So it goes with Cliffhanger, which stars Sly as Gabe Tucker, a withdrawn mountain climber struggling with guilt after a fatal fall at his hands leads him to retreat from his work and his peers. Despite his hallowed status, the actor still played the outsider seeking redemption. Stallone’s work as a certified action star in the 1990s didn’t change the main frame around his films. After starring in Flatbush, actor Henry Winkler would go on to reprise the role in another 1970s 1950s reboot: Happy Days. It also not only helped to launch Stallone’s career, but it provided the template for another classic American character: The Fonz. Though The Lords of Flatbush adds quite a bit of saccharine to the rough biker aesthetic, the feel-good, coming-of-age flick fulfills its purpose. As the boys chase girls, boost cars, shoot pool, brawl in the street fights, and loiter at the local malt shop, life presents itself, forcing these teens to grow up and face adult responsibilities. Sly plays Stanley Rosiello, a member of a gang from the Flatbush neighborhood in Brooklyn, New York.

Like West Side Story (1961) before it, these duck-tailed bikers are more interested in juvenile hijinks and (eventually) falling in love than steamrolling through town and creating chaos along the way.

That interim was just long enough to gloss over some of the decade’s grimier aspects and apply a fresh sheen of nostalgia for leather-clad greasers crashing sockhops. While the 1950s may seem like a far-gone era in the 2020s, in the 1970s, the post-WWII boom was only 20 years passed.

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