The Choppers

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.

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!

This movie essentially begins with five young men who turn to a life of crime by stripping cars which they find along the road and selling the parts to an auto salvage yard. Although they are quite good at what they do the problem is that they soon become a public menace and rather than laying low for a month or two they continue on at the same rate even though the police are getting closer to discovering who they are with each passing job. Now rather than reveal any more of this movie and risk spoiling it for those who haven't seen it I will just say that this film was quite typical for its time and probably won't appeal to everyone. In that regard I suppose it's an acquired taste. The acting was adequate for the most part with the most annoying detail being the slang dialogue which just never seemed to stop. Even so, the plot was still interesting and the presence of Marianne Gaba (as "Liz") certainly didn't hurt this film in any way either. Again, some people may not like this movie for various reasons but I didn't think it was too bad and as a result I have rated it as about average.

For a movie that rhymes "Monkeys in my Hatband" with "I can do a handstand" for the lead character's big song, this movie was pretty good.

It's a movie with a moral that if parents don't look out for their kids they will start stealing car parts and shoot a bunch of cops. Does anybody know what he meant by "Monkeys in my hatband"?

I don't get it. Perhaps watching this movie on the roof of a supermarket in center city Philadelphia made it a bit more entertaining.

I hope that Arch Hall Jr. is one day recognized as the genius he is.