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Mean Streets and American Graffiti (and Mulligan's Bloodbrothers) are vividly taken stock of, the joke is that it's the same theme as Invasion of the Body Snatchers, a collision of tribes. (Philip Kaufman picks it up again with Rising Sun.) "The Eye-talians and the colored" in the Bronx, Brotherhood Week 1963. Greasers in golden jackets, roving Lothario (Ken Wahl) and shrimpy artist (John Friedrich) and New Jersey transplant (Tony Ganios). Nothing to do but get into rumbles and chase skirts—hustlers at the bowling alley get an operatic beating, girls on the sidewalk are targeted until one giantess cuts the fondlers down to size. "There you go again, hurting our feelings." I Vitelloni but with the phantasmagoria of later Fellini, keyed to the mountainous stomper (Erland van Lidth De Jeude) with a soft voice and a tomboy squeeze (Linda Manz). Fathers and sons, the Old Guard dumbly builds muscles or grows fat in Hawaiian shirts, what's the next generation to do? Jukebox swagger: "I know these guys have heard of rock 'n' roll. But you guys ever hear of rock 'n' cock?" The future hausfrau is a Mafia princess (Toni Kalem), the visitor from another world is a Village coed (Karen Allen), brought together for a game of strip poker, separated for a backseat quickie. Boys and their urges, catnip for the Marine recruiter watching from the sidelines. (A detour into a spectral neighborhood reveals the war at home and the junction with Hill's The Warriors, resolved on a gridiron turned battlefield.) A rollicking view of the dead end of adolescent machismo, not nostalgic but cuttingly aware of having "two fists of iron and going nowhere," as goes the tune. With Alan Rosenberg, Jim Youngs, William Andrews, Val Avery, Dolph Sweet, Michael Wright, Burtt Harris, and Olympia Dukakis.
--- Fernando F. Croce |