Yet for a movie about L.A. cops and the dangers they face (the reason they act like drunken fools during their off-time is to relieve the tension), there is an artificiality to it all; characters are so goofy and over-the-top that anyone missing the opening credits might think they were watching an extended TV pilot for an inferior Barney Miller spin-off.
Among the officers at this particular precinct is 19-year veteran “Spermwhale” Whalen (Charles Durning), whose bad attitude may end up costing him his pension when he retires in six months. Then there’s the bigoted Roscoe Rules (Tim McIntire), a foul-tempered cop whose antics get him and his young partner Dean Proust (Randy Quaid) into plenty of sticky situations.
Black officer Calvin Motts (Louis Gossett Jr.) and Asian Frank Tanaguchi (Clyde Kusatsu) are often the butt of jokes aimed at their ethnicity, while Baxter Slate (Perry King), Spencer Van Moot (Stephen Macht), Sam Lyles (Don Stroud), and Harold Bloomguard (James Woods) fumble their way through one assignment after another.
At one point, officers Slate, Lyles and Bloomguard are assigned temporarily to Vice Squad under Sgt. Scuzzi (Burt Young), with disastrous results. Rules and Proust are sent in to break up a potential race riot at a tenement, only to be beaten to a pulp by damn near the entire building!
Many scenes in The Choirboys are also set in MacArthur Park, where the buddies gather nightly to blow off a little steam, moments that are played (mostly) for laughs. Yet while the movie features a number of amazing actors, we rarely believe any of them could pass as officers of the law.
Then, at right around the halfway point, The Choirboys starts to tackle more serious subject matters, with as much drama as comedy sprinkled into the mix. Lyles and Bloomguard are Vietnam vets who served together during the war, with Lyles especially traumatized by the experience (the film opens with an unconvincing flashback, showing the battle that scarred Lyles). There’s also a very poignant scene in which Burt Young’s Scuzzi, portrayed up the that point as a slob, has a heart-to-heart talk with a tearful homosexual teen arrested for soliciting sex from undercover cop Zoony (Vic Tayback).
The Choirboys gets even darker in the last act, and while it maintains that made-for-TV vibe throughout (MacArthur Park never looks like anything more than a backlot set), it also adapts some of the grittiness you’d expect to find in a ‘70s cop / crime movie, with Robert Webber turning up late and stealing the show as the hyper Deputy Chief Riggs (the one character who generates genuine laughs in his handful of scenes).
Does the movie earn this sudden switch in tone? Not really, but I welcomed it anyway. All at once, these guys seemed more like real characters than the clownish, drunken buffoons that earlier had been making a string of sexist, racist, and homophobic jokes. I found myself invested in their later situations and conflicts.
Not that any of this redeems Aldrich’s movie. The Choirboys is just too silly for too long to be taken completely seriously at any point. But at least we catch of glimpse of the old Aldrich, the filmmaker who helmed such classics as Kiss Me Deadly, What Ever Happened to Baby Jane?, and The Dirty Dozen.
The Choirboys definitely pales in comparison to these three films, but with all the inane scenes in this movie, and the humor that falls flat a hell of a lot more than it connects, you’ll be happy that at least a glimmer of Robert Aldrich peeked through in the end.
Rating: A possibly far too generous 5 out of 10
Angered by a trade embargo imposed on them by the U.S., Japan enters into an alliance with Nazi Germany and Fascist Italy in September of 1940, thus becoming one the Axis Powers. With the threat of war looming heavily, Admiral Husband Kimmel (Martin Balsam) of the Navy and the Army’s General Walter Short (Jason Robards), both stationed in Pearl Harbor, issue a number of alerts to keep the troops on their toes.
As Japanese Ambassador Nomura (Shogu Shimada) and the U.S. Secretary of State (George MacReady) work towards a peaceful resolution, Japan’s navy, under the command of Admiral Yamamoto (So Yamamura), is preparing for a surprise attack on Pearl Harbor, to cripple the American Navy. Assisted by Commander Minoru Genda (Tatsuya Mihashi) and Lt. Cmdr. Mitsuo Fuchida (Takahiro Tamura), Yamamoto puts his plan into motion, choosing the morning of Sunday, Dec. 7 as the best time to launch the attack.
Striving for an accurate portrayal of events both before and during the bombing on Pearl Harbor, Tora! Tora! Tora! spends its entire first half setting up the attack, from the growing tension between the two countries to their armies and navies preparing for the inevitability of war. Featuring a number of high-level meetings between bureaucrats and military commanders, the first half of Tora! Tora! Tora! has its moments; I especially liked the scenes where U.S. Intelligence was working feverishly to intercept and decode messages sent to the Japanese Ambassador. Unfortunately, there aren’t enough of these moments, and for a time the movie plods along at a slow pace. I do applaud the filmmakers for their historical accuracy, but there are reasons why most war movies don’t dedicate a lot of screen time to closed-door meetings! That said, the early Japanese segments of Tora! Tora! Tora! are livelier, in part because the military and their preparations are front and center, but I also think Masuda and Fukasaku infuse these sequences with an energy that isn’t present, at least initially, in the American scenes.
It’s during the second half of Tora! Tora! Tora! that the movie really comes alive, from the Japanese planes taking off to the attack itself, which, like the rest of the film, leans towards historical accuracy. Simultaneously exciting and heartbreaking, the bombing of Pearl Harbor is brilliantly brought to life, and stands as one of the best depictions of this tragic day in American history.
