The Choirboys (1977)

The Age of Commercialism

Just perfect...

I wanted to like it more than I actually did... But much of the humor totally escaped me and I walked out only mildly impressed.

This is one of the best movies I’ve seen in a very long time. You have to go and see this on the big screen.

My brother was a police officer for over 10 years, and he recommended that I read Joseph Wambaugh's book. I liked it so much that I re-read it several times! It really takes a cop to appreciate cop humor, and once my brother kind of explained it to me I almost split a gut. However, when workers of The Factory AKA Universal got hold of it and sanitized it, it really became bland farce (like so many other things Universal touched, truly anti-Midas at times). The Factory neatly excised such nasty things as child abuse and homicide, along with homosexuality and other freak-show attractions such as strippers, exhibitionists and the like. Even THAT could be forgiven, considering the fact that Americans at the time were kind of Pollyanna-naive on the human condition. What could NOT be forgiven was how the movie was given a relatively happy ending (just what The Factory Doctors ordered). Totally contrary to the book. I don't blame Robert Aldrich for this somewhat stale movie, I blame The Factory and its methods of stifling any creativity and integrity.

Never forget that we are watching "The Choirboys" with 30years of hindsight.When it was first released in England I was a policeman in north - east London and the manager of the local cinema distributed free tickets to the local nick which,of course,we all took advantage I found it a fairly accurate picture of how cops all over the world let off steam and,in times of trouble,hang together lest they be hanged separately. I suspect you'd need to have been a big city cop to have fully appreciated the strain of working in a hostile environment where nobody but other cops is coming to help you if it all kicks off.So you look out for your colleagues,and when it hits the fan you all shelter under the same umbrella.Or at least you did back in 1977. And that's the way it was.In London,in L.A.,Berlin or Hong Kong or any other town with a street life I guess. The street life has of course carried on indeed become emboldened by the gradual lessening of will within the upper echelons of the police service to deal with it effectively.Now with so many "isms" pointed in their direction,cops in general are reluctant to enforce the law with regard to any but the most serious offences committed by street people.They have become the beneficiaries of what is known as the "Free Ride Act". Clearly knee - jerk liberals will see this as "a good thing" as they drink their latte macchiatoes made with soya milk.But it was a great deal safer to walk through the streets of London at night in 1977 than it is today. The depiction of a gay man with a pink poodle seems to have excited particular rage amongst reviewers,almost as if no gay man would be seen dead with a pink poodle,come on fellers,is it really an outrageous sexual slur?And of course sadomasochists are people too,we all know that but must we necessarily laud their unusual preferences?Or can we say we find them distinctly odd?Probably not on reflection. But in watching "The Choirboys" we are watching history.It is not our place to judge the attitudes of people 30 years ago, neither should we be in a hurry to just in case they decide to judge ours in turn. This movie is a reflection of its time,the LAPD cops merely a microcosm of American society at the time the movie was made. So,apart from its appalling political incorrectness,does it have much merit as a movie?No,not really,apart from a terrific cast.Mr Aldrich's films are usually full of sound and fury but very little of substance. If you think of "The Choirboys" as a sort of "Dirty Dozen" on the streets of L.A. you won't go far wrong.Bear in mind that isn't necessarily a recommendation.

(Slight Spoilers) Running neck and neck with the ridicules "Exorcist II: the Hieratic" as the worst movie of 1977 "The Chiorboys" is about the most off-the-wall cop movie ever made that was so bad that even the book's author Joseph Wambaugh,that the movie is based on, disowned it never wanting to be mentioned in the same breath with the film.Having a bunch of beer and booze guzzling as well as mentally unstable LA police officers make complete fools of themselves is not very funny as the movie want's it's audience to think. These yo-yo's end up causing more trouble to the community as well as themselves then any gang of street thugs could possibly do and were supposed to like them? There are a number of cops who have very serious mental hang-ups that leads to suicide and in the case of police officer Sam Lyles, Don Stroud, involuntary manslaughter but what that shows is how lax the LAPD is in allowing men with serious mental problems into it ranks.The cops in the movie "The Chiorboys" screw up almost ever assignment that their put on but what get's them in trouble is when Lyles, drunk and locked up in a police paddy wagon, goes wacko and blows away a park hustler when he tried to help him. Were shown at the beginning of the movie that Lyles has been suffering from a sever case of claustrophobia since he was in Vietnam but yet he managed to get into the LAPD where, being assigned a deadly weapon, he may very well be put in tight places where his phobia would take over his common sense.There's also the sad case of officer Baxter Slate, Perry King, who's suffering from very dark sexual hangups dealing with S&M that leads him to get involved with a dominatrix. When discovered getting his rocks off by his fellow cops Baxter begs them for help, all Baxter wanted was for them to talk to him, but is ignored which leads to him, feeling ashamed and abundant, shooting himself.With these two cases of police driven to he edge and beyond it's very hard to find anything funny in the movie that's supposed to be a police comedy/drama about the inner workings of the LAPD. Remarkably the most touching and understanding scene in the movie has to do with the uncouth and scuzzy head of the vice squad Sgt. Scuzzi, Burt Young. Talking to a young man picked up for soliciting in the park Sgt. Scuzzi takes the time to talk to him and treats the frightened 18 year-old with kindness and understanding like a father not a hardened cop on the beat. It turned out that Scuzzi letting the boy off without being booked didn't end his problems with him getting shot and killed later in the movie.Very uneven at best and mindless and offensive, to every race color and creed, at worse "The Chiorboys" totally misses the mark that it, and author Joseph Wambaugh in his book, tried to make about the pressures of being a policeman in a major US city. We get a bunch of stories of cops who are so unstable and unprofessional that they come across worse then any of the criminals in the movie and end up getting the worse of it when their ever called upon to arrest or restrain them. There's even a very disturbing scene when two of the cops Rules & Proust, Tim Mcintire & Randy Quaid, are on a roof trying to stop a woman from jumping to her death. Rules encourages instead of trying to talk her out of it where she ends up jumping to her death.The very contrive ending with officer Whalen, Charles Durning, confronting his boss Chief Deputy Riggs, Robert Webber, about him suspending some half-dozen officers, involved in the cover-up of the Lyles shooting was about as corny and unconvincing as it could get. That was supposed to be the high point in the movie that would make you forget just how silly and hare-brained it was up until then. Instead of making the movie "The Chiorboys" better it made it even worse if that at all was possible.

Justly forgotten black "comedy" of a bunch of immature alcoholic policeman and their disgusting behavior in and out of uniform.The plot is vague (to say the least) and the humor is either unfunny or just revolting. The film is chockful of offensive humor--there's racism, sexism (all the female characters I saw were hookers) and extreme homophobia (the gay guy with the pink poodle was just horrendous). Full of unpleasant characters.I watched this on cable. 30 minutes in I was horrified--I was going to turn it off but I kept it on because this DOES have a cast of well-known actors. But (after another lousy half hour) I turned it off. It's really hard to believe such a talented director with such a good cast would make THIS! Also the author of the book this is based on disowned this. That should tell u something. When not offensive this is just dull. You don't see any of the actors in this gloating about doing this. Avoid.