Director Walter Hill’s The Warriors (1979) is a contemporary urban drama with all the traits of a western. Hill adapted the screenplay from the novel written by Sol Yurick in 1965. The film follows a group of nine gang members from Coney Island who trek up to the Bronx where thousands of other rival gang members have gathered for a summit held by a man known as Cyrus, the head of the most powerful gang in the city who plans to unite all the New York City gangs together as a crime syndicate.

The opening of the film is a series of montages that follow the Warriors as they take numerous subways from Coney Island to the Bronx. Other gangs are also shown as they too make their way to the meeting. Once the Warriors arrive at Van Cortlandt Park, the Warriors make their way to the front where Cyrus delivers a speech where he plans to unite all the gangs in an attempt to control New York. Cyrus demands that all the gangs put aside their differences and secure each city borough, and then create a collective organization that can battle not only the police, but the mafia as well.

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In salute of this weekend’s debut of Marvel Comic’s The Avengers, it’s time to rediscover another Marvel character who’s had three different film versions and hopefully one of these days, they’ll get it right. Dolph Lundgren stars in the first adaptation of The Punisher (1989).

The Punisher was always my favorite Marvel character because he didn’t have superhuman strength, he couldn’t shoot webs out of his wrists, or defeat evildoers with a metal alloy suit; he was nothing more than a badass vigilante who went out and wasted criminal scumbags left and right. He was one of the darkest characters that ever came out of the Marvel universe. So with this first film version, the writers decided to take some extra crappy liberties and change the story around.

In the comics, Captain Frank Castle was a decorated U.S. Marine whose family was killed by gangsters. Broken, disillusioned by the corrupt justice system, Castle decided to take the law into his own hands and became the Punisher who over the years forged some uneasy alliances with other Marvel heroes like Spiderman, Daredevil, and many others.

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Westworld (1973) marks the feature film debut of Sci-fi writer Michael Crichton who had recently met success in Hollywood with the film adaptation of his famed novel The Andromeda Strain. Westworld stars Richard Benjamin (Peter Martin) James Brolin (John Blane) and Yul Brynner (The Gunslinger).

Westworld is set in the near future (now passé) where a resort known as Delos, comprised of three resort communities gives its adult patrons the opportunity for $1000 a day to live out their fantasies as either an old west desperado, a medieval knight, or a hedonist in the pre-Christian Roman Empire. The park is also home to human like androids that are engineered to look, talk, and react just like humans.

Peter Martin (Benjamin) accompanies his best friend John Blane (Brolin) who has visited Westworld before. Peter begins asking John how the theme park operates and most importantly, what can they expect while enjoying their two week stay as wild west outlaws. After their orientation and then being equipped with authentic old west clothing and pistols, Peter and John arrive at the Westworld theme park by stagecoach where Peter is in awe of the park’s authenticity.

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Repo Man (1984), not to be confused with the movie about two guys who go around repossessing people’s internal organs when they miss a payment, is a Punk Rock classic starring Emilio Estevez as a clean cut kid in the dirty business of repossessing cars in the seedy underworld of Los Angeles.

Otto Maddox (Estevez) has just been fired from his job as a supermarket stock boy due to his lack of respect for authority. Later that night at a Punk Rock house party, he also finds out that his girlfriend Debbie is cheating on him with his best friend Duke. To make matters worse, Otto also finds out that his hippie parents gave away money that was promised to Otto for finishing college to a sleazy televangelist. What’s a broke, depressed punker supposed to do now?

After a long night of drinking and wandering the streets, Otto runs into Bud (Harry Dean Stanton) who pleads with Otto to help get his pregnant wife’s car out of a bad area and deliver it to the hospital where she’s going into labor. Otto initially refuses to take the job for less than $20 and finds out that he has been suckered into stealing a car.

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Enemy Mine (1985) is one of those great, lost treasures of sci-fi from the mid 1980s. The film stars Dennis Quaid as a fighter jock who becomes marooned on a distant planet with an alien being known as a Drac, a humanoid, reptilian creature who perceive humans as a threat since humans have begun colonizing the far reaches of space.

Quaid’s narration opens up the film and explains that by the late twenty first century, humans put aside their differences and worked together to begin colonizing outer space in search of worlds and resources. The Drac race had colonized the universe a thousand years prior to man’s arrival and went to war to preserve their claim in the galaxy. During a surprise attack launched by the Dracs, pilot Will Davidge (Quaid) and his shipmate crash-land on the planet Fyrine IV, a hunk of rock in outer space that has a breathable atmosphere.

Davidge’s partner Joey (Lance Kerwin) dies due to internal injuries and Davidge is left all alone. After Davidge buries his friend, he looks off into the distance and sees smoke from the crashed Drac ship that was responsible for him being marooned. Davidge sets off to find the ship and to kill its pilot if it isn’t already dead.

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Not to be confused with the upcoming remake, this week’s pick is Paul Verhoeven’s classic sci-fi action film Total Recall (1990). It is based on Phillip K. Dick’s novel We Can Remember it for You Wholesale and stars Arnold Schwarzenegger as a man trying to piece together who he really is on Mars in the year 2084. Noted for his unique blend of violence, extreme sexual situations, and gore, Verhoeven pulls no stops with Total Recall.

In the film Schwarzenegger stars as Doug Quaid, an everyday guy who has nightmare visions concerning the planet Mars that for some time has been colonized by humans. Disenfranchised with his work and everyday grind, Doug decides to visit a company called Rekall that sells memory implantations that makes you feel as if you have really taken a vacation without actually going anywhere.

