KNIGHTS OF THE CITY is an incredible ‘80s b-movie fever dream that’s still only on VHS, and so up my dark, garbage strewn alley that it’s amazing I never knew about it before. Gives me hope for what else could still be out there.

It involves gangs, breakdancing, and a battle of the bands. It was released in 1986, but filmed in 1984, starring and written by Leon Isaac Kennedy, between PENITENTIARYs II and III. He plays Troy, leader of a street gang and also lead singer of a band. I never caught the name of the gang, and they wait until the final act to reveal that the band is called The Royal Rockers. They’re violent tough guys who collect protection money from area businesses, and participate in gang rumbles using canes, bats, chains and switchblades. Their band rehearses in a trashed, graffiti and mannequin filled punk apartment, but their music is danceable synth-based R&B love songs.

The unspecified Florida city’s street culture is like a collision of BREAKIN’ and DEATH WISH 3, so we see endless varieties of sleeveless shirts, headbands, leather jackets, fingerless gloves, sunglasses, studded belts, raised collars, mesh tank tops, berets, wristbands, armbands, camouflage, marching band jackets, New Wave blazers, and many types of mohawks. The villain Carlos (Jeff Moldovan, BLOODSPORT: THE DARK KUMITE), leader of the Mechanics, is introduced wearing a red vest over a red Hawaiian shirt tied up Daisy Duke style. His trademarks are a fedora and a cheap fake mustache cut in two with each half glued to the side of his mouth. When he takes off the fedora it reveals that he too has a mohawk.

The movie opens with typical street scenes set to the drum machines and burbling keyboards of Shannon’s “Let the Music Play.” Then we go to a club where the Rockers argue with the promoter, Flash (Jeff Kutash, “Disco Instructor” on an episode of Hart to Hart), about payment for an upcoming gig that we never see. Then there’s a bunch of breakdancing and a Michael Jackson impersonator.

Meanwhile, The Mechanics are prowling cars to steal, but they’re interrupted by a woman cartoonishly disguised as an old bag lady (like Batman in The Dark Knight Returns). She’s one of the main characters but I couldn’t find them ever saying her name, and I think in the credits she might just be “Joey’s Girl” (Olga Ruiz)? Disrespectful. The Mechanics chase her into an alley where different guys who don’t know them help attack her because it’s their territory. Luckily she slips out and jumps over a bridge just as it’s opening.

The aforementioned Joey (Nicholas Campbell, FAST COMPANY, THE DEAD ZONE) is a member of Troy’s gang who is not in the band and is always very upset about

1) the gang not living up to his ideals of badass gangdom

2) the other members playing music

The guitarist, Mookie (John Mengatti, TAG: THE ASSASSINATION GAME), who combs his hair during rumbles and ties rope around his guitar case or some reason, is the most passionate about the music. He demands eight hour rehearsals, preaching that they’re not good yet because “Good is Wes Montgomery, Miles Davis, Beethoven. That’s good.” Joey always belittles him by referring to his “silly band” and his “stupid band” and “playing the ukulele” and “doing your refugees from Fame bit.” For his part, Mookie says Joey is “on a train to nowhere.”

But they have to stop the Mechanics from stealing cars on their turf, so they try to settle things with a rumble in a junkyard full of backlit smoke. There are lots of impressive flying leaps and roundhouse kicks before a cop named McGruder (Floyd Levine, who had played cops in SUPER FLY, DEATH WISH, DOG DAY AFTERNOON, CURSE OF THE PINK PANTHER and more), who wears a brown leather jacket and says things like “take a walk” and “take a hike,” shows up and arrests all of our guys.

They all stay in one holding cell and the Rockers annoy Joey by singing “We’re gonna do something tonight” over and over again until cellmates the Fat Boys start beatboxing and it turns into a cypher with Kurtis Blow, T.K. and Jessie while others breakdance.

Twilight Records owner Mr. Delamo (Michael Ansara, GUNS OF THE MAGNIFICENT SEVEN) happens to be locked up (actually, the door is clearly not locked!) in another cell for being drunk, and when he gets bailed out he hands out a bunch of business cards. The next day the band shows up at the Twilight offices to sexually harass the receptionist (Lou Ann Carroli), lie about having an appointment, pull gold records off the wall, and give “our cassette” as they keep calling it to the woman in charge, Mr. Delamo’s daughter Brooke (introducing Janine Turner, MONKEY SHINES). They cause a big scene, Troy says it’s “bullcrap” that her father is busy, Mookie whines that “you think we’re scum!” and forcibly kisses the receptionist on the lips as he leaves. Cut to:

Brooke and a friend (Heather Lazlo) in a car loving that demo tape (actually a song by Michael Sterling, a Miami artist who also engineered for 2 Live Crew and Poison Clan). She wants to sign them, but didn’t get their contact information, so luckily they show up to her “Twilight Records Street Contest Auditions.”

