Cinema's Three Most Intimidating Youth Gangs

When I was a kid, the idea of teenage street gangs scared me. Well, they often had an undeniable appeal in their iconography, strong sense of group identity, and strength in numbers ideology, which is why I question the wisdom of including S.E., Hinton's The Outsiders in so many school curricula to this day. But now that I am a middle-aged, middle-class softie, youth gangs terrify me. I'm probably not alone in this, and it is probably what makes them such great foils in movies.

They don't always have to be the villains, though. Sometimes the protagonists of a film are a sympathetic gang, which means we will either become very familiar with a rival outfit, or, more often, we will get introduced to a dozen or more of them over the course of the film.

Either way, we've been exposed to a lot of different movie gangs over the years, so I thought it was far past time to pick out the three most intimidating. Such an exercise is obviously subjective, and I imagine one man's intimidation is another's amusement, so please feel free to add your own selections below - if I am swayed, I will update this post to reflect it.

Third Place: - The Ducky Boys from The Wanderers (1979)

Bear with me here, I realize not too many of you have seen this film - after all, the biggest names in it are Ken Wahl, Karen Allen and Olympia Dukakis. It is a little hard to describe, too: an existential coming-of-age movie set in the Bronx of 1963? Sure, let's go with that.

The titular Wanderers are one of a number of high-school club gangs drawn up along ethnic lines. In their case, it's Italians, but there are gangs of Chinese kids ("Don't f**K with the Wongs!" is one of my favourite movie quotes), black kids, and willful outsiders like the Fordham Baldys. The Ducky Boys though, they're...something else.

The Wanderers settle their beefs with other gangs with somewhat sanitized rumbles - no guns, no blades - by mutual consent. The Ducky Boys, on the other hand, are portrayed as silent, ominous (Irish?) Catholics who straight-up murder a former Wanderer with very little provocation, immediately after receiving communion.

The Wanderers arrange to play a football game against their black rivals, the Dell Bombers,to finalize and legitimize their conflict, but things go awry when the Ducky Boys show up. Shrouded in fog in one of the end zones, wearing no colours, carrying bats, boards and lengths of pipe, every time the camera cuts back to them, there numbers have increased.

Without ever expressing a reason why, or saying anything at all, actually, the Ducky Boys mob descends on everyone else, including a number of spectating gangs. It's chaos, and in a misguided display of intercultural cooperation, it turns into the Ducky Boys versus everyone.

And they kind of hold their own. I mean, the Wanderers, Dell Bombers and the Wongs are left in control of the field, but it isn't exactly a rout.

The Ducky Boys, with their silent rage, incomprehensible motivation, and ability to mobilize huge numbers at the apparent drop of a hat earn them third place on this list.

And, they are apparently based on a real gang from that time.

Second Place: The Gramercy Riffs from The Warriors (1979)

Since this influential film depicts 23 distinct street gangs and casually mentions the existence of over a hundred, you have to figure one of them would make the top three, right?

But if you are familiar with the movie, maybe you're thinking, "Why not the heroes? And if not them, why not the Baseball Furies?" Fair questions; here is my rationale.

First of all, the Warriors are sympathetic, which actual hampers them in terms of intimidation. They are the good guys, and despite being a street gang in a pseudo-cyberpunk New York of tomorrow (by way of the late seventies), their focus on getting back to Coney Island means that they spend almost no time doing intimidating or even illegal activities. (Wait, maybe vandalism, but still.)  The Warriors spend almost the entirety of the film on the run, except for a couple of fights where they defend themselves long enough to keep running.

As to the Baseball Furies, there is no question that they look intimidating, as Halloween photos from my junior high school can attest. But when they come up against the Warriors, it seems like they are "more show than go," as they say, as the protagonists fight their way through with only a single casualty.

Now the Riffs, on the other hand, are quite the opposite. Remember, Cyrus, whose Central Park gang Summit and subsequent assassination kicks off the story, was the Riff's leader, giving them even more motivation than the other gangs to find the Warriors, wrongfully blamed. Clearly exerting some degree of authority over even other independent clubs, the Gramercy Riffs coordinate the search for the Warriors, declaring their desire for a live capture and using a complicit disc jockey to coordinate their efforts with covert messages over the airwaves.

Most terrifying of all, every time they are shown onscreen, the Riffs most prominent attribute is discipline.  Their leadership is respected and obeyed without question.

Where other gangs are little more than mobs, the Riffs have a clear organizational structure, and would appear to have squads and squad leaders who partake in large scale martial arts training.

Their discipline, esprit de corps and no-nonsense attitude are summarized by the synchronized delivery of their rallying cry, "YEAH, RIGHT."

At the end of the movie, when Masai and the Riffs realize the Warriors are simply patsies, they descend en masse (and very quickly) to Coney Island, where they ruthlessly, and still very quietly,  remove the real villains (and fashion victims), the Rogues.

This combination of youthful zeal and iron discipline make the Gramercy Riffs the second most intimidating gang in this short list.

First Place: Half-life War Boys from Mad Max: Fury Road (2015)

It is not secret that I regard this film very highly, considering it the best action film of the 21st century to date, and the fact that contractual shenanigans are preventing us from getting a sequel is nothing short of criminal. But is it fair to consider this mob of pasty, largely faceless antagonists as the most intimidating youth gang? And are they even really a gang?

As far as the latter point goes, I shall waste no time on the semantic distinctions between "gang" and "cult," but will concede there is considerable overlap in both real life and this film. For my purposes, a group of young characters who embrace a uniform appearance to signify their inclusion in a group they perceive as elite, who seek to legitimize their most extreme behaviour to each other, and conduct mayhem at the drop of a hat can certainly be considered a gang as far as this list is concerned.

In terms of intimidation, there are a number of factors in play. First, like the Riffs, they have a structure and show considerable discipline. During the attack by the Buzzards in their spiky cars on the War Rig, they display tremendous coordination, shouting commands and tactics to one another.

They coordinate their attacks, focusing on an exposed hydraulic at one point, cascading a series of explosive projectiles at another, raining them down in sequence like pyromaniac whalers out of Moby Dick.

And although we never really see the Riffs put to the test, what sets the War Boys apart is their fanaticism. Knowing that irradiation and a host of other factors have left them with shortened lifespans, and believing that death in service will see them exalted in the afterlife, the War Boys are capable of amazing feats, even when mortally wounded.

Their fearlessness and zeal doesn't leave them as robots, either - they display creativity in the field, improvising attacks with rocks or grenades as needed, or counterbalancing a vehicle like a catamaran in order to compensate for a lost wheel.

Immortan Joe has taken the idea of the youth gang to perhaps its ultimate expression, and built a culture and religion around it, turning the chassis and engines of the old world into mythical steeds of the wastelands, mounts for his War Boys in their reckless drive for glory.



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