Blog NKCDC 43 years after the movie ‘Fighting Back,’ a real-life and an imagined sequel (Director’s Cut)

By Dr. Bill McKinney For the Inquirer
A version of this essay was originally published in The Philadelphia Inquirer.


There is something special about watching a movie filmed in your hometown — or even better in your own neighborhood. 

Most Philadelphians have probably seen Rocky, Creed, 12 Monkeys, Trading Places, Philadelphia … but chances are you haven’t seen Fighting Back, the 1982 movie filmed almost entirely in Kensington. 

A movie neighborhood “gone bad” 

The movie trailer and promos declared “Enough is enough! Thieves, Pimps, Prostitutes, Muggers, and Drug Dealers beware; John D’Angelos out to make his neighborhood safe. He’s declaring his own personal war on crime and he doesn’t want your kind around here anymore.” 

The film, starring Tom Skerrit (John D’Angelo) and Yaphet Kotto (Ivanhoe Washington), was part of the era’s subgenre of movies — think Dirty Harry, Death Wish, Walking Tall and Taxi Driver — that centered on urban decay and vigilantes who see themselves as a last resort when city government has become too weak or too complicit to address societal ills. 

Let me summarize the plot for you. 

It’s centered on an Italian American family, who live in the neighborhood and own a small grocery. They’ve been part of the neighborhood for generations. The movie opens with a celebratory party but is soon followed by images of the home becoming abandoned as people move away from the crime and chaos that is right outside their front door and in the park across the street.  

John weathers crisis after crisis — including the murder of his best friend and the discovery that his teenage son is using heroin and — until he decides to organize neighbors into a civic association, they call the Peoples Neighborhood Patrol (PNP). Not truly understanding the causes of urban decay or causes of white flight, and confronting a corrupt and ineffective city government, members of the PNP turn to vigilantism (and racist actions) which eventually leads to conflict with Ivanhoe Washington, a Black community leader who does understand the underlying causes of the problems residents are facing. 

Still from Fighting Back (1982).
Paramount Pictures publicity still, courtesy of Bill McKinney

In the denouement of the movie the Police commissioner gives a wink of approval to John to murder his rivals — which he does — and then murder is followed by a battle in the park between the other PNP and their perceived antagonists, ending with more death and the reclamation of the park. The movie ends with the announcement of John winning a seat on City Council, and with children once again playing in the park. 

Photos of the El on Kensington Avenue & F Street in Kensington featured in Fighting Back (1982).
Tom Gralish / Inquirer Staff Photographer

If you follow Kensington does this all sound familiar yet?   

Do the questions of what happens in a community when it is disinvested in and when white flight occurs sound familiar?  What do residents do when they rightfully are frustrated by not only the untenable conditions they live in but the frustration of not being able to rely on City Government or other forces to support them?  What are the options when you do organize your neighbors and your efforts, but your voices are still ignored by the powers that be, is vigilantism and displacement the only option left? Do they solve any of the problems for the long term?  The movie is definitely not a cinematic classic, but it does ask some good questions.   

Fighting Back asserts three possible community responses to the challenges of the neighborhood — join the chaos, organize and work with the system, or turn vigilante. 

But unlike movies, in real life there is a fourth path forward, one centered on self-determination through community-driven, trauma-informed development and a comprehensive approach to problem-solving. 

THEN: photo from McPherson Square Park from 1982 film Fighting Back (1982) and NOW: McPherson Square Park on Jan. 8, 2025.
Tom Gralish / Inquirer Staff Photographer

Years later, in real life 

There is an even deeper connection to the movie for me.  When I purchased my home 23 years ago, the previous owners told me that the movie (which I had never heard of) had been filmed in the house. My home is, in fact, the home you see on the cover of the DVD and promotional posters; my home is where the party scene to start the movie is filmed.   

THEN: poster for Fighting Back (1982), filmed in Kensington. NOW: 2025 photo of the home which served as a location in the film.
Paramount Pictures & Tom Gralish / Inquirer Staff Photographer

The park that serves as the symbol of chaos and the point of greatest conflict in the movie is McPherson Square, the park my front door opens out to. In real life, the park has received much more national and international attention than the movie ever did.   

And, finally after many years of laying vacant, the family grocery and site of the PNPs community meetings, — located on the corner of McPherson Park at 3000 Kensington Avenue — was purchased by the nonprofit organization I work for, New Kensington Community Development Corporation, and renovated. It will be reopening on Jan. 15 as the Kensington Engagement Center. 

The building will serve as a space for community engagement — allowing residents to share ideas and strategies for the co-creation of Kensington as we move forward. It will also serve as an exhibit space, with the first exhibit focusing on the history of Kensington Avenue, the current experience of business owners on the Ave, and a number of interactive tools for residents to think about the past, the present and to apply those thoughts to what they want the Avenue to be in the future.   

