The Choirboys (1977)

Regista:

Robert Aldrich

Writers:

Christopher Knopf (writer)
Joseph Wambaugh (novel)

Data di uscita:

23 dicembre 1977 (USA)

Genere:

Crime | Drama

Slogan:

Don't look for these guys in church.

Plot:

A group of Los Angeles cops decide to take off some of the pressures of their jobs by engaging in various forms of after-hours debauchery. |

Plot Keywords:

Female Nudity | Dominatrix | Police | Based On Novel | Independent Film

Recensioni degli utenti:

What's Going On?

Cast

Charles Durning	...	Spermwhale Whalen
Louis Gossett Jr.	...	Calvin Motts
Perry King	...	Baxter Slate
Clyde Kusatsu	...	Francis Tanaguchi
Stephen Macht	...	Spencer Van Moot
Tim McIntire	...	Roscoe Rules
Randy Quaid	...	Dean Proust
Chuck Sacci	...	'Father' Sartino
Don Stroud	...	Sam Lyles
James Woods	...	Harold Bloomguard
Burt Young	...	Scuzzi
Susan Batson	...	Sabrina
Cheryl Smith	...	Tammy
Claire Brennen	...	Carolina Moon
Gene Chronopoulos	...	Card player

Alias:

Ragazzi del coro, I (Italy) [it]

Durata:

119 min

Nazionalità:

USA

Lingua:

Inglese

Colore:

Colore (Technicolor)

Aspect Ratio:

1.85 : 1

Sonoro:

Mono

Divieti:

Finland:K-16 (uncut) (1988) | Netherlands:16 (original rating) | Finland:K-18 (cut) (1978) | West Germany:18 (f) | France:-16 | Spain:18 | Sweden:15 | USA:R | Norway:18

Luoghi delle riprese:

Bronson Canyon, Griffith Park - 4730 Crystal Springs Drive, Los Angeles, California, USA

Company:

Airone Productions

Citazioni:

Roscoe Rules: [attempting reverse psychology on a female attempting to jump from a roof] Go ahead, Bitch. Jump!
[she jumps]

Movie Connections:

Featured in Los Angeles Plays Itself (2003)

Colonna sonora:

I've Got a Crush on You

What's Going On?

(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.