The Choirboys * (1977, Charles Durning, Louis Gossett Jr, Perry King) – Classic Movie Review 10,398

Director Robert Aldrich’s 1977 The Choirboys is a raw and repulsive black-comic crime thriller about the delinquent members of an American police department in Los Angeles, the Wilshire Divison of the Los Angeles Police Department.

The Choirboys stars Charles Durning, Louis Gossett Jr, Perry King, Stephen Macht, Tim McIntire, Randy Quaid, Clyde Kusatsu, Don Stroud, James Woods, Burt Young, Robert Webber and Blair Brown. The Choirboys’s screenplay by Christopher Knopf is freely based on the 1975 best-selling novel by former police officer Joseph Wambaugh, with a different tone, a completely different ending and several character names changed.

An outstanding ensemble cast is put through tasteless, embarrassing Animal House-style farcical antics by the normally estimable cult director Aldrich at his most cynical, unpleasant and scoffing.

The Choirboys is gleefully non-PC and has something to offend everyone, including author Joseph Wambaugh, who attacked it, sued the production, and had his name removed from the film’s credits.

Also in the cast are Chuck Sacci, Jeanie Bell, Michele Carey, Charles Haid, Joe Kapp, Barbara Rhoades, Jim Davis, Phyllis Davis, Vic Tayback, Susan Batson, Cheryl Smith, Claire Brennen, Gene Chronopoulos and David Spielberg.

Woods stars in two other Wambaugh adaptations: The Black Marble (1980) and The Onion Field (1979), with Wambaugh having more control on their production after his experience here.

The title is explained by the cops’ drunken parties that they call ‘choir practices’.

© Derek Winnert 2020 Classic Movie Review 10,398

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