The Lords of Flatbush
By Peter John Gardner
One has to wonder where the smorgasbord of 1950s nostalgia was coming from during the 1970s. In the seventies, there seemed to be a demographic of people that wanted to return to the decade of greasers, poodle skirts, and the Big Bopper. The entertainment industry got American Graffiti, Happy Days, and Grease. Maybe because 'flower power' didn't work, many people wanted to escape the burgeoning cynicism of the Nixon era and return to a simpler time when "soda jerk" was a commonly used term in middle America. Who the fuck knows. Whatever the cause, in 1974 the world received another bit of nostalgia in the form of this low budget, steaming pile of poodle shit known as "The Lords of Flatbush".
I was actually kind of pumped going into this film. Obviously, there's the Stallone factor, but the film also features a pre-Fonzie Henry Winkler portraying one of the Lords. Fonzie and Stallone as greasers in Brooklyn? Ooh, baby. How could this not be a recipe for greatness?
"The Lords of Flatbush" are four highschool wiseguys in 1950s Brooklyn, NY. These are the type of meatheads that are too 'tough' to display any kind of maturity or sensitivity. We know this because the film spends 30 minutes of its 90 minute running time establishing this. Ok, we get it. They're supposed to badasses. Let's move on.
A plot, and I use the term loosely here, begins to emerge when Stallone's character, Stanley, gets his girlfriend knocked up after a night of was-it-or-was-it-not consensual sex on the beach.
And this is the only thread in the movie that follows through. The other Lords: Chico, Butchey (the Fonz!), and Wimpy each get their own stories. Chico wants to bone his cocktease girlfriend, but she won't give in until he grows up, Fonzie is apparently quite intelligent (the film never shows us this. This is told to us in dialogue by a cook at the local diner) but is wasting his life away hanging around with these thugs. Wimpy? Wimpy likes to shoot pool.
And that's it. Stanley's plot is the only one that follows through to something that resembles a resolution. If you really want to know, Stanley acts tough on the outside, but the film decides to let the audience know that he DOES have a sensitive side in the last ten minutes of the movie when he finally buys a ring for his girlfriend. The film concludes with a Jewish themed wedding between the two and another scene of Stallone dancing around in a circle, though fully clothed this time.
The other plot threads go absolutely nowhere. Instead, "The Lords of Flatbush" is padded out with many scenes that were probably intended to show character development, but since the filmmakers didn't seem to have a script or a plot before going into production, we get a bunch of scenes of obvious improvised dialogue and scenes that last up to ten minutes that go nowhere and leave you thinking, "Why the hell was that scene in there?".
Stanley's revelation that he must take responsibility in his life comes so sudden and late into the film that it's not believable at all, but I'm going to jump from there anyway. I've been wandering around this place for twenty some odd years now, and I still feel like I haven't quite grown up yet. I may be a grown ass man on the outside, but I still have the mind and sense of humor of a 16 year old. Whereas the filmmakers seem to be stuck in two decades previous to their time, I'm still stuck with a mindset that counteracts my age.
Every one of us has had a conversation about having kids someday, and my usual stance is, "I don't want to be a dad because I know that I'm not mature enough to be a good one". But, would that be the case? Nowadays, I really don't know. I'm trying to grow up; I really am. I dress nicer than I did before, I desire a clean and classy home, I've got a purdy Bachelor's degree hanging on my wall, and I am able to lead others. I think if I found out that a Peter Jr. was on the way, it'd probably be the final catalyst for a transformation into "Grown Ass Man Peter".
There is nothing wrong with nostalgia, and there certainly isn't anything wrong with having the sense of humor that still finds dick and fart jokes amusing, but there comes a time when we must start acting less like our shoe size and more like our age...at least on the outside.
I think that's what "The Lords of Flatbush" was trying to tell me. Then again, maybe it was trying to tell me to be more like The Fonz. That would be just as productive, in my opinion.