Troy has a girlfriend named Jasmine (Wendy Barry, 3:15 THE MOMENT OF TRUTH, Mötley Crüe “If Looks Could Kill” video, Ratt “Back For More” video) working on a shitty butterfly mural in his apartment. He treats her like shit and doesn’t at all hide that he’s going to court Brooke. They do a BREAKIN’ thing by having The Rockers go have an awkward dinner with Brooke’s rich family, but instead of just being wacky/outrageous they’re rude and threatening. Then Troy invites her on a date, they have montage romance, then sex, then drive around with the boys and get in an argument with Carlos and threaten him even though she’s in the back seat.

Troy wants to quit the gang (making Joey very emotional, as usual) and win the contest. He brings in Flash to teach them dance moves during a traditional dance lesson montage. To avenge Troy’s betrayal, Jasmine enters the contest too. When Troy sees her wearing Hollywood-from-MANNEQUIN style sunglasses and looking super-hot on Carlos’ arm he has to be held back by Mookie telling him she’s not worth it because “she’s a whore.” Joey hides around the corner the whole time and then confronts them almost in tears that they’re failing the gang by not murdering Carlos and/or Jasmine on the spot. Sorry to disappoint you, buddy.

In the very next scene Troy goes home and Brooke says she’s going on a trip so he throws a fit in a very childish and emotionally abusive way, a harangue that includes yelling “BULLSHIT!” in her face and ends with “You think I’m nothin? You think I’m nobody? Well I’m gonna show you what this ‘nobody’ can do!”

Then in the scene after that she has already taken the trip and returned and I’m not sure why it was even needed except to give them a (poor) reason to fight. It’s the contest now, with some stylishly designed dance numbers and then a head-to-head song battle between two finalists.

Up first, “Jasmine and her Bad Girls” perform a song called “I Won’t Give It Away” (actually by Barbara Mitchell, presumably the one from the group High Inergy) on a set with a sky and skyline backdrop, a bench and palm trees, litter and smoke blowing like there’s a wind storm or like it’s the opening credits of DAY OF THE DEAD. Pretty cool looking. Never let ’em tell you Twilight Records doesn’t go all out on the presentation.

Then The Royal Rockers are on a set with larger, three dimensional buildings, as if we’ve zoomed into Jasmine’s backdrop. They perform “You’re Not the Only One” (actually by Bruce Fisher, the guy who wrote “You Are So Beautiful”), and by the way it could be called “You’re Not the Only One (Who Cries),” ‘cause that’s what it’s about. Strong men also cry, Lebowski. Troy’s fashion seems based on Michael Jackson, including a Thriller type jacket with the colors reversed.

When the song is over Brooke smiles, the crowd chants “Rockers! Rockers!” and Smokey Robinson (the host) announces, “Well, I think it’s rather evident, and the judges agree, that the first prize of $10,000 and a recording contract and a chance for real stardom and fame go to The Royal Rockers.” It’s so deranged because it is very much not at all evident that one or the other song was better, there was no attempt at suspense about who the judges would choose or at making the losing band feel okay about it, it is likely public knowledge that the head of the label who’s about to hand out a trophy is fighting with the loser of the contest over the winner of the contest… I mean, there are showmanship and ethics violations left and right, but luckily Jasmine is such a good sport that she just smiles.

I don’t get why she’s happy with this outcome, but good for her.

Brooke comes over and tells Troy “I just knew you could do it, I’m so proud of you!” and kisses him on the cheek like everything is fine, but he gives her the moody “you think I’m not good enough” horseshit yet again and then the boys drive shirtless in convertibles by the beach to celebrate.

At night, Carlos drives Jasmine out to the power plant, drinks some Coors and shoots her in the back. Cut to daylight, and the Royal Rockers pulling a sheet off the body to discover that it’s Jasmine.

There’s an ambulance in the background but no one there other than the gang. I have no idea why they came to this crime scene, why whoever covered the body then abandoned it, it’s really a puzzler.

But Troy is incensed because Jasmine was still “one of us” so he challenges Carlos to a fight with no guns to decide which gang has to leave town. The Mechanics’ hideout is in a big tug boat, which reminds me of the snowmobile rape gang from Denys Arcand’s GINA. Troy and Carlos have a knife duel over a big opening in the ship until Carlos falls (but lands in dirt so he doesn’t die) and then they have a fist fight. But eventually the guns come out and then Mookie wacks Carlos on the head with the trophy from the contest.

You can’t help but wonder about the origins of something like this. It’s kinda like those movies set on Hollywood Boulevard, except it’s Hollywood, Florida (and Miami and Fort Lauderdale). Unsurprisingly there are some interesting characters behind the production. Director Dominic Orlando had done videos for Survivor, Carly Simon, Berlin, The Beach Boys and others. He never did another feature film, just a ton of Celine Dion videos, the live action segments on the New Kids On the Block cartoon, and a 1993 children’s music video called THE SUBSTITUTE TEACHER. Oh shit, and the Vanessa Williams “Colors of the Wind” video. Okay. I respect him.

