TEEN GANG FILM LIST

I think I may have done a list like this before, but after I watched THE YOUNG SAVAGES the other night, it got me thinking. So here’s a list of my favorite movies about teenage gangs (I couldn’t remember enough titles for too many letters to make another alphabet list, so I did my second favorite listing device, triplets):

THREE FROM THE PERIOD I EXPERIENCED MOST CLOSELY:

THE COOL WORLD (Shirley Clark’s 1961 masterpiece and my all time favorite flick, worth it for the jazz soundtrack alone or the lingering shots of real street scenes in Harlem c. 1960, though I still can’t find it on DVD)
THE YOUNG SAVAGES
BLACKBOARD JUNGLE (worth it just for the young Sidney Poitier; overdone in some scenes but a mostly realistic period and location feel)

OLD HOLLYWOOD CLASSICS:

DEAD END (as old Hollywood as it is, it’s still one of the best)
ANGELS WITH DIRTY FACES (the Dead End kids with Cagney, how swell)
KNOCK ON ANY DOOR (old-style Hollywoodized adaptation of the great Willard Motley novel which introduced the line “Live fast, die young and have a good-looking corpse”)

FANTASIZED VERSIONS BUT STILL GREAT:

WEST SIDE STORY (the white gang was mostly miscast, but even so it’s a great adaptation of Shakespeare to 1950s New York gangs)
THE WARRIORS (from the Sol Yurick novel, a fantasy but with some very realistic scenes and location shooting around New York)
THE WANDERERS (mostly realistic, e.g. there really was a Bronx gang known as the “Baldies,” but Richard Price must have been beaten up by one or more Irish kids when he was growing up because his fantasy gang of zombie-like, soulless midget “Danny Boys” is a pretty mean spirited take on the Irish, if he’d done a similarly offensive take on the African-American gang or the Asian-American one, or even Italian or Latino ones, there would have been an uproar, but still worth it for a lot of the acting, including Karen Allen in one of her earliest film roles)

EARLY TAKES ON WHAT WE HAVE NOW:

BASTARDS OF THE PARTY (great HBO documentary about the origins of the Crips and Bloods)
MENACE II SOCIETY (stone brilliant)
BOYZ ‘N THE HOOD

HISPANIC VERSIONS:

LOS OLVIDADOS (Bunuel’s most realistic flick—though with surreal dream sequences—was shot in Mexico in the 1950s)
MI VIDA LOCA (from the Latina perspective)
AMERICAN ME (the gang starts out as teens but then they grow older and so does the gang, though still including teens and those even younger—it’s one of the most realistic of Hollywood “gang” movies)

NOT QUITE TEEN GANG FLICKS BUT CLOSE ENOUGH:

ON THE WATERFRONT (though a very small part of the film, the gang Brando’s character started plays a pivotal role, and the kid who leads them is more real than any other white movie gang kid because he wasn’t an actor, but a local kid from Hoboken)
QUADROPHENIA (the great Brit flick about the whole Mod thing actually has some of the most realistic “gang” fight scenes, pre semi-automatic times, ever filmed)
KING CREOLE (Elvis’ most realistic flick, with elements of “teen gang” culture)

HONORARY MENTION:

GANGS OF NEW YORK (it has flaws, especially in the casting, and the gangs aren’t exactly “teens”—but a passionate attempt to tell the story of the original gangs in the USA)