"[This] Puerto Rican motorcycle gang came pushing its way through the crowd; wanting to see what was going on", and "they pushed everyone aside". They walked away after bumping into van Lidth. The crew also encountered trouble from former members of the "real" Baldies, who complained the film portrayed the Baldies incorrectly, saying: "[The movie] is a lie! This was not a bad neighborhood. There was no crime, no robbery. Murder, yes, but no crime!" Rose Kaufman eventually told them to "fuck off", which nearly resulted in a brawl between the former gang members, Wahl and several other actors. The final battle with the Ducky Boys, which takes place during a football game, was filmed in Van Cortlandt Park. Kaufman compared this scene to a "brutal British soccer brawl"; Ganios compared it to the Battle of Mons Graupius. When asked further about this scene, Ganios said: The final fight with the Ducky Boys was absolutely wild, [and] for all practical purposes it was real. For an entire week hundreds of screaming, stunted madmen—armed with real baseball bats, axe handles, and chains—hurled themselves at us in wave after wave of unabated Celtic fury. It got totally out of hand, with the mayhem sometimes continuing for a full five minutes after [the director] yelled cut. Some of the actors and camera crew were seriously injured and had to be hospitalized. Editing During editing, Kaufman removed six minutes of footage from the film. Release The Wanderers was released theatrically on July 13, 1979, by Warner Bros. Kaufman said the film initially had a "very small, limited" release. The director's cut premiered at the Telluride Film Festival in 1995. This was followed by a 1996 theatrical re-release in the U.S. due to the film's popularity. In 2012, the director's cut of The Wanderers was screened to the Film Society at the Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts. Both versions of the film were released in 2017 by Kino Lorber under license from the film's producers, who own its rights. Critical reception The film's initial reception was mixed. After an advance screening on December 31, 1978, Variety praised it, saying that "despite" the "uneasy blend of nostalgia and violence", The Wanderers "is a well-made and impressive film". The Kaufmans were also complimented for their script, which was described as "accurately" capturing the "urban angst" of growing up in the early 1960s. Janet Maslin of The