A cult item in some circles, The Wanderers still suffers from its original (mis)representation by mainstream critics who lumped it in with a current spate of "youth violence pix" such as The Warriors and Boulevard Nights. But Philip Kaufman's film, based on Richard Price's autobiographical portrait of Bronx street life in the early sixties, was, in his own words, "not really a gang movie; it's a coming of age movie," closer in spirit, though at once more serious and more imaginative in its execution, to a cultural foray like American Graffiti. The following is a much condensed excerpt from critic Stephen Farber's appreciation of The Wanderers: "The Wanderers inevitably recalls other movies about youth gangs-including The Blackboard Jungle, A Clockwork Orange and Saturday Night Fever-but this film is like West Side Story flavored with the comic grotesquerie and the melancholy poetry of Fellini. It's not a realistic film; it's conceived as a phantasmagoric reminiscence of life in the Bronx in 1963, just before the Kennedy assassination shattered the country's innocence. The dazzling opening sequence (in which) four of the Wanderers are chased by a menacing gang called the Fordham Baldies and their 400-pound leader, Terror, (and are saved by) a towering figure with jet-black hair and a match stick dangling from his mouth...succeeds in making us share the fantasy of the Wanderers; we're transported to the world that they perceive-a mythical land of leather-jacketed knights and giant-killers. Kaufman wants us to recall a time in our own lives when every emotion was heightened. This subjective style is sustained throughout the film. Kaufman also has a gift for defining and distinguishing large galleries of vivid characters. Although the boys dominate the film, several of the actresses-Linda Manz as the insolent Baldy mascot, Karen Allen as the Bohemian stranger-also make a strong impression. I think the contribution of a woman screenwriter (Rose Kaufman) shows in the treatment of these female characters and in the film's thoughtful, mature vision of male camaraderie." (New West, 8/13/79)