toysoldiermp The opening of the movie says it all. We see the pre-shift briefing and go straight to Choir practice after shift and see a drunken party. This breaks away from the book by showing the stress relief drinking but doesn't really show that this is their way of dealing with the stress of the job. I think if you have read the book prior to seeing the movie it is more enjoyable but still disappointing in that so much of the book is missing. The weakness of the film can almost be overlooked with a fantastic cast who do a great job with what they have to work with. While most likely Wambaugh's best book it is not the best movie from his books. If you are a fan of Hill Street Blues, you can't help but notice that this movie/book may have helped inspire the show.

ianlouisiana 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.

moonspinner55 Joseph Wambaugh disowned this film-adaptation of his bestseller about department low-lifes within the Los Angeles police force, but the experience probably shamed him anyway--and anyone who gets through the picture will feel shame for him. Half-assed mixture of smut-minded hijinks and 'sobering' cop drama is so sloppily constructed I am amazed director Robert Aldrich didn't remove his name as well. Aldrich, once a filmmaker of merit, seems to have nothing on his agenda here except earning a paycheck (ditto cinematographer Joseph Biroc, who does some of the gloppiest, ugliest work I have ever seen in a major movie). The mostly-male cast members continually smirk and leer throughout (it's difficult to distinguish the characters' loutish behavior from the actual actors themselves--everyone comes off looking pathetic). The low-point of the movie comes when snarling cop Tim McIntire (in a career-ending turn) is hand-cuffed to a tree without his pants and is spotted by a mincing homosexual. McIntire threatens to tear out the guy's liver and break his spleen if he comes near him. Everyone on screen is doubled over with laughter, but the viewer is the butt of the joke. * from ****

sol1218 (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.