The Choppers

The Choppers is a fun hour filled B movie of youth gone wrong genre. Led by Cruiser (Arch Hall Jr), it's fun seeing how the gang operates. Man, dig that huge cell phone! Plus, see Arch in his hot rod tapping to the beat of his own song playing on the radio! Another shameless plug from Arch Hall Sr. who reminds me of the poor man's Walt Disney. Bruno VeSota, one of my favorite B actors, is great as Moose: the stubbly junkyard owner who smokes a stogie, is involved in shady deals, and takes a nap now and then. And what's up with Cowboy and his ballad "Entertain your lawyers"? For more laughs, watch Gypsy's face during the chase scene (she's got a great scream!). There's even a corny moral thrown in thanks to Torch's drunk Pop. The stereotypical 50s/60s B movie drunk is always a hoot to watch.

With a lot of slang and teen lingo and Conga Joe (hee hee ha!), it's fun to look back at deviance of yesteryear in this not wholly serious, yet entertaining flick.

Competently made jd film, with Arch Hall Jr. as the lead delinquent. Together, he and his teenage buddies mount a clever operation to strip abandoned cars along a deserted road. Their base is a rundown auto yard run by a cowboy clown and an escapee from a fat farm (VeSota). There, Moose and Cowboy run the operation and fence the goods, mainly for their own profit. Trouble is an insurance company has sent in an investigator to help out the cops who've hit a dead-end.

Still looking like the Pillsbury doughboy, actor Hall nevertheless delivers a pretty good performance, along with the rest of the cast that also includes former star Tom Brown as a cop. But it's really VeSota who steals the movie looking like a squatting toad. He's quite a commanding presence. Good thing whistle bait Gaba's along to furnish sexy eye relief from all the guys, especially VeSota. The action's filmed along barren LA-area roads making you wonder why anybody's there. Still, the meager budget is used wisely to deliver realistic results. Then too, Hall Sr. let a pro (Jason) direct, which may account for the uptick in quality from his other, often campy, productions.

All in all, the 70-minutes amounts to respectable drive-in fare that fans of the Halls can catch without embarrassment.

Not in the league of THE SADIST or WILD GUITAR, this early Arch Hall, Jr. flick is fun, b/w, and low. Love Moose, junkyard mogul (great caricature of him on the sign as well). Whatever these guys were thinking when they made this type of exploitation film is okay with me. The slang dialogue is flowing and plenty of cheeseburgers to go around.

A 4 out of 10. Best performance = the guy who plays Moose. This is on DVD with WILD GUITAR so check it out, daddy-o! Lame songs which are perfect, chicks just good-looking enough to seem like they'd be around these guys, and nice locale where they filmed it. Arch Hall, Sr. must have been a strange dude, bankrolling his kid's career this way, but what the hey!

As bad as this should be, it's kind of fun, and you could actually find yourself watching it a second and third time. Arch Hall Jr. was 16 when this was shot, and even gets a writing credit.

What makes it work, kind of, is that the gang of car-stripping JD's are NOT stupid and embarrassing, but halfway interesting and believable. And it's got Bruno VeSota at his scintillating, stogie-smelling, sausage-fingered best. Continuity? Fageddaboudit. But it's got a simple little story to tell and does it well.

And it does feature the inimitable "Monkeys In My Hatband," which you'll play again and again with your jaw dropped, wishing that YOUR dad had put YOU in a movie when YOU were sixteen and let you play that absolutely dumbass song you made up on the crappy $39 guitar you got for your thirteenth birthday and drove everybody crazy with.

"The Choppers" IS available, but you'll have to hunt for it. Definitely worth tracking down if you're huge on beatniks, juvies, and playing chicken.

A delicious little JD film about kids who strip cars for parts. Yes, our youth has gone wild! But what's up with that song Arch Hall Jr. sings? "Monkeys in my hat band. I can do a hand stand" Poetic genius.

Would you believe that a life of stealing parts off cars can lead to a violent death? Lives are thrown by the way side in a climatic shoot out in the junk yard. And who's to blame? The parents.