Wild Thing

It may be difficult for the young generation to imagine in the gentrified, Disneyfied 21st century, but New York City in the early 1980s was a desperate and awful place.

Times Square had been surrendered to the sex trade, the subways to street gangs, and the urban neighborhoods to hopeless, crumbling decay, as the rich majority and federal government made a conscious, overtly racist decision and effort to invest instead in the suburbs.

This awful situation gave rise to a curious genre of film set in a nightmarish contemporary Manhattan, populated by mulleted toughs harassing good citizens and engaging in choreographed knife fights in front of concrete walls sprayed with graffiti indistinct enough so as not to prevent a future network TV broadcast.

"The Warriors" may be the best known film in this category, but I argue "Wild Thing," though more obscure, is a gem that actually holds up better with time.

That's because it draws its conceit not just from its urban nightmare setting, but from Edgar Rice Burroughs' classic, "Tarzan."

After a young hippie couple is gunned down on a New York City side street, their infant child is taken in by a kindly homeless lady (Broadway veteran Betty Buckley).

The boy grows up wild in the Manhattan jungle just as Tarzan did in Africa, and becomes a legendary hero defending the innocent with his makeshift tools, like a bow-and-arrow and grappling hook.

The script by indie legend John Sayles is pure comic book pulp, with just enough social commentary to make you think.

The film is dark and dingy, but so was New York City then. So it works.

In fact, just about everything works in this forgotten treasure of a film.

When Wild Thing saves the day at the end (no spoiler there), and the kids on the street start chanting the Troggs' classic song, you'll be singing along, too. Trust me.