I will mention that a few of the cast members have, you know… done bad things. In 2022 Nicholas Campbell, who played Joey and later the title character on Da Vinci’s Inquest, was suspended from a CBC show he was a regular on for calling a grip the n-word. And Smokey Robinson, who played Smokey Robinson, has recently been accused of sexually assaulting four of his housekeepers. But racists and rapists are a boring subject. I’m more interested in talking about the executive producer literally being a mobster.

That’s right – Michael Franzese was a capo in the Colombo crime family. His dad, Sonny Franzese, sort of pioneered mobsters getting into pop culture, having a controlling interest in Buddah Records and financing DEEP THROAT and THE TEXAS CHAIN SAW MASSACRE. I guess Michael followed in his old man’s footsteps – he and his company Miami Gold had already produced MAUSOLEUM and SAVAGE STREETS, and the year this came out Fortune Magazine listed him as #18 on its list of the Fifty Most Wealthy and Powerful Mafia Bosses, due to his scheme to defraud the federal government out of gasoline taxes. Also that year he was sentenced to 10 years on conspiracy charges. When he got out he became a motivational speaker and pizza restaurant franchiser, and played a reformed mobster in LET THERE BE LIGHT (2017) starring and directed by Kevin Sorbo.

I wondered about that character Flash. The reason they treat him like such a big shot is that Jeff Kutash was a Vegas legend and the choreographer of KNIGHTS OF THE CITY. According to jeffkutashproductions.com “He is known as the architect of Street Dancing, having created the Dancin’ Machine troupe in 1974, that performed internationally as America’s premier DiSCO Dance attraction. He also discovered the Electric Boogaloo dancers.“ He started on a local variety show in Ohio before introducing breakdancers to Vegas when he wrote, produced, directed and choreographed its first water show, Splash, which was performed in and around a 19,000 gallon water tank and ran for 21 consecutive years at the Riviera Hotel.

An L.A. Times article from the year KNIGHTS OF THE CITY was released says Kutash had “four shows currently running in what he calls ‘the casino market’” while developing an adaptation of the comic strip Joe Palooka for Broadway. A decade later he was on federal trial for allegedly handing over $5,000 cash in a bowling alley locker room to bribe a district judge to rule in his favor in a civil suit over the control of Splash. I couldn’t find the verdict in that case, but I suspect it was not guilty, because the judge involved was acquitted of his corruption charges.

Kutash’s websight makes a big deal about him doing some type of choreography on an episode of Taxi that won Emmys for directing, writing and editing. It also says he was inducted into the Rock ’n Roll Hall of Fame in 2000, but their official websight doesn’t list him with the inductees and his name doesn’t come up in their search engine or on the several other sources I checked. I don’t know if that’s stolen valor or not, but IMDb says he’s choreographer for STEELE JUSTICE, and he better not be lying about that one. You don’t lie about STEELE JUSTICE.

In 2018 there was a bit of a KNIGHTS reunion when Franzese hosted a Kutash show called A Mob Story at the Plaza Hotel & Casino. So the show went on.

I’m glad to have KNIGHTS OF THE CITY in my life. It’s not a positive presence like BREAKIN’ 2 – it’s more like its evil counterpart. It doesn’t believe in community or bright colors, nobody really gets rewarded or grows, other than deciding not to kill anybody at the end. Only Jasmine exhibits forgiveness and sportsmanship, and her prize for that is only to have her murder avenged. Its world is nihilistic and dystopian with the exception of its weirdly boundary-less music scene. Punks love R&B and breakers do choreographed numbers to cheesy rock music. The theme song played once in the movie and again on the end credits is “Cry of the City” by The Night Brothers, which has lyrics like “It’s a rat race, it’s a jungle / gunshots end the dream as the sirens scream.” It sounds exactly like all the montage rock shit I like from fighting tournament movies, and sure enough “The Night Brothers” seems to be Joe Esposito, who sang “You’re the Best” for THE KARATE KID and “Success” on SCARFACE. I couldn’t find him credited anywhere, but he posted the song on his official Youtube channel.

It’s one of those movies that seems like it’s trying to be more normal than it ends up being. Maybe I’m not giving them enough credit – maybe they’re deliberately subverting expectations by having the main character never make up with his girlfriend, or introducing her dad as an out of control drunk but never mentioning that again, or having the the heroes triumph over the actual wronged party (his ex-girlfriend who he treated like garbage and then cheated on). But it just feels like they didn’t think about that not being how you’re supposed to do it. More than that, it doesn’t feel like they considered it weird that all the main characters are joyless, insecure assholes, always fighting and complaining except in the montages where Troy tries to be sweet to Brooke, the only consistently nice character, who he then flips out at for no reason and dumps. In a different type of movie that could be grating, but here it’s just so funny to see a movie stubbornly taking the wrong side, thinking it’s the good guy.

Hey man, you don’t have to take it as a message, or a blueprint. It’s just one point of view, one opinion, one cry of the city.

P.S. A profuse thank you to Mr. Majestyk, who was so insistent I had to see this that he sent me a copy.