous debates by Kevin with his dad, girlfriend and teachers regarding the violent crime problem in the U. S. Filmmaker Lawrence Foldes' specific juxtapositions are very heavy-handed, as in cross-cutting between Kevin's girlfriend (Anne Lockhart) crying on his mom Lynda Day George's shoulder and footage of Kevin being serviced by a street hooker prior to the final shootout.

Acting is okay, with the starbilled trio in relatively brief roles and Van Patten stuck with an unplayable assignment of belligerent student by day/G. I. Joe by night. Other offspring talent Anne Lockhart and Mike Norris visually resemble their famous forebears June and Chuck, but have little to do. Comic actor Dick Shawn adds a welcome wry touch as Van Patten's equivocal philosophy prof. Tech credits, particularly the visuals and special effects, are good.

If you`re not old enough to remember Yoram Globus and Menahem Golan here`s the rundown : They`re a couple of film producers and finaciers from Israel who set up the Cannon film company in the early 1980s . The only Israeli to get a worse press than these two was Menachim Begin . Begin probably deserved the bad press but Globus and Golan were a god send to film makers because no matter how bad your script was they`d happily fund your movie and would normally employ directors who couldn`t direct and actors who couldn`t act . In fact you often got the impression that people would just walk up to Yoram and Menahem ask them for some money and they`d oblige without seeing the film maker`s resume . If only producers nowadays were so trusting.

THE YOUNG WARRIORS isn`t a Cannon film but Globus and Golan did finance it and it has their signature all over it . It`s badly directed , badly acted , badly edited but it`s the script that jumps out and attacks you with its awfulness . It starts with a bunch of high school jocks getting involved in all sorts of zany pranks , in fact the first 20 minutes of the movie plays out like a sex comedy and it`s something of a shock when THE YOUNG WARRIORS turns into a vigilante movie . But it`s not just any type of vigilante movie like EXTERMINATOR 2 or DEATH WISH 3 ( Notice a connection ? They`re both sequels and they`re both vigilante movies made by Cannon films ) , no siree this is a laughably bad vigilante movie about pretty boy high school jocks and their poodle going on a mission to wipe out scumbags . This film is proof that Globus and Golan were giving money to people regardless of their film making abilities and you have to worry about people who seem to spend their entire reserves on making movies set entirely around vigilantes