Jovens Guerreiros

This is just plain bad, but not necessarily boring or un-entertaining. This movie has that genuine third class 80's action picture quality (dark, blurry, soft), and that genuine third class 80's music, and dito sound, and dito haircuts and dito shots and angels and so on. Everything about it is third class 80's. But I guess you could enjoy it anyway, just because of all it's genuine... bad nostalgia 80's. And supercast including Borgnine and "Shaft" Roundtree.

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.

Where do I begin as I really don't know. I came out of this film as blindly as I went into it.

First we have comedy (I think that's what it was meant to be), then we have heinous crimes, then we have love and then vigilanteism. As I haven't a clue as to what genre this is really meant to be I've had to refer to the film page here to tell me. It says it's a crime/action. OK, crime I can go with as it was a crime to release it but where is the action? I've seen more action in a documentary about pot plants!

The fact that this sorry tale enlisted the help of Ernest Borgnine and Richard Roundtree made it even more painful to watch and knowing they were in it was the only reason I looked at it to start with. I came out of it almost bereft and spent the whole time looking for some decent acting.

Someone ought to tell the scriptwriter that you cannot put horrendous crime, no matter how badly acted, into what can only be classed as a farcical romp into the world of crime-fighting by young guys who fancy themselves as Charles Bronson wannabes.

My lasting impression on this will be my own disbelief at how I managed to sit through this. (1/10)

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

this ain't no "regular" movie, i mean, there were some fu*ked up scenes in there.... a cannon release with the Golan/Globus on the production, that's have to be bad, in some strange good way. i think it's 30% fun and 70% torture/boring. still interesting though. plot is on a young and a bit high temper student called Kevin, who like to party a lot with his college boys friends, drinking beer, picking on the freshmen, getting drunk girls to bad, a typical 80's student.. everything is really nice but one day, his high school sister get raped sliced and killed, and then Kevin getting nuts. driven by revenge he decides that the gang (with the really cool van!) should be punished. slowly he's taking his friends and they all start playing - "justice league". the movie has early eighties colors and that means DARK, i saw it in complete darkness and still some of the scenes were pretty dark, it does some strange/o.k mood. i pretty much liked it.