While at Rekall, Doug is persuaded by the manager to purchase what is referred to as an “ego trip” where you assume the role of a particular individual. Quaid is intrigued and selects the persona of a secret agent who is on a mission to save Mars.

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This week’s Monday Pick is the 1987 Sci-fi action film Robocop, directed by master filmmaker Paul Verhoeven (Total Recall, Starship Troopers, Flesh & Blood, Soldier of Orange, The Black Book). Peter Weller stars as slain police officer Alex Murphy who is brought back to life by corporate scientists to become the ultimate law enforcement weapon in the crime-ridden Detroit of the near future.

Robocop is not only a well made solid blend of sci-fi and action, Verhoeven and writers Ed Neumeier and Michael Miner splendidly poke fun at many institutions in American culture like the media, corporate greed, privatization, capitalism, and even masculinity.

OCP (Omni Consumer Products) is a vast corporation that specializes in space exploration, civilian and Military technology, and government intervention. OCP enters into an agreement to run and finance the Detroit police force in order to serve its needs, one being that OCP plans to turn Detroit into the city of tomorrow known as Delta City due to rampant crime and that the city is on the verge of financial collapse.

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This week’s Monday pick is Manhunter (1986), Michael Mann’s film adaptation of Thomas Harris’s classic novel Red Dragon. The film stars William Petersen, Kim Greist, Joan Allen, Brian Cox, Dennis Farina, Stephen Lang, and Tom Noonan.

Manhunter is one of Mann’s best and it was the first film to introduced the world to psychotic killer Dr. Hannibal Lecktor who would go on to great acclaim five years later in the Academy Award winning Best Picture Silence of the Lambs.

William Petersen stars as FBI profiler Will Graham who is pulled out of semi-retirement by his old boss Jack Crawford (Farina) when a series of grizzly murders occur a month apart from one another. Graham is considered one of the best profilers in the Bureau and Crawford is reluctant to ask him to come back after Graham was viciously attacked and almost killed several years earlier when he apprehended Dr. Lecktor.

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In the past 20 years, Kevin Sorbo has become a pretty prominent name in the geek community, spanning over a few different subgenres. Of course, he got on the map by playing Hercules for 5 years straight, and then captaining the space ship in Andromeda for another 5 years.

Since then, he’s been drifting in and out of the comedy and geek genre with films like Meet the Spartans and FDR American Badass!. Now he’s getting a little more play in a film that may not take itself seriously enough. It’s called Poolboy: Drowning Out the Fury, and its cynical tone puts films like Tropic Thunder and Machete to shame. Here’s the premise:

A Vietnam Veteran Sal Bando (Sorbo), tortured by his past as a Poolboy, returns home to Van Nuys, California, and a country he doesn’t recognize, in which it seems only Mexicans run pool-cleaning companies. Bando sets off on a brutal mission to reclaim his “rightful” vocation and enact revenge on the man (Trejo) who killed his wife and son.

Not only will fans get cult hero Sorbo in the lead, but Machete himself, Danny Trejo drops in as the film’s main villain. You can also check out a few other special cameos in the trailer after the jump. Poolboy hits DVD and VOD right now, where those are sold.

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This week’s pick is the adventure-comedy classic The Goonies (1985). Richard Donner (Superman I, II, Lethal Weapon series) and Steven Spielberg craft this cult classic, which has entertained countless fans for over twenty-five years.

The Goonies centers around a group of seven outcast teens from Astoria, Oregon whose homes are about to be demolished due to a real estate venture to expand the ritzy Astoria country club into their neighborhood. Facing their last weekend together, Mike Walsh (Sean Astin) and the rest of his friends rummage around his father’s attic and uncover a map, and a Spanish doubloon.

Mikey begins to tell the story of a Seventeenth Century Pirate known as One-Eyed Willie who stole a large assortment of treasure from the English back in 1632, and it was rumored to have been buried somewhere along their coastline. At first, Mikey’s friends seem reluctant to go on one last Goonie adventure but change their minds when they realize that if they were to find One-Eyed Willie’s treasure, they and their families wouldn’t have to leave Astoria.

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Even though Robert Rodriguez has long been touting 2009′s Machete was the beginning of a trilogy of films, it was thought to be dead in the water due to the lackluster performance of the original. Now, Deadline is reporting that Rodriguez has producer Alexander Rodnyansky on board and is ready to move forward with the sequel Machete.

The sequel, as was hinted during the first film, will be titled Machete Kills, already has a script and will start production as soon as April. The new film finds Machete recruited by the U.S. Government to take on a mission that would be too much for any normal man.

Machete must battle his way through Mexico single-handed to “take down a madman cartel leader and an eccentric billionaire arms dealer who has hatched a plan to spread war across the planet with a weapon in space.”

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This week’s pick is yet another John Carpenter classic. Kurt Russell stars as the first ever action hero of the 1980s in Escape From New York (1981). After success with Halloween and the horror classic The Fog, Carpenter’s next project would be a unique blend of science fiction, action, noir and a western. The result is one of the finest multi genre classics of its time.

Set in a dystopian future (now the past) the United States’ crime rate rises to an astonishing four hundred percent in 1988. To combat the growing crime rate, the United States becomes a totalitarian police state and the great city of New York is turned into the one prison for the whole country. A fifty-foot containment wall is erected around all of Manhattan Island, all the bridges and waterways are mined, and the United States Police Force patrols the wall perimeter to insure no one escapes. Once you go inside the prison, you never come out.

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