Rushed to beat The Wanderers; Fox was meant to end up with Mercy; the Dingoes subplot was cut after Beck and Van Bakkenberg's chemistry showed; the Rogues drove a 1955 Cadillac hearse; Michael Beck became born again; Sunny Landon was hit by the bat; Mercy's stitches and broken wrist; production paid off gangs via an NYPD contact
The movie was rushed to get ahead of another gang movie, The Wanderers, by Philip Kaufman of The Right Stuff, with Ken Wall (as transcribed) of Wise Guy; two hosts have never seen it, prompting a joke about being only 26.
Fox was originally to end up with Mercy; in the book and original script Swan was captured by a gay gang called the Dingoes, who had Dobermans, and escaped later, but Walter Hill saw the dailies, noticed Beck and Van Bakkenberg (as transcribed) had chemistry, and rewrote everything to drop the Dingoes; Dobermans are compared to Halle Berry's dogs in John Wick 3.
The Rogues drove a 1955 Cadillac hearse; Michael Beck partied too much during filming and became born again; Sunny Landon (as transcribed), later in Predator, was the cop Swan hits with the bat, and in one take Mercy was hit in the face and needed stitches.
Mercy broke her wrist running with the stunt double, which is why she wears the jacket for the rest of the movie, explaining the odd 'where'd you get that jacket' exchange; to film anywhere in the five boroughs production paid off whoever ran that turf, with an NYPD contact telling Marshall the producer which gang members needed paying.
Ajax's language and sexual assault (disputed); what is said to Mercy; Cleon's death; Fox's stunt double being thrown onto the tracks and never mentioned again
Ajax is simultaneously a great character and badly aged for his language and being a sexual assaulter.
The counterargument is that a movie about gangs who stalk the streets needs a bad guy, and Ajax contrasts with Swan's King Arthur moral code; a bad guy in a 1979 New York gang is plausible, though some of his words are hard to hear now, and what is said to Mercy is not great.
Cleon dying has aged terribly and hurts every time; the stunt double thrown onto the tracks and the character never being mentioned again is one host's vote.
The story recited: Michael Beck as Swan and Thomas Waits (as transcribed) as Fox were to be the two stars, but Fox's actor feuded with Walter Hill, who killed the character off midway, rewrote the last 45 minutes, and used a crew member with the same hair as a stunt double, seen from behind with Mercy before a cop throws him into the train; nobody later asks what happened to Fox the way they ask about Ajax.
The actor told the story at a 2015 reunion where the cast rode the subway to Coney; another host disliked his face in the zoom-in and was glad he died.
The death should have established the stakes of the all-night journey and made the arrival a relief, but it is so quick and so hamstrung together that it has no emotional payoff.
Today a studio would recast as with Eric Stoltz and Michael J. Fox in Back to the Future rather than concoct a stunt death; it also creates a hole when Swan returns to an empty station with no ambulances or police after a man was thrown in front of a train.
Why the Warriors run from police is debated: they are a gang in colors where they should not be, and the fire, the assassination and the DJ keep police on alert; starting the fire five stops down is called a smart move by the other gangs, and Masai is said to have been pulling the strings like Masai Uhiri (as transcribed).