While there are no big-name stars in Tora! Tora! Tora!, the cast does a fine enough job, especially Robards as the cantankerous General Short; E.G. Marshall as Lt. Col. Bratton, Chief of Military Intelligence (he’s the first to raise concerns of a possible attack); and So Yamamura as the apprehensive Yamamoto, who fears that, even if the attack is successful, all Japan will have done is “Awaken a sleeping giant and fill him with a terrible resolve”.
Though not consistently exciting, Tora! Tora! Tora!, by telling the story of Pearl Harbor from both sides of the conflict, has enough going for it to make it worth your time.
Rating: 6.5 out of 10
It was a good idea, using non-actors who nonetheless had some notoriety, but I admit, when I heard this, it tempered my expectations and didn’t give me much hope for the film.
Turns out I was both wrong and pleasantly surprised. The performances, by actors and football players alike, ranged from serviceable to good, but the characters and story grabbed me right from the get-go and held my attention throughout, leading up to a final showdown that absolutely blew me away.
After a run-in with a local KKK member (Ron David), Raymond Moffat (Roy Jefferson), his brother Junior (Haskell V. Anderson III), and their friend Ned (Le Tari), leave the town of Kincaid behind and enlist in the army. All three are shipped off to Vietnam, where they’re taught by their commanding officer, Capt. Quinn (Mike Bass), how to avoid the deadly traps set by the Viet Cong.
When their tour of duty ends, the three return to Kincaid, only to find things haven’t improved much for the black community. Initially, Raymond and the others, spurred on by their Baptist preacher (Ed Heath), rely on legal means to bring about change, convincing every African American in Kincaid to register to vote. But when the KKK, led by Harold Turner (Rick Ellis), resorts to threats and even violence to keep the status quo, Raymond, Junior and Ned decide it’s time to hit back… and hard!
Of the three main leads in Brotherhood of Death, only Roy Jefferson was a pro football player, and while his performance isn’t quite as strong as either Anderson’s or Tari’s, he certainly isn’t bad, and is especially believable in the last act, when things get rough.
There are elements of the story that also work well, and carry Brotherhood of Death above your typical exploitation film. The entire sequence involving the vote, where Raymond, Junior and the others are trying to bring about change the legal way, getting every black citizen in town to vote the racists out, was handled well, and had me rooting like hell for them (even if the results were a foregone conclusion).
But while Brotherhood of Death occasionally dabbles in loftier areas, the ending, a fight to the finish between our heroes (using their army training to their advantage) and the bigots, is 100% exploitation goodness, and is as satisfying as they come.
Rating: 8 out of 10
These are the opening images of 1971’s The Brotherhood of Satan, a horror film that ignores traditional narrative as it weaves the story of a Satanic cult and the mayhem it unleashes on a small desert community.
Widower Ben Holden (Charles Bateman) is driving down a secluded road with his daughter K.T. (Geri Reischl) and girlfriend Nicky (Anha Capri) when he happens upon the wreckage from the opening scene. Racing to the nearby town of Hillsboro to alert the police, Ben is instead assaulted by the sheriff, Pete (L.Q. Jones), and other locals. It seems that Hillsboro has been inexplicably cut off from the rest of the world for days now, during which time dozens of citizens were brutally murdered and a number of kids have gone missing. With Ben’s help, Sheriff Pete, his deputy Tobey (Alvy Moore), and kindly Doc Duncan (Strother Martin) try to figure out what’s happening in this normally peaceful town.
What none of them realize is a coven of Satan-worshipping witches has descended upon Hillsboro, and are luring the town’s children to a dilapidated mansion, where, in a few days’ time, they will participate in an ancient ritual. And the leader of this cult is none other than Doc Duncan himself!
Directed by Bernard McEveety and written by William Welch (credited) and L.Q. Jones (uncredited), The Brotherhood of Satan is a bizarre motion picture that, as its story unfolds, raises more questions than it answers. Yet I found myself drawn into it, and the weirder the movie got, the more intrigued I became.
And believe me, this movie gets plenty weird! While at home one evening reading from the bible, Hillsboro resident Ed Meadows and his wife Mildred are attacked and killed by their daughter’s doll; and the scene where the witches, all of whom are senior citizens, initially gather features both head-scratching dialogue and the brutal slaying of one of their number, Dame Alice (Helene Winston). The murder of Dame Alice is shocking in that it seemingly comes out of left field, with only a faint explanation of who this person was, and why they were killed. Then there’s Nicky’s peculiar dream, tinted in red and littered with dead bodies, that randomly pops up in the final act.
Yet as unusual as it all is, I never once believed the events unfolding in The Brotherhood of Satan were as random as they seemed. I trusted that every odd image, every fantastic killing, every random interaction between two characters was another piece of a puzzle, and regardless of how long it would take to piece it all together, I was in it for the long haul.
It took two viewings (both in the same night) of The Brotherhood of Satan for me to decide whether or not my faith in the filmmakers was justified. Happily, it was, but that’s not to imply the movie is perfect. The scene with the doll-turned-killer has a handful of unintentionally funny moments, and tonally the film never really comes together, teetering between arthouse and exploitation without fully embracing either. But its unique approach, coupled with an unforgettably creepy final scene (that also featured a twist I didn’t see coming the first time through) do their part to make The Brotherhood of Satan a unique addition to the late ‘60s / early ‘70s Satanic craze, ranking alongside The Devil Rides Out and Rosemary’s Baby as one of the subgenre’s most unforgettable entries.
Rating: 8 out of 10