On the 15th we will not only be doing a ribbon cutting and opening of the building and exhibit but will also be launching a small business supports program as well as a new multi-million-dollar collaborative partnership to address housing stability and mental health in Kensington.  

Photo of the building at 3000 Kensington Avenue, Wednesday, Jan. 8, 2025 that NKCDC renovated and will be reopening on Jan. 15, 2025 as the Kensington Engagement Center.
Tom Gralish / Inquirer Staff Photographer

Let’s imagine a sequel to the movie

My pitch for a sequel to Fighting Back 40-some years later similar to the original, opens with clips of the chaos and violence in the world and in Philadelphia — only this time the clips are primarily from YouTube and social media. 

John is weathered, worn down, and frustrated.  The years he spent on council were not used to address the core issues which led to the decline of his beloved community. He bears the weight of having been through cycles of failed strategies that were designed upon flawed theories of change, one of the most flawed being vigilantism — which was never a solution, just a trauma response.   

John now realizes that Ivanhoe was right, that they needed to address the underlying issues connected such as poverty, education, and racism, to eliminate the downstream crime that he and PNP had instead focused on.  

John also carries the weight of someone who has lost a child, as his son was never able to recover from his addiction to heroin and he died as a direct result.  But his son’s daughter, Donna, is alive and has been the apple of her grandfather’s eye. 

In the next scene we meet the grown Donna who is in her mid 20s and a single mom. Despite all of the challenges she and her family face on a day-to-day basis she has stayed in the neighborhood.  She, like so many others, is experiencing generational trauma from the neighborhood, and we see it in a scene where she is trying to shuffle her children to a school that has barely any students left while hopscotching through the chaos on the avenue.   

Like her grandfather, she is also sad and almost broken and follows in his footsteps using the dominant systems of civic engagement — recently having been elected as a committee person — to desperately try to make a difference while also just trying to make it as a single mother. 

In her despair and concern she agrees to go with a good friend to an event in a neighboring community in hopes of accessing something, anything, that can turn the tide.  When she arrives, she is surprised to find a different message than she is used to.  The space itself has been adorned with colorful posters that share the history of the neighborhood as well as data on the current conditions related to crime, poverty, housing, and more. She is completely intrigued by the approach and is even more impressed when the facilitated conversations begin. 

Unlike the conversations she is used to that are dominated by a very few people and focused on rehashing old grievances, blame, and old strategies, instead these conversations incorporate many voices, and focus on strengths, and complex comprehensive approaches to addressing the issues underlying the very real challenges they face.  

She is so impressed that after the event she pulls the facilitator of the group aside and asks for more information and through this conversation not only does she learn of their theory of change, but she learns of her attraction to this powerful young man.  

That Sunday at dinner with her grandparents she describes the experience, and throughout the conversation her grandfather asks more questions than she has heard him ask in years. By the end he realizes and explains to her that where she was must have been the continuation of the work of Ivanhoe Washington and when he says that name, she realizes that the facilitator was Mr. Washington’s grandson, Devontae.   

Through long conversations John and Donna realize what Donna witnessed is the path forward they should be pursuing and while the love between Donna and Devontae blooms, John also gets a spark in his eye for the first time in years and they all bring the model back to their own community and soon begin to see the fruit of this labor.  They begin by laying a new foundation that is based on acknowledging the trauma the community has experienced, then focus on community-led and comprehensive processes and strategies.  

They begin to see real change. Investment begins to enter the community from the City, State, philanthropic and private sectors, as people see a path, and something to invest in. Politicians stop acting as if they are the only decision-makers and instead partner with many others in service to the community. Even the police are relieved — as they are no longer put in a position of solving problems beyond their ability to solve — and find that they are in the right spot to serve.  

Together, with everyone in the right spots, everyone is finally able to address the core issues of poverty, employment, housing, education, health and more. Businesses that had been shuttered return, new businesses that meet the needs of longtime residents arrive and serve the community as residents also have a path to stay in their homes and benefit from the positive changes taking place in the community.   

Things are not perfect, but they get better.   

Fighting Back: Resilience, ends with scenes of people throughout the City in their communities meeting not with baseball bats and anger but in discussions of how to replicate Kensington’s success rather than just talking about how to avoid becoming Kensington, and with the wedding of Donna and Devontae attended by the old leaders such as John and Ivanhoe as these new leaders begin their next journey together.  

Bill McKinney is the executive director of New Kensington Community Development Corp. 

The Kensington Engagement Center opens on January 15th, 2025. For more information on the space, including current exhibits and how to visit the space, click here!