Over the years, however, “Boulevard Nights” has found the audience it always deserved via repertory screenings (it’s a perennial favorite at Quentin Tarantino’s New Beverly Cinema in Los ...

Boulevard Nights started as a script written by the then 22-year-old Japanese-American Desmond Nakano in 1977 when he took a film class with the Paul Schrader at UCLA.

When “Boulevard Nights” opened in early 1979, it was one of several major studio films — along with “The Warriors,” The Wanderers,” and “Over the Edge” — to take on gang violence as its primary